Individual Assignment Specifications

Purpose:

This assignment aims at developing your understanding of the purpose and use of management accounting systems, in particular costing systems, and its usefulness in aiding managers make informed decisions. You are to critically evaluate the literature (using journal articles) to analyse the practical use of management accounting systems by contemporary companies, in terms of their relevance to the real-life companies' decision-making by managers and achievement of business goals.

Assignment Task: You are required to conduct a literature search and critically review a costing system in this assignment.

Part A

Choose ONE of the costing systems studied in this unit from the list below, and answer the questions that follow:

Job Costing

Process Costing

Operation Costing (Hybrid Costing)

Activity-based Costing (ABC)

Questions:

1. Briefly discuss the features of your chosen costing system. (3 marks)

2. Identify 2 specific Australian companies that your chosen costing system is suitable for, and explain why. (3 marks)

3. Discuss two potential uses of the cost information for decision-making, to the managers in each of the 2 organisations selected in Q2 above. (3 marks)

Part B

Choose one peer reviewed journal article (from any country) on the: Use of your chosen costing system in a real-life organisation (i.e. a case-based empirical study). The article should be published between 2005 - 2020. Choose your article only after you have accessed and reviewed several relevant articles, and then choose the best article that will answer the questions below.

Questions:

1. Based on your chosen costing article, briefly summarise how the costing system was designed and implemented in your real-life organisation. (3 marks)

2. Based on your chosen costing article, did the costing system in the study satisfy the features discussed in Part A (Q1)? Why or why not? Include examples in your answer from your costing article. (5 marks)

3. Based on your chosen costing article, how useful was the cost information to the internal users in the organisation? Discuss with examples from your costing article. (5 marks)

4. Based on your literature findings, state two key lessons that would inform contemporary organisations about the practical use of your chosen costing system. (5 marks)

Additional Information: a) You are encouraged to choose the journal article from the following Accounting and Management Accounting Journals: Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal;

Journal of Management Accounting Research

Journal of Applied Management Accounting Research