The Implementation Stages of Activity-Based Costing and the Impact of Contextual and Organizational Factors.

Abstract

Abstract Abstract: Anderson (1995) suggests that the critical success factors change at different stages of implementation for information innovations such as ABC. Using mostly contextual and organizational factors found to be associated with ABC success in prior studies, this study tests how these factors affect ten stages of the ABC implementation process. Based on a survey of U.S. manufacturing firms, different factors become importance as higher stages of ABC implementation are reached. Evidence is also found that the direction and level of importance for many factors varies by stage. For instance, a high-quality information system may lead to rejecting ABC before adoption or abandoning it after implementation has started, but it also appears to enable reaching the highest implementation stage. Studies that combine ABC firms from several implementation stages to test certain success factors may distort their significance levels or reject other factors that are only important for certain stages.