5.7. Extent of the use of innovative management accounting techniques
ABCis often linked to other strategic and business initiatives that are likely to complement and enhance
each other, rather than being individually necessary and sufficient for improvement (Cooper and Kaplan,
1991). In particular, studies indicate that improvements in costing systems have been implemented to
reconcile management accounting information with other advanced management practices (Anderson,
1995). According to Swenson (1995) linkages with other initiatives provides a ready application for the
ABCinformation. Krumwiede (1998) also reported that firms linkedABCto other improvement initiatives
(e.g. target costing, benchmarking of activities and value chain analysis) because of their need for more
accurate product/activity costs. Thus, other initiatives may act as catalysts for replacing simplistic costing
systems with more sophisticated ones (Innes and Mitchell, 1990). Therefore, the following hypothesis is
tested:
Hypothesis 7 (H7). The level of cost system sophistication will be greater in organizations adopting
other accounting innovations than the organizations not adopting them.