EVALUATING THE SUCCESS CONDITIONS OF THE ACTIVITY BASED COSTING METHOD IN TURKEY FROM THE CULTURAL CONTEXT

In the mid-1980s, the Activity Based Costing (ABC) was developed as a costing method to achieve more accurate product costs and more accurate cost measurement by Robert S. Kaplan and Robin Cooper for better business management. ABC has been developed primarily to overcome the shortcomings of the traditional volume-based cost accounting method in the distribution of overhead costs. ABC is a costing system that focuses on activities to determine costs. The most important benefit of this system is the fact that ABC systems provide product cost information that is closer to reality than traditional volume-based costing methods. The ABC system provides business managers with accurate information on producing and selling different products. Using this information, business authorities have the advantage of making healthier decisions about pricing and production quantities. One of the most important benefits provided by the ABC system is the ability to monitor the expenses of the entity's functions or departments for the activities. In this way, managers are provided with the opportunity to increase the efficiency of the activity, to eliminate the activity or to make decisions such as obtaining the activity from outside the company. The most important criticism of ABC systems is the difficulty in setting up and implementing these systems. Adopting an ABC system to business executives is hard work. The main problem is how the system starts. Business managers may be reluctant to switch to this system because the system is time-consuming and costly. The ABC application is not only an accounting system but also an organizational change initiative. First of all, managers need to evaluate ABC in this way for a successful ABC application. Therefore, cultural factors gain importance in the success of ABC. Although ABC is an adequate method to provide more accurate cost information for businesses, the results are not satisfactory for the practitioners. One of the reasons may be cultural factors. Very few studies have been conducted to investigate the relationship between culture and ABC application success. It is necessary to think about the effect of culture as the national culture and organizational culture. The basic element in the development of the cultural characteristics of the organizations is the social values, namely the national culture. The shared values of the organization form its culture. Such cultural values may be related to how communication is done, how decisions are made or how people are progressing in the organization. The aim of this study is to