Determinant Controllability of Responsibility Accounting in Profit Planning

The issue of stewardship and scarcity of resources have brought about the need to attach responsibility to activities. Systems designed expected to accumulate costs for the purpose of ascertaining product and period costs in order to plan profit have failed to identify responsibility managers who should control these costs. This study sought to review literature on the controllability principle in responsibility accounting concept as a determinant of profit planning. Arising from this study, controllability establishes and reports the cause and effect relationships between activities of specific managers and the performance of their activities. It is also observed that in addition to assigning costs to specific responsibility centres, two extreme levels of the application of the controllability principle exist. These are the low level and high level controllability accounting application systems. Nonetheless, there are some organizations that fall within the continuum of these application systems. Key words: Controllability; Principal-Agent model; Profit planning; Responsibility accounting