Adoption and Implementation of Activity-Based Costing: A Web-Based Survey

This paper presents the results of a Web-based survey that gathered evidence about the current status of activitybased costing adoption and implementation. Activity-based costing was introduced about 15 years ago and implemented initially by large manufacturing companies. Our results indicate that the rates of adopting activitybased costing are now similar for service firms and manufacturing firms. Larger firms are more likely to have adopted activity-based costing than smaller firms, possibly because activity-based costing is more beneficial in larger firms that have a diverse mix of products or services. Larger firms are also more likely to have specialized staff familiar with this method.