Adoption of activity management practices: a note on the extent of adoption and the influence of organizational and cultural factors

We examine the extent to which activity management practices are adopted by Australian business units at each of Gosselin's [Gosselin, M., 1997. The effect of strategy and organizational structure on the adoption and implementation of activity-based costing. Acc. Organ. Society 22 (2), 105–122] levels of Activity Analysis, Activity Cost Analysis and Activity-based Costing. We also examine the association between extent of adoption and the organizational factors of size and decision usefulness of cost information, and the business unit culture dimensions of innovation, outcome orientation, and tight versus loose control.Data were collected by mail survey questionnaire of a random sample of business units, with questionnaire design and distribution based on Dillman's [Dillman, D.A., 2000. Mail and Internet Surveys: The Tailored Design Method. John Wiley & Sons Inc., New York] Tailored Design Method. Adoption rates are found to be higher than in prior studies, suggesting the continuing relevance of activity management practices and the advantage of using Gosselin's (1997) levels. All factors were found to be associated with all activity management practices. In particular, business unit size and all three business unit culture dimensions were found to be associated with extent of adoption of Activity Analysis (AA) and Activity Cost Analysis (ACA), while decision usefulness and the cultural dimensions of outcome orientation and tight versus loose control were associated with Activity-based Costing.  

The Contribution of Non-U.S. Institutions to Academic Accounting Journals

This study uses the weightings of accounting journal quality derived by Howard and Nikolai (HN, 1983) to produce a ranked list of the publishing contribution of the twenty-five top non-U.S. institutions for the ten-year period 1977–86. A data base was created of all the contributions by non-U.S. academics to the ten academic accounting and finance journals ranked highest in the HN study. The results of the analyses of this data base indicate: (a) the contribution of non-U.S. countries to the accounting and finance literature; (b) the proportion of publications accounted for by the top twenty-five non-U.S. institutions; and (c) a ranking of the contributions of the top twenty-five non-U.S. institutions.