دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی تحقیق درباره هرینه یابی مبتنی بر هدف: گذشته، حال و آینده - اشپرینگر 2018

Abstract

Although target costing is an extensively studied topic in the management accounting literature, a holistic investigation into its methodological development is missing. Therefore, an extensive state-of-the-art analysis is conducted that focuses on articles in highly rated journals. We determine nine distinct research streams that encompass further developments of the traditional target costing methodology. By grouping these streams into three research scopes, we outline the achieved progress as well as remaining tasks for further enhancements. Due to the abundance of these tasks, we align them with six future themes of management accounting that we identified as being particularly influential to target costing. As a result, six promising topics for researchers to advance target costing are determined. Additionally, our findings reveal to managers of which issues they should be particularly aware with respect to the performance of their target costing processes.

5 Conclusion

Although target costing is an extensively studied topic, a holistic investigation into its methodological developments is missing. The paper seeks to fill this gap, revealing that research in this context is far from reaching maturity. Based on a systematic literature review, our state-of-the-art analysis of 90 articles in highly rated journals emphasised nine distinct research streams that pursue the further development of traditional target costing. We grouped these streams into three research scopes (the treatment of endogenous deficiencies, the extension of the planning horizon and the extension of the organisational scope) and outlined the respective achieved progress as well as remaining tasks to further enhance target costing methodologically.

Due to the abundance of potential research areas determined, the results of two large-scale empirical studies were used as a filter. In these studies, Schäffer and Weber (2012, 2015) identified twelve future themes of management accounting. We characterised six of them as being particularly influential to target costing. Accordingly, we aligned them with five key topics to advance target costing, namely, (1) con sideration of information uncertainty, (2) dynamic target costs, (3) multi-periodic approach, (4) TLCC and (5) IOTC. Table 3 illustrates this alignment and the resulting research agenda, which—while some indications about applicable research designs have already been proposed—may be addressed through empirical and non-empirical research alike.