US AMERICAN VERSUS GERMAN ACTIVITY-BASED COSTING. EFFECTS ON BUSINESS DECISIONS MANAGEMENT IN THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY

AbstractThis paper seeks to describe the role that activity-oriented cost accounting systems, i.e. US American and German activity-based costing, play in the establishment of supply-chainnetworks in the modern automotive industry. These costaccounting systems are the subject of analysis for two reasons: they relatively successfully describe the causality principle between cost drivers and cost objects and represent two different approaches of cost calculation within the activity-oriented concept. Also, the paper attempts to show that the efficiency of these systems is contingent on the value chain activity to which the systems were applied. Although based on identical conceptual frameworks, these systems do not have the same cost allocation purposes in automotive industry.