的关注焦点。无论采用哪种成本核算方法（作业成本法与非作业成本法），几乎所有公司都认为，应对产品与客户盈利情况同时加以衡量。尽管大多数使用作业成本法的公司（近60%）认为作业成本法支持产品和客户的盈利能力决策，而大部分非作业成本法的使用公司（约60%）认为作业成本法不支持产品和客户的盈利能力决策。
ABC的支持
在最近，作业成本法这种成本计算方法的价值及使用率已经成为从业人员和学者争论的主题。在此之前的调查表明，作业成本法的使用率比过去几年已经提高了，并趋于稳定。主要探讨的问题是，作业成本法的使用所创造的价值与其实施成本。通过对作业成本法的使用率和作为成本与利润核算系统的相关问题的研究之后，得出的结果归纳如下：
（1）作业成本法运用于整个内部价值链，绝大多数的公司将继续使用这种方法。
（2）接受调查的管理人员认为，在非作业成本法中缺乏准确的成本费用分配和作业成本信息流通不及时。
（3）作业成本法可以减轻管理人员对成本分摊准确性，在分配和资源消耗之间的因果关系，获取成本/利润信息的及时性，以及更新系统的能力等方面的忧虑。
（4）目前作业成本法的使用率和在理想制度下的使用优势预示着越来越多的公司将使用这种成本核算方法。
（5）作业成本法能提供更大的财务、运营和战略决策支持。 （6）作业成本法可以被更好地纳入预算和规划过程中。
（7）作业成本法提供比非作业成本法更好的战略性产品/客户决策支持。 作业成本法在理论上几乎适用于任何行业，因为它能适应不同的管理水平。然而，作业成本法在管理相对复杂的非服务性公司运用最有效。管理复杂的公司容易发现到底哪种类型的成本核算方法更有利，因为在信息完全开放的时候，成本很难被用来理解和评价最大利益。服务行业可能不适用作业成本法，因为这些行业的成本很难分配，没有一个可以识别的因果关系。
公司可以将作业成本法视为一种管理工具。作业成本法的运用可能要付出昂贵的代价，它并不总是符合公认的会计原则，所以如果使用作业成本管理，公司不得不保留一个独立的系统进行跟踪成本是否符合一般公认会计原则。
在当今复杂的商业世界，作业成本法作为一种成本核算系统，可更精确地将成本分配到产品和部门。我们的研究结果提供了充足的结论支持：作业成本法的确给管理者提供了更有意义的价值。我们相信，使用作业成本法为公司提供了更
优越的成本和盈利能力核算系统，现在是时候让更多的公司采用作业成本核算方法了。
原文
Activity-based costing: is it still relevant?
Material source: Management Accounting Quarterly, spring, 2011 Author: William Stratton, Denis Desroches, Raef Lawson, Toby Hatch Over the past several years, consultants, practitioners, and academic investigators have noticed that activity-based costing (ABC) methods, developed to improve decision support and the accuracy of cost- and profit-measurement systems, too often have yielded less than the desired results. Robert S. Kaplan and Steven R. Anderson state, \the complexity of their operations, took too long to implement, and was too expensive to build and maintain.”Further criticism of ABC appeared elsewhere. \in theory, ABC proved notoriously difficult in practice. It involved defining 'activities' and trying to judge (often subjectively) how much overhead each used. And it had to be done regularly. Companies got fed up, and many abandoned it. From 11th position in the 2001 annual survey of the most widely used management tools (Bain), it fell to 22nd place (in 2008).\
Studies of ABC use have reflected this dissatisfaction with the technique. The Bain & Company annual surveys in 2005 and 2007 reported use of activity-based management (ABM) at 50% and 52%, respectively, with associated satisfaction scores below the average for all tools used. Similar results were reported in the SUNY-Albany, Hyperion, and Pepperdine Study (SHAPS surveys): During the same period, they found a decline in the perceived value of ABC compared to its usage.
Despite the negative results of these studies, there are many case studies and anecdotal reports of organizations that have adopted ABC methods and reported satisfaction with the value they provide. These companies consider their ABC methods an investment worth the time and resources committed to them. One motive for conducting this research was to seek an answer to the question: \distinguishes successful implementations of ABC methods from those that have not succeeded?\
In order to study the use of ABC methods (and other issues related to the design and use of costing and profitability methods), we formed the Business Research and Analysis Group and conducted a survey sponsored by the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) and other professional associations.
Cost and Profit Measurement Methods Across the Value Chain
The assignment of costs to products, customers, or other cost objects has always been a thorny issue. For external reporting, production costs must be assigned to products for both income and asset reporting purposes. For operational cost control, strategic decision-making, and performance measurement purposes, however, many organizations also assign costs from the other functions in the internal value chain.
What methods are used to measure costs and profits across the value chain, and does their usage vary by function? We identified the most frequently used types of methods as:
(1) Actual costing (2)Normal costing (3)Standard costing (4)Activity-based costing.
While the set of costing method types is as diverse as the kinds of operating systems, most organizations in the survey chose from this short list. In fact, most companies used more than one of these methods. A survey shows the use of these method types across the value chain. We can reach the following conclusions:
(1)With the exception of production-related costs, a significant proportion of costs is not assigned to cost objects.
(2) For production costs, standard costing is still \rate of 42%.
(3)Contrary to common belief, ABC methods are used across the entire value chain at approximately the same rate. ABC is not a production-specific method.
As to the overall satisfaction with the ABC method, our survey results refute many of the assertions that ABC increasingly is being abandoned. We asked 141 organizations to indicate their use or nonuse of ABC. Of these, only four (2.8%) previously used ABC but no longer use it, and 22 (15.6%) considered ABC but chose not to implement it. To explore the specifics in more detail, we looked at the benefits and concerns that respondents related about cost and profit measurement systems.
Benefits and Concerns about Cost-profit-measurement Systems
In order to judge the value of ABC, it is helpful to identify commonly reported benefits of cost-profit-measurement systems and their prevalence. The most frequently reported benefits include:
(1)Useful for product decisions, such as pricing, design, and outsourcing. (2) Helpful for product/service profitability analysis.
(3) Helpful for making operational improvements.
(4) Useful for performing budgeting, planning, and performance evaluation. Survey also shows that managers agree that ABC provide a wide variety of benefits for their cost-profit-measurement systems. The three lowest-scoring benefits relate to commonly claimed benefits of the ABC method: activity-cost information and accurate allocation of overhead (indirect) costs. More disagreed than agreed that their system was able to accurately trace activity costs to final cost objects. In a similar way, more disagreed than agreed with the statement that their system could accurately trace overhead costs to final cost objects. Overhead allocation and activity-cost measurement are clearly of concern to managers. To investigate whether ABC methods address these issues, we recast the responses into two groups: ABC users and ABC nonusers. Survey makes it abundantly clear that ABC methods address these issues and constitutes strong evidence of the value of ABC methods. Only one in four nonusers agrees that the costs of activities are traced accurately to products or services, whereas almost 70% of ABC method users agree that this benefit is realized. Similar results apply to overhead cost tracing. Finally, less than 40% of ABC nonusers receive accurate costs of activities, while more than 70% of ABC users benefit from such cost knowledge.
It is not surprising that the two benefits directly related to activities，the focus of ABC are realized to a greater extent in such systems, but overhead allocation to cost objects is important in non-ABC methods as well. The substantial difference in benefits realized from ABC makes it clear that ABC methods warrant serious consideration, especially in organizations with significant overhead costs.
What are the main concerns of managers regarding their cost-measurement systems, and do ABC methods help alleviate these concerns? Survey identifies a variety of possible concerns and tells how users of ABC methods and non-ABC methods view each. The major concerns for both groups include:
(1)Need to find a better way to allocate costs.
(2)Allocations do not reflect how resources are used (lack of cause-effect). (3)Information is not timely. (4)Updating the system is difficult.
While organizations that apply ABC methods share these concerns, the level of concern about these issues, is uniformly less than expressed by those that use non-ABC methods. This finding indicates that use of ABC methods at least somewhat