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The Rise And Fall Of Activity Based Costing In Japan, Hiroshi Ozawa, Anura De Zoysa

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Activity Based Costing (ABC) has come to light in an era where there was worldwide attention for Japanese management systems and management accounting practices. Despite the worldwide hype for ABC as a method capable of producing more accurate product costs, ABC gathered very little interest from the business community in Japan. However, in contrast, Japanese management and cost accounting researchers took a positive view on the concept and attempted to discuss its applicability to Japanese companies as a viable alternative for their existing cost systems. Although, the collapse of the Japanese bubble economy in early 1990s provided some impetus for …