Activity-Based Costing: origini e sviluppo del metodo

Activity Based Costing is an accounting system which identifies activities to produce product, allocates costs to the latter and uses cost drivers to attribute activity costs to products. Developed by Kaplan and Johnson in 1980s initially to join traditional method, it becomes soon a strategic instrument, because surpassing its mere utilization for allocation of costs, it embraces all the aspects of companies management. My goal is to produce a theoretical analysis about this recent accounting method, determining its benefits and limits, focusing also on the differences among traditional methods; I will briefly mention even the following Activity-Based Management, the management method based on activities. Before talking specifically about the subject of my thesis, I explained the evolution of the economic environment and the new success factors in the enterprises which determined the obsolescence of the traditional accounting methods, bringing up the need to develop a new accounting approach.