作业成本法的实施和适应性【外文文献翻译

1、外文文献翻译译文 原文：Activity-Based Costing Implementation and AdaptationAbstractActivity-based costing (ABC) has been much studied and much written about over the last decade. While the topic has received a great deal of coverage from a technical and theoretical standpoint, accounts of actual implementation

2、 experiences have received relatively less study. If ABC is to be an important addition 10 management practice the theory must be translated into successful implementation. This survey reports on the extent of research that applies the theory of organizational change to the topic of ABC implementati

3、on. It finds the area under-researched and makes suggestions for new studies. IntroductionOver the course of the last decade a management tool called -based activity costing II (ABC) has become one of the more widely embraced of new management methods. While its core lies in cost accounting it has a

4、ttracted the attention of business managers in general and has been the subject of articles in the Harvard Business Review, Fortune, and elsewhere in the business press. And not only is it a major theme in business, it has been adopted in parts of government for instance the IRS and the Department o

5、f Defense.What began as essentially anaccounting II matter has spread to the point where itaffects nearly every aspect of an organization from production to marketing. In the early literature about ABC the focus was on the un derly ing con cepts-esse ntiOly theory development I . As the theory began

6、 to be implemented far-trheearching consequencesliterature thatwere developed for instance the need to reshape performance evaluation measures to reflect the new economics revealed by ABC. As these extensions of the basic theory started to affect organizations academic researchers came to recognize

7、that profound implementation issues were arising. This in turn has given rise to a segment of the ABC literature on organizational change. It is that literature this paper surveys.The focus of the paper is that part of the orga ni zatio nal cha ngeIIsome theoretical foundation. I will not attempt to

8、 survey comprehensively a large number of teaching cases nor accounts of ABC installations in the practitioner literature - articles along the line of In a DoD Environment Hughes Aircraft Sets the Standard for ABCI (Haedicke and Feil 1991). These cases and descriptions have had an important influenc

9、e on the moreacademicI papers by providing a rich fieldchfrotom whiexamine successes and failures. The paper is generally restricted to ABC. Although there aresurely many common lessons and conclusions that might be extracted from implementations of TQM (Jensen and Wruck 1994) or JIT (Klein 1989) I

10、will not attempt in this paper to make those connections.Finally I note that this is quite a new and accordingly rather small, literature. Only in about 1990 did rigorous study of ABC implementation become part of our literature. Moreover there are those (e.g. Hopwood 1983) who believe that the whol

11、e area of studying accounting in the contexts in which it operates is underdeveloped.The next section gives a description of ABC. The third section is the review and the final section concludes.DiscussionThis section outlines the basic ideas of ABC and how the basic ideas have spread to other areas

12、of management.An explicit aim of cost accounting has always been to use an accounting system that assigns to products a dollar amount that reasonably reflects the value of resources actually consumed to create that product - whether a good or a service. Some resources are fairly easy to account for,

13、 like the paper in a book. The greater challenge lies in allocating resources where the connection between the resource and a unit of the final product is indirect unobservable and imprecise like industrial engineering services.In recent years the challenge in allocating indirect resources has incre

14、ased greatlyfor several reasons. (1) Indirect cost as a fraction of total cost has increased e.g. automation: the substitution of machines (indirect) for direct laborers (easily traced). (2)Increasing proliferation of product models and types, where complex production scheduling, parts inventories,

15、etc. add to indirect costs; e.g. automobile models and optio ns. (3) Decreas ing reliability of the base II which has traditi on ally bee n used toallocate direct costs; direct labor time. This changing manufacturing world has led to the need for better methods of assigning costs. The key idea of AB

16、C is that activities cause costs products do not cause costs. The design of an ABC system rests on identifying the relationship between an indirect resource and theactivity I that consumes it. Once thadone, the product cost is simply the cross product of the activities that were incurred to produce

17、that product and the cost per unit of the activity. ABC started out. then, as a solution to a product costing I problem. Revised product costs leamdadrkireetcintlgy to implications: when a new, more reliable cost system shows that some products are generating less revenue than their cost, marketing

18、practices should change, for example, re-pricing, abandonment, changing product promotion policies, etc.In the operations realm, the ABC perspective makes clear that production managers do not manage costs they manage activities (which in turn create costs). This implies that ABC can and should be u

19、sed for more than passively measuring costs it can be usedactively to manage costs. Among other uses it has been used to improve quality byestimating the costs of-valuenactivities (MacArthur 1992). The extension ofacsedymanagement II.ABC to cost management is termedActivity-based management reaches

20、beyond manufacturing. Returning to the marketing department, it becomes clear that the costs of marketing can be analyzed in terms of the activitiesII that cause them, just as is the manufacturing process (Foster etal.1996). A large Dutch firm Philips NV performed an analysis of one of its business

21、unitsin which administrative departments that support production - personnel among others were examined in terms of the activitiesII which drove their costs (Groot 1997).This study resulted in revised methods of allocating the costs to the production departments and also in personnel reductions in t

22、he administrative departments.ABC thinkingI calls into question performance measurement. If the newactivinsights call for different emphasis then performance measurements should direct managers efforts toward that emphasis. Further with ABC thinking traditional budgeting practices become suspect - i

23、t makes more sense to start with the number of times an activity is to be performed as the basis for the budget than to start with last year's buand add 5% .ABC thinking also changes the criteria for design: product designers, armed with information about the cost of manufacturing activities, co

24、uld design a product to minimize manufacturing cost (Berlant et al. 1990).The list goes on. The point is that ABC is a tool that affects behavior throughout an organization. Because it changes established routines and revises performance and compensation standards, it has important behavioral conseq

25、uences. It is no surprise then that not every attempt to capture the benefits of better cost measurement has met with success. It is true that there is a selection bias that makes it harder to learn the failures than the successes, but nevertheless there is abundant evidence of slow, stalled, or aba

26、ndoned ABC implementations as well as important advances. Before proceeding tothe academic study of this implementation process a description of the scope of ABC is in order.ABC is not universally accepted. There is a substantial population of organizations that believes that the cost exceeds the be

27、nefit. It appears that even among organizations that have adopted it. It is most likely doneoff line II with spreadsheets and special stit has not replaced the traditional accounting system used to create financial statements.Since many of the uses of ABC - product prici ng for example -do not depe

28、nd on real timeI information, many of the benefits of ABC are available even without thceost of restructuring the accounting system. Despite the absence of a wholesale changeover to ABC systems the concepts of ABC have been influential and have certainly affected policies in a wide range of organiza

29、tions.SurveyBruns (1987) performed an early detailed field study of a firm that changed its accounting system (though it was not an ABC implementation). Though he did not submit the study to a deep theoretical analysis he observed what many others reported later: (1) the importance of a top manageme

30、nt sponsor - in this case the absence of one and associated lack of progress;(2) the stimulating role of crisis in developing new information systems: and (3) the difficulty of dislodging anembeddedI cost systemresistance to change. While none of these discoveries were startling they are the beginni

31、ng of a fairly consistent picture of ABC implementation that arises in later studies.It is also one of the few studies that peers into a relativefailure I .Anderson (1995) performed a very thorough case study of ABC implementation at General Motors. She used interviews, archives, and direct observat

32、ion to track the implementation over a period of several years. Her approach was to follow the case studymethods proposed by Mintzberg(1979) and Eisenhardt(1989) in which she began thestudy with adefined research focus II using the existing literature on ABC to pickvariables. The theoretical framewo

33、rk was based on Kwon and Zmud (1987) and Cooperand Zmud (1990). In this view, the success of implementations depends both on stages of the implementation, as well as on factors that determine progress within each stage. This model is based largely on studies of implementations of information technol

34、ogy projects (which have been studied much more thoroughly than accounting implementations) and on the organizational change literature.The GM story was more successful II than not. As Anderson left the theater, ABC had become corporate policy and had begun to branch out beyond its initial uses in p

35、roduct costing to -abcatisveitdy management I , where operational improvements are sought on that basis of the ABC principles. Nevertheless, the system had not yet proceeded beyond the fourth of the six stages, and there were still difficulties that threatened to curb full acceptance and the full sc

36、ope of possibilities.Anderson found that the stageI model fitted GMs experience quite well. It seems clear that almost any set of events can be fitted to this model that identifies for example the first stage as theinitiation I stage. Thus the study is not so much a test of a theory asa careful acco

37、unt analyzed according to the organizing principle of achange modeSimilarly, the general category offactors I in Kwon and Zmud(e1n9o8u7g)hare broadto encompass almost anything: the categories are individual organizational technological task characteristics and external environment.She draws many con

38、clusions; a few seem particularly important. (1) Individual factors - things like sponsorship -are important in the early stages, but organizational factors - Like routines to promote efficienc-y become Idominant in later stages. Organizational factors are probably even more important at GM, where t

39、here were over100 ABC sites than in smaller organizations.(2) There were significant technological hurdles to be cleared -the challenges at GM extended far beyond the resistance tochange II that might meet a change in say a bonus formula. There were two criteria that GM set early on: that the system

40、 be broadly applicable to many different processes and that it result in better decision-making. (3) She found very strong sentiment that the ABC system should reside not in accounting but in manufacturing and that knowledge of the production process is very important to success. In some cases proce

41、ss knowledge was a criterion for team membership in others accountants were excluded from teams in the belief that they could not approach the problem with a clea n slate II.Source : Frederick WLindahl . Human Resource Planning, 1997, Vol.20 Issue 2, 62-66.二、翻译文章译文：作业成本法的实施和适应性摘要 在过去十年里作业成本法进行了深入的研究

42、，与此同时，作业成本法这个题材 受到了大量技术和理论角度的关注，而关于实际运用经验的研究却很少。如果作业 成本法要成为一个重要的补充管理实践，它的理论必须被转换成成功的实践经验。 这个调查报告研究的范围理论适用于组织理论对 ABC 实施的话题的变革。它发现 这个领域研究的不足之处，并提出新的研究建议。引言在整个过程的最后十年里一种被称为作业成本法II (ABC的管理工具成为一种 被更广泛接受的新管理方法。虽然它的核心在于成本核算，但它吸引了一般的业务 经理的关注，而且还成为了哈佛商业评论中 才富I和其他商业出版社中各文章 的主题。它不仅是出版社的重大主题业务，它还被部分政府部门所采用，例如，国

43、 税局和国防部。作业成本法成为会计I领域中的一部分，已经影响到从生产到销售的每一个 组织方面。早期关于作业成本法的文学作品，重点主要集中于内在的概念 即埃 森的理论发展I，它是理论的开始，一提出就产生了深远的影响。例如它提出的重 塑绩效评估措施就反映了新制度经济学的基础知识。而这些基本理论的延伸开始逐 渐影响组织，学术研究人员开始意识到作业成本法的实施性问题。这又反过来加深 了作业成本文学对组织的影响。本文研究的就是这部分加深了的作业成本对组织影 响的文学。本文的焦点是有一定理论基础的 组织变革I文学。我不会试图全面大量的研究教学案例也不会确认作业成本法在公司中的账户装置是否沿着文学论文国防部

44、环 境休斯飞机公司为ABC设置的标准（Haedicke1991年8月初版）这条路线。这些 案件和描述可以提供更丰富的领域，从而对更多的 学术I论文产生重要的影响，并 以此检查它们的正确性。但这种研究仅仅局限于作业成本法的理论方面。虽然会有 很多共同的经验，并且可能从全面质量管理（Jensen和Wruck 1994或Klein , 1989）实现中得出结论，但我不打算对理论研究进行展开。最后，我意识到对作业成本法的研究是非常的新颖的。只有在1990 年左右实施的严格的作业成本法才属于我们研究的范围。此外还有一些人 如 Hopwood， 1983 认为在整个范畴中研究会计工作是不会有成果的。这一段

45、是介绍作业成本法 的理论的，第二部分是回顾最后一部分是得出结论。讨论 这个部分主要概括了作业成本法的基本思想，并且论述了这个基础思想是如何 传播到其他管理领域中的。成本核算的明确目标始终是运用会计系统分配给产品的 每一分钱都能合理地反映在生产产品（不管是产品还是服务）的实际损耗价值。有 一些资源的分配是很简单的，很容易理解；而也有一些资源很难分配，比如那些相 互联系，又难以区分开来的与最终单位产品之间的间接费用。最近几年中，分配间接费用的难度大大地增强了。因为：（1）间接成本在总成本中的比重在上升；例如，自动化使得机器生产的间接人工代替了（比较容易分 配的）直接人工；（ 2）由于生产产品的型号

46、和类型在不断的增多，使得企业要在 复杂的生产调度中尽量能够保持零库存，从而增加了间接成本；（3）分配直接成本、直接人工的传统基础方法的运用减少，从而导致了制造企业需要更好的成本分 配方法。作业成本法的关键思想是：作业消耗成本；产品不消耗成本。作业成本法 是用来说明间接成本和消耗间接成本的作业之间的联系。一旦运用了作业成本法， 产品成本不过是各个作业耗费成本的总和。这样作业成本法的实施就可以解决产品 成本计算的难题，而且经过改进后计算的产品成本可以直接影响产品在市场上的销 售：当一个更加可靠的成本系统计算出来的成本远小于它的收益时，该产品的销售 方式就应该改变了，就可以重新定价或改变产品促销策略

47、等。在操作领域里，作业成本法的基本思想表明产品管理者不能控制成本，但他们 可以控制产生成本的作业。这意味着作业成本法可以而且应该更多地用于衡量成 本；作业成本法可以被积极地用于控制成本。在其他方面的使用中，作业成本法已 经被用于估计没有价值增加的作业成本来改善质量(Mac Arther1992 )。这个对成本管理延伸的作业成本法被叫做作业成本管理1|0作业成本管理在销售方面的影 响超过了在制造业中的影响。回到销售产品的市场上，依据作业消耗成本的基本思想来分析销售成本，就会使成本分配变得很清晰，就像制造过程一样具有一定的 顺序性(Foster1996)o荷兰飞利浦NV公司在它的商业部门中的管理部

48、中实施对 个人产品的分析，尤其是检查控制成本的作业(Groot1997)。这个方案实施后， 使得公司改进了以往的成本分配方法，从而减少了生产部门和管理部门人事成本。作业成本的思维0质疑传统的绩效衡量。如果新的 作业0分析需要与以往传统 方法有不同的侧重点，那么管理者应该朝着新的侧重点去进行绩效衡量。此外，随 着作业成本法新的“思维”的运用，传统的成本预算变得令人怀疑因为传统的 预算使得以往被用作年初预算基础的作业，比上一年年初预算成本增加了5%。同时作业成本思想的标准也影响了设计的标准：产品设计师只要拥有关于作业制造成 本信息就可以设计一个制造成本最少的产品( Berlant， 1990)。这样的列子举不胜举。但从中可以看到一个共同点：作业成本法是通过组织影 响行为的一个工具。它改变了原来分配成本的套路，修改了性能和补偿标准，它具 有重要的行为后果。但是这并不令人意外，不是每一个想享受更好成本计算好处的 企业都可以心想事成。因为存在一个选择性偏好，使得学会失败比学会成功更难， 但是虽然如此，仍有充分的证据表明其实那些缓慢的、停滞不