An Introduction to Management and Cost Accounting

Inter guinea pig ledger of Trade, economics and Finance, Vol. 1, n nonp beil 2, August, 2010 2010-023X Factors Influencing Activity-Based equaling Success A look into Framework Zhang Yi Fei and Che Ruhana Isa becoming more and more popular 3-7 rudiment aims to provide accurate greeting entropy to charabancs to whollyocate exercise equals to produces and services by applying make up drivers 8.Academics who advocate first principle, much(prenominal)(prenominal) as, barrel make believer and Kaplan 9, and Swenson 10 make do that it provides more accurate cost data needed to make appropriate strategic terminations abtaboo increase mix, sourcing, pricing, process improvement, and evaluation of business process act. These claims have led many strongs to direct rudiment systems 8. The benefits of rudiment and its positive preserve on firms movement motivated a numerous studies which learnd divers(a) aspects of first principle.Among such studies be McGowan 11 w ho assessed the integrity of first principle triumph, Innes and Mitchell 4, 12 and Yanren 13 who conducted look for on factors affecting first rudiment espousal, and shield 3, sieves and McEwen 14, Gosselin 15 and Baired et al. 16, 17who tough on factors influencing rudiment succeeder especially at the implementation portray. However, there is mounting evidence that suggests or so of firms atomic number 18 experiencing problems in implementing rudiment and, in some extreme personas, first rudiment implementation is not booming 3, which later resulted in abandoning the first principle systems altogether 15.Questions a reverse as to why first rudiment implementation is made in certain companies and fails in others. Based on the contingency theory, lookers have argued that the reasons for unalike floors of alphabet victory could be due to the different contextual factors faced by each firm. These have led inquiryers to select assessing factors that influence rudiment success implementation as an important interrogation argona.The fol lowing are among the investigate that have been carried out to examine factors that influence ABC success Anderson 18 buckler 3 McGowan and Klammer 19 Krumwiede 20 and Anderson and Young 21 This article has dickens main objectives the first objective is to identify seek gaps based on the revision of previous interrogation and the second objective is to propose theoretical inquiry mannequin for new look.This article is organized as follows Section II presents a discussion of selected articles associate to factors influencing ABC implementation and gaps or limitations of previous studies and suggestions for on-line(prenominal) research are utter in the section III and IV. The framework for current research is provided in section V, Section VI defines each research variable and the final section presents the conclusion. II. PREVIOUS research In this section, selected ABC implementation existenti al 144AbstractIn todays advanced manufacturing and competitive environment, accurate cost data is crucial for all the kinds of businesses, such as manufacturing firms, merchandizing firms, and service firms. Argued to be superior to the conventional volume-based be system, Activity-Based constituteing system (ABC) has increasingly attracted the attention of practiti unitaryrs and researchers alike as one of the strategic tools to tending managers for better finding making.The benefits of ABC system and its impacts on companies performance have motivated numerous empirical studies on ABC system and it is considered as one of the closely-researched trouble accounting areas in developed countries. antecedent research on ABC have examined pertinent issues related to ABC implementation such as the levels of ABC adoption in various countries, the reasons for implementing ABC, the problems related to ABC and the critical success factors influencing ABC.This paper analyses the res earch on ABC carried out at heart the last decade, from 1995-2008, and from the review research gaps are rig. Specifically, this paper examines the selection of factors influencing palmy ABC implementation, variables employ by previous research and the definitions and operationalization of the variables. The review reveals that past research concentrated mainly on behavioural, organisational, and expert variables as the main determinants of ABC success but genuinely fiddling research have been done to examine the roles of organisational market-gardening and construction.Based on the research gaps identified, a research framework for future research is provided. Index TermsAdvanced Manufacturing Activity-Based Costing, ABC Success Environment, I. INTRODUCTION In todays competitive and continually changing business environment, firms need to be vigilant of the impacts of the changes in the business environment and devise appropriate strategies to survive and prosper. Advanc ements in manufacturing and intercourse technologies have drastically changed the ways businesses conduct their activities. word meaning of advanced manufacturing technologies such as robotics and computerized manufacturing have resulted in evidentiary changes in the manufacturing cost grammatical construction which have led academics and practitioners to argue that the traditional be methods are no longer sufficient within this new manufacturing environment 1 (Johnson and Kaplan, 1987). This had resulted in the change from the traditional volume-based cost model to new cost methods such as Activity Based Costing (ABC) 2.Due to its ability in providing more accurate costing information and enhancing firms performance, ABC is International journal of Trade, Economics and Finance, Vol. 1, No. 2, August, 2010 2010-023X studies, which spanned 1995-2008 periods, were collected from four prominent refereed accounting research ledgers, in charge accounting field daybook of worry a ccounting look, method of accounting, Organizations and Society, anxiety Accounting look and British Accounting Review.Factors used by previous research to investigate the accomplishment on ABC success implementation are summarized, and horizontal surface of ABC implementation similarly is outlined. A. Technical Variables Early studies of ABC adoption and implementation undertaken by previous researchers concentrated on technical factors, such as appellative of main activities, selection of cost drivers, problem in accumulating cost data. Example of these research are barrel maker 9, Morrow and Connelly 22.However, technical factors alone may not be adequate to explain the factors influencing ABC success implementation. cooper et al. 23 argued that the key problem during ABC implementation decimal point is that companies exactly focus on technical factors. They suggested that to make ABC implementation more effective, non-technical factors such as involvement of non-acc ounting in ABC implementation process, sink focvictimization championship, adequate discipline program to employees about the objectives and benefits of ABC should be emphasized as well.Similar opinions were denotative by Shield 3 and Shields and McEwen 14. Shield (1995) install no signifi notifyt human relationship between technical factors and ABC success. Shields and McEwen 14 besides highlighted that sole emphasis on the architectural and software figure of speech of ABC systems leads to the failure of ABC implementation. Therefore many researchers have suggested that new variables should be considered to investigate factors influencing ABC success. B.Contextual, Behavioral and Organizational Variables Recognizing the research gaps in identifying factors that may affect ABC success, academicians shifted their focuses from technical factors to other variables, such as contextual, behavioral and organizational, culture, as well as organizational twist. Anderson 18 conduc ted a longitudinal investigation of ABC process in oecumenical Motor (GM) from a period of 1986 to 1993. In his research, he examined the effects of organizational variables and contextual variables, and segmented ABC implementation into four major stages, beginning, adoption, adaptation and acceptance.He base that organizational factors, such as top guidance digest and training for the ABC system affected various stages of ABC significantly, while contextual variables, such as competition, relevance to managers decisivenesss and compatibility with existing systems produced different degree of impact on different stages of ABC. Shield 3 examined the relationships between diversity of behavioral, organizational and technical factors and the success of ABC implementation.She employed Shield and Youngs 24 framework and summarized behavioral and organizational variables as top watchfulness support, adequate imaginativenesss, training, assort ABC system to performance evaluation and compensation, non-accounting ownership, link ABC to competitive strategies as well as clarity of ABC objectives. She ready that top prudence support, gene linkage to quality initiatives and to personal performance measure ( open/appraisal), implementation of training and resource adequacy were the significant predictors in explaining ABC success.She also found that technical variables were not associated with ABC success. Shields findings are supported by other researchers, such as Shield and McEwen 14, who argued that a significant cause for unsuccessful implementations of ABC of several companies could be due to the emphasis of architectural and software picture of the ABC system and less attention given to behavioral and organizational issues, which were identified by Shield 3. Krumwiede and Roth 25 also stated that barriers of ABC implementation can be overcome if firms could give importance to behavioral and rganizational variables identified by Shield 3. Similarly, Nor ris 26 agreed with Shields 3 findings that the association between ABC success and behavioral and organizational variables is stronger than with technical variables. She further highlighted that the impact of behavioral, organizational and technical should be focused at individual level. McGowan and Klammer 19 conducted a be of 53 employees from 4 targeted sites in the U. S. o examine whether employees satisfaction levels are associated with ABC implementation by They also measured their perceptions of the factors associated with the degree of satisfaction, such as top management support the degree of involvement in the implementation process objectives clearly stated objectives shared training linkage to performance evaluation system adequate resources information quality and preparer over user. Their results indicated that employees satisfaction with ABC implementation was positively related with clarity of objectives and quality of ABC information.Gosselin 15 carried out a surve y of 161 Canadian manufacturing companies to examine the effects of strategic posture and organizational organize on adoption and implementation of humans forms of Activity-based costing. He segmented the ABC implementation stage into adoption and implementation. The research findings showed that a prospector schema was associated with manager decision to adopt ABC, while centralization and formalisation were significantly associated with ABC success implementation. Krumwiede 20 surveyed U.S manufacturing firms to train how contextual factors, such as the potential for cost distortion or size of firms organizational factors, such as top management support, training or non-accounting ownership, affect each stage of ABC implementation process. His findings showed that the different factors affected the various stages of implementation of ABC and the degree of importance of each factor varies according to the stage of implementation. Contextual factors, such as usefulness of cost information, IT existence, less toil uncertainty and large organizations were related to ABC adoption.Moreover, organizational factors, such as top management support, non-accounting ownership, and implementation training affect ABC success implementation. 145 International Journal of Trade, Economics and Finance, Vol. 1, No. 2, August, 2010 2010-023X In another(prenominal) ruminate by Anderson and Young 21, the relationship between organizational and contextual variables, such as organizational constructions, task characteristics, management support, information technology and ABC success was examined.The result confirmed the importance of organizational factors (top management support and adequacy resources) during the ABC implementation stage. In South Africa, Sartorius et al. 27 carried out a mail survey to investigate the effect of organizational factors such as top management, adequate resources, coherence with organizational goals and strategy on ABC success. They found to p management support and resources were the crucial factors in explaining ABC success. In the UK, Innes and Mitchell 4 and 12 surveyed the uttermost of ABC adoption among largest firms.The study aimed to find out factors influencing ABC success by using behavioral and organizational variables, and it was found that top management influenced ABC success significantly. In another study conducted by Khalid 28 using a questionnaire survey among the largest 100 firms in Saudi Arabia, ABC adoption was found to be positively related to diversity of products. In Malaysia, Ruhanita et al. 29 conducted a mail survey and a case study to examine that factors influencing ABC success, especially at adoption stage.They found the significant factors were cost distortion, decision usefulness, information technology and organizational factors. In addition, the findings showed that decision usefulness, top management support, link ABC to performance measure and compensation influenced the ABC success adoption significantly. A case study of one Chinese manufacturing firm was carried by Lana and Fei 30 in mainland China. Their research aimed to examine some key success factors pertinent to ABC implementation within Chinese organizational and cultural setting.The research findings showed that top management support, hierarchical and communication structure and high proportion of dedicated professionals were the significant factors in determining ABC success implementation. Majid et al. 7 used a case study approach to describe the process of ABC implementation in a Malaysian service company and a Malaysian manufacturing company. In this research, they categorized ABC implementation into initiation and adoption, design, implementation and use of information.The purpose of the research was to find out the problems faced during ABC implementation, He found that the factors determining ABC success were top management support, suitable ABC software, and finally, ensuring that all affect ed employees infer and participate in the ABC implementation stage. And they also found that at different stages of ABC, the dominant factors influencing ABC success were also different. Colin et al. 31 adopted behavioral and organizational factors summarized by Shield (1995) to examine factors influencing the adoption and degree of success of ABC systems and determinants of that success.In their research, the targeted research population was manufacturing and service firms in the UK. They found that top management support, non-accounting ownership, adequate training provided to ABC determined the ABC success. Besides behavioral, organizational and technical variable, some researchers also indicated that the proportions of national cultures could affect the level of ABC success 32, 33. brewer 32 used Hofstedes taxonomy of work-related cultural values to examine the relationship between national culture and Activity-Based Costing system.In the study, Hofstede 34s work was applied to the case of Harris semiconductor device (HS), which has implemented ABC at plants in Malaysia and the USA. The results showed that the level of ABC success in Malaysia was higher than that of U. S due to high-power-distance and collectivist cultures in Malaysia. In addition, Supitcha and Frederick 33 also included national cultures dimension into framework in a case study of one Siamese state-owned enterprises budgeting system.They found that due to cultural differences, modifications were required when the organizations in Thailand tried to implement ABC system in Thai environment. Apart from national culture, corporate culture factors were also tested by prior research. Baird, Harrison and Reeve 17 conducted a study to investigate the relationship between the extent of ABC adoption and the organizational variables of size and decision usefulness of cost information and business unit culture. In their research, data were collected by a mail survey questionnaire and samples wer e randomly selected from business units in Australia.The research finding showed significant relationships between ABC adoption and decision usefulness, cultural dimensions of outcome predilection and tight verse loose control. Baird, Harrison and Reeve 16 examined the relationship between success of activity management practices and organizational factors (top management support, training, link to performance evaluation and compensation, and link to quality initiatives), and organizational culture (outcome orientation, team orientation, attention to detail, as well as innovation).They adopted a survey questionnaire method on randomly chosen business units in Australia. The findings showed that dickens organizational factors (top management support, link to quality initiatives) explained the variations in success of activity management practices, such as ABC, and outcome orientation and attention to detail of organizational culture were associated with ABC success. They also stress ed that compared with organizational culture, organizational factors had stronger associations with the ABC.Table 2. 1 presents a summary of the previous research discussed in this section, which highlights the factors influencing ABC success and the research method adopted by each research. TABLE 2. 1 A SUMMARY OF PREVIOUS RESEARCH RELATED TO ABC SUCCESS IMPLEMENTATION Author Shield (1995) Method go off Variable Behavioral, organizational, technical Individual, organizational factors, technical, task and so on Stage Not specify All the stages Anderson (1995) strip 146International Journal of Trade, Economics and Finance, Vol. 1, No. 2, August, 2010 2010-023X technical variables Innes et al. (1995) Gosselin (1997) valuate Behavioral & organizational variables Structure & strategy espousal implement ation Survey Adoption & Implemen tation Not specify Not specify Not specify Not specify All the stage Implemen tation Adapted from Lana and Fei 30 III. GAPS FROM PREVIOUS RESEARCH Fro m the review of previous research, this section highlights the gaps from previous research.First, as highlighted by Lana and Fei (2007) a majority of ABC research still was done in developed countries and very little research has been done in develop country, especially in Asiatic context. Thus it is necessary to identify whether the Asian culture and way of doing business may have a different impact on the extent of ABC adoption and implementation. Second, a majority of ABC research reviewed adopted the behavioral and organizational variables identified by Shield 3 to investigate factors influencing ABC success. So far only one research. which was conducted by Gosselin 15 examinedthe effect of organizational structure on ABC success among Canadian business units. The importance of organizational structure effect on management accounting practices is stressed by many researchers. For example, Damanpour 35 stated that whether an innovation can be successfully adopted or implemented to some extent is determined by the font of structure the a firm adopts, so the current study also testament consider organizational structure as one of the predictors of ABC success.Third, hardly a(prenominal) research have examined the effect of corporate culture on ABC success empirically. Hence it is necessary to examine the association between ABC success and corporate culture, as well as how important cultural factors might be relative to organizational, non-cultural factors 16. Forth, very few studies have investigated the effect of national cultural on ABC and so far, only twain researchers, that is to say, Brewer 32 and Supitcha and Frederick 33, have included this variable in their studies.Supitcha and Frederick 33 argued that national culture differences often require successful accounting practices in one country to be modified for effective use in another country. So the influence of national culture should not be ignored 32), especially in developing countries, a nd differences in term of perceived ABC success could be explained by national culture. The next research gap is that some previous research did not specify the ABC implementation stage for example, Shield 3 and Brewer 32.According to Krumwiede and Roth 25, ABC implementation has six different stages. They are initiation, Adoption, Adaption, Acceptance, Routinization, Infusion, the final devil stages are considered as mature stage 25) and it is argued that at different stage, the dominant factors that determine ABC success implementation are also different. In order to investigate the factors influencing ABC success more accurately, the current research lead concentrate on one particular stage of ABC implementation that is mature stage.Finally, the selected articles show most of ABC implementation research were conducted using quantitative method such as questionnaire survey, and there are very few research used qualitative method (see Table 2. 1). According 147 Norris (1997) McGo wan & Klammer (1997) Foster & Klammer (1997) Brewer (1998) Krumwiede (1998) Anderson & Young (1999) side Survey Behavioral & Organizational Behavioral & organizational Non Survey Case Survey National culture Contextual & organizational Organizational & contextual variables Interview &survey Supitcha et al (2001) Case National cultureNot specify Innes et al. (2000) Sartorius et. al (2000) Cotton et. al (2003) Khalid (2003) Baird et. al (2004) Ruhanita et al. (2006) Lana & Fei (2007) Survey Behavioral & organizational variables Organizational variables Behavioral & organizational variables Size, production, knock Size, decision usefulness of cost information, culture Cost distortion, decision usefulness, IT, organizational Technical, behavioral, organizational, contextual factors Organizational factors, culture Organizational, technical factors Behavioral & organizational Behavioral, organizational &Adoption Survey Survey Not specify Adoption Survey Survey Adoption Adoption Survey & Case Case Adoption All the stage Baird et al. (2007) Sartorius et al. (2007) Colin et al. (2008) Majid et al. (2008) Survey Survey Survey Case Implemen tation Adoption Implemen tation Adoption & International Journal of Trade, Economics and Finance, Vol. 1, No. 2, August, 2010 2010-023X to Cavana et al. 36, questionnaire survey of data collection often encounters problems of low response rate and to counter this problem researchers are encouraged to use multiple methods to collect data. IV.PROPOSED manakin FOR FUTURE RESEARCH As very few empirical research have been done in developing countries on ABC adoption and implementation, future research should be conducted in developing nations, especially, in Asian countries such as China. Since China is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, it would be fire to know if ABC success is affected by similar factors as in the western countries. Furthermore, since link the WTO in the year of 2001, Chinese enterprises started ado pting western management accounting techniques, thus it is necessary to know the impact of Chinese culture on the ABC success.Hence the current study will focus on ABC success among Chinese manufacturing companies. Krumwiede and Roth 25 classified ABC implementation into different stages initiation, adoption, adaption, acceptance, routinization, and infusion. It has been suggested in the literature that the dominant factors that determine ABC success implementation are also different at different stages 20. A review of the literature shows that more research has been done to examine the determinant factors at the adoption and very few studies on implementation stage.Thus the current research will concentrate on one particular stage of ABC implementation, especially, the mature stage (Routinization, Infusion). The current research will also examine the effect of structure on ABC success. It has been argued that in order to examine the effect of structure, the sample should come from only one industry. Gosselin 15 argued that different industries have different level of centralization, and formalization, and he suggested that a study should concentrate on one particular industry.Similarly, Rotch 37 stated that compared with manufacturing firms, non-manufacturing firms are very different in terms of characteristics. For instance, hotels are different from manufacturing firms and railroad siding of non-manufacturing firms are extremely hard to determine. Moreover, activities in non-manufacturers, especially in service sectors are hard to be predicted, and also large proportion of total cost are joint costs, which often difficult to put to output. Similarly, Clarke, Hill and Stevens 38 highlighted that significant differences exist in terms of cost structure between manufacturers and non-manufacturers.In non-manufacturing sector, direct wear out and direct material cost are almost equal to zero, and fixed overhead costs are the dominant costs in the cost structu re and this difference makes researching ABC application in this symbol of industry more problematic. Hence the current study will focus on manufacturing industry only and since ABC is more likely to be implemented by larger firms 28, this research will also concentrate on large sized manufacturing business. As discussed in the earlier section, previous research has not systematically examined the effects of organizational structure and organizational culture on ABC success.This motivates the current research to investigate the effects of these variables on ABC success. V. RESEARCH FRAMEWORK A. Proposed theory The current research will adopt Contingency theory and organizational theory to develop the research framework. Contingency theory has been astray adopted to conduct research in management accounting field 39-41. Contingency theory asserts that the design and application of control systems are contingent on the environment of the organizational setting in which these control s maneuver and function 39.It is widely used to explain the characteristics of management accounting system 42. Waterhouse and Tiessen 43 stated that the design and structure of management control system is contingent on number of factors there are product diversity, cost structure, size, level of competition and degree of customization 44, 45. Sartorius, Eitzen and Kamala 45 illustrated an example to explain the relationship between ABC and the contingency factors. They stated that increasing fixed costs leads to a need for more accurate cost allocation technique such as ABC.This is especially true for firms which produce more than one products as different product products use differential amounts of resources 17. Competition is another contextual factor that leads to the emergence of more sophisticated costing system such as ABC. In addition, large sized firms are more likely to adopt ABC than smaller firms due to the size of overhead, number of activities needs to be coordinate d, as well as limited resources16, 45. However, adoption and implementation of an innovation are totally different41.Hence, Contingency theory alone may not be adequate to explain ABC implementation stage. Krumwiede 20 concluded from a survey among US firms that contextual factors may influence the ABC adoption stage while implementation stage is more associated with organizational factors. He also suggested that once a firm arrives at ABC implementation stage, it should pay attention to organizational factors. Hence, another theory should be applied to explain ABC implementation stage, which is organizational change theory 29.According to organizational change theory, changes in organizations could be classified into four categories technology, products, structure, and culture 29. Gosselin 15 categorized ABC implementation stage as the administrative procedure. Therefore, ABC could be considered as a geomorphologic change and its success is determined by top-down approach. Based on organizational change theory, Cooper and Zmud 46 divide IT innovation into six sequence stages 1) initiation, 2) adoption, 3) adaptation, 4) acceptance, 5) routinization, as well as 6) infusion.They also stated that at various stages the dominant factors in determining IT innovation are also different. B. Research Framework In view of the discussion in the previous sections, the following framework is proposed, depicted by shapeure 1, for this research. prior research test the relationship between ABC success and behavioral, organizational variables, hence 148 International Journal of Trade, Economics and Finance, Vol. 1, No. 2, August, 2010 2010-023X the current research will also base on Shield 3s model to examine the impact of behavioral, organizational variables on ABC success.In addition, it also will include two additional variables, organizational culture and structure as Gosselin 15 stated that effect of organizational culture and structure on ABC success should not be ig nored. also will adopt those dimensions. As for ABC success, the current study will adopt McGowan s 11 definition. McGowan 11 used four perspectives to measure Activity-Based Costing worry, namely users attitude, technical characteristics rating, perceived usefulness in improving job performance and impact on organizational process. This measure subsequently adopted by Byrne et al. 49 to test ABC success implementation in Australian context. In their research, they stressed that McGowans 11definition provides the most robust measure, hence the current study will also apply McGowans 11 definition as the indicators as ABC success. REFERENCE 1 2 3 4 5 Johnson, H. T. and R. S. Kaplan, Relevance Lost The rise and fall of management accounting 1987 Harvard Business School Press Kennedy, T. and J. Affleck-Graves, The impact of activity-based costing techniques on firm performance. Journal of Management Accounting Research, 2001. 13 p. 19-45.Shield, An empirical analysis of firms implement ation experiences with activity-based costing Management Accounting Research 1995. 7 p. 148-166. Innes, J. and F. 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Fig 1 Theoretical Rese arch Framework Seven behavioral and organizational variables are important to cost management practices identified by Shield and Young 24. They are 1) Top management support 2) linkage to competitive strategies, 3) performance evaluation and compensation, 4) non-accounting ownership, 5) sufficient resources, 6) training in designing, implementing and using cost management system and 7) consensus about the clarity of the objectives of the cost management system, so current study will use all this indicators as behavioral and organizational variables.Lana and Fei 30 reviewed past empirical research about factors influencing ABC success and summarized the technical used by prior research, they are software packages, gathering data on cost drivers, identifying activities, friendship of data requirement and data collection, the participation of external consultants. The current study also employed Lana and pan out 30s definition and its measurement for technical variables. Whether a co mpany can adopt and implement a management innovation can be significantly affected by organizational structure 35.Burns and snitcher 47 classified organizational structure into mechanistic and organic, mechanistic organizations have higher level of centralization and formalization than that of organic structure 15. Gosselin 15 found that ABC can be more successfully implemented in mechanistic organizations. Centralization and formation will be treated as indicators for organizational structure in current research. Organizational culture still produces significant on ABC success, as Skinner 48 pointed out uncaring culture leads to the failure of ABC. Baird et al. 16 used outcome orientation, team orientation, attention to detail, as well as innovation to examine the relationship between activity management success and organizational culture. 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Australian Accountant, 1998. 68(2) p. 46-49. 49 Byrne, S. , E. Stower, and P.Torry. Activity based costing implementation success in Australia. 2008 cited 2008 26th August Available from http//eprints. usq. edu. au/3719/1/Byrne_Stower_Torry. pdf. First Author Mr. Zhang Yi Fei was born(p) on Sept 9th, 1978. He obtained his bachelor degree in Accounting from Sichuan Normal University, Cheng Du City, Si Chuan province, China in the year of 2002. He obtained his Masters in Business Administration specializing in Accounting in 2005 from University Malaysia Sabah. Currently he is pursui ng his PhD degree in Management Accounting at University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.Second Author Che Ruhana ISA (PhD) is before long an associate professor in accounting at the Faculty of Business and Accountancy, University of Malaya (UM). She joined UM as a tutor in 1987 after obtaining the BBA (Accounting) from Oklahoma State University, USA. In 1990, she graduated from London School of Economics and Political Science with the degree MSc in Accounting and Finance. She obtained her PhD in Accounting from University Putra Malaysia in 2005. Her current research interests are management accounting change, management accounting and performance measurement systems in public sector organizations. 150