Cost and Management Accounting Practices: A Survey of Manufacturing Companies

The purpose of this study is to explore cost and management accounting practices utilized by manufacturing companies operating in Istanbul, Turkey. The sample of the study consists of 61 companies, containing both small and medium-sized enterprises, and large companies. The data collection methodology of the study is questionnaire survey. The content of the questionnaire survey is based on several previous studies. The major findings of the study are as follows: the most widely used product costing method is job costing; the complexity in production poses as the highest ranking difficulty in product costing; the most widely used three overhead allocation bases are prime costs, units produced, and direct labor cost; pricing decisions is the most important area where costing information is used; overall mean of the ratio of overhead to total cost is 34.48 percent for all industries; and the most important three management accounting practices are budgeting, planning and control, and cost-volume-profit analysis. Furthermore, decreasing profitability, increasing costs and competition, and economic crises are the factors, which increase the perceived importance of cost accounting. The findings indicate that companies perceive traditional management accounting tools still important. However, new management accounting practices such as strategic planning, and transfer pricing are perceived less important than traditional ones. Therefore, companies need to improve themselves in this aspect.