The July 2003 issue of Strategic Finance contains the article “Roles and Practices in Management Accounting Today: Results from the 2003 IMA-E&Y Survey” written by Ashish Garg, Debashis Ghosh, James Hudick, and Chwen Nowacki. This article reviews findings from a survey of managerial accountants conducted by the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA). Read this article and complete the following requirements.

Required:

a. The article notes that cost management is an important element for strategic decision making. Why did respondents to the survey believe this was the case?

b. The authors noted that decision makers were most interested in “actionable” cost information. What are the attributes of actionable cost information?

c. Ninety-eight percent of respondents to the survey said that factors exist that cause distortions of cost information. What factors were identified that are responsible for these distortions?

d. Considering the proliferation of “off the shelf” software that is available, many people believe only a minority of companies develop their own cost management systems. According to the article, what percentage of companies actually do develop their systems “in house,” and what do you think are the implications of the in-house development for managerial accountants?