Committed Resources
Other resources must be purchased before they are needed. A factory building is a good example. The building must be planned and built before production takes place.
Committed resources are resources that are supplied in advance of usage; they are acquired by the use of either an explicit or implicit contract to obtain a given quantity of resource, regardless of whether the amount of the resource available is fully used or not. Committed resources may have unused capacity, since more may be available than is actually used.
Let’s look further at committed resources. Many resources are acquired before
the actual demands for the resource are realized. For example, organizations
acquire many multiperiod service capacities by paying cash up front or by entering into
an explicit contract that requires periodic cash payments. Buying or leasing buildings
and equipment is an example of this form of advance resource acquisition.
The annual expense associated with the multiperiod category is independent of actual
usage of the resource; thus, these expenses can be defined as committed fixed costs,
and they provide long-term activity capacity.
A second and more important example of committed resources concerns organizations that acquire resources in advance through implicit contracts, usually with
their salaried and hourly employees. The implicit understanding is that the organization
will maintain employment levels even though there may be temporary downturns in
the quantity of activity used. As a result, the expense associated with this category of
resources is independent of the quantity used—at least in the short run.
Thus, in the short run, the amount of resource expense remains unchanged even
though the quantity used may vary, and this resource cost category can be treated
(cautiously) as a fixed expense. We may call these shorter-term committed resources
discretionary fixed costs. They are costs incurred for the acquisition of short-term
activity capacity