Activity Based Costing

Accounting, Organizations and Society 24 (1999) 649±672

www.elsevier.com/locate/aos

Activity-based costing di?usion across organizations: an
explorative empirical analysis of Finnish ®rms
Teemu Malmi*
Department of Accounting and Finance, capital of Finland School of Economics and Business Administration, Runeberginkatu 22-24,
00100 Helsinki, Finland

Abstract
This probe aims to relieve what drives insertion di?usion in management accounting during its various phases.
Based on Abrahamson [Abrahamson, E. (1991). Managerial passions and formulates: the di?usion and rejection of innovations. Academy of Management Review, 16, 586±612], four perspectives with potential to explain the di?usion of
accounting innovations are identi®ed: the ecient-choice, forced selection, fad and fashion perspectives. The di?usion
of activity-based costing ( alphabet) in Finland provides an empirical context to study how these four perspectives apply to
management accounting innovation. Data comes from a set of four surveys (total n=490, response rate 39.5%, 114
ABC cases), from interviews of consultants, academics and software industry employees, and from archival sources.
The study proposes that the driving forces tail end innovation di?usion in management accounting change all over the
course of di?usion.



Ecient choice may explain the soonest adoptions, whereas fashion-setting organizations exert
considerable in¯uence in the take-o? stage. Later on, the in¯uence of fashion setting organizations diminishes. Further
di?usion is explained both by mimetic behaviour and ecient-choice. # 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Many scholars in management, economics and
cerebrate ®elds share the goal of trying to explain
why organizations behave as they do. Although a
large variety of issues has attracted academic
interest, change and development in organizations
have been among the most dicult to explain, let
alone manage (Van de Ven & Poole, 1995). In the...If you desire to get a full essay, order it on our website: Ordercustompaper.com



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