Factors influencing the performance of activity based costing teams: a field study of ABC model development time in the automobile industry

This paper examines how the group dynamics of activity based costing (ABC) development teams and the level of organizational resources devoted to model development affect model complexity and development time. A theoretical framework is developed based on the organizational literature on teams, The framework is tested using objective data from 18 ABC projects in two automobile manufacturing firms and survey data from ABC team members. Results show that ABC team cohesion is the key determinant of the time it takes to develop the first ABC model. Further, ABC models become more complex in the presence of an external consultant and as the level of competition increases. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.