Crafting Efficiency in Managerial Costing System Design

This book focuses on an integrated approach in developing a model to guide the design of effective managerial costing systems. While the focus is on the manufacturing industry, information in the book will be useful to other industries as well. To achieve this, the book utilizes the action design research methodology founded within a design science paradigm, which aims to develop pragmatic solutions to an actually experienced business problem or class of business problems. After which, the book then explains the elaborated action design research process, which is a researcher-practitioner approach to designing pragmatic, industry-experienced problems in an academically sound manner.

In doing so, the book illustrates how a design process embedded in the engineering field, i.e., design science research, can successfully engineer effective managerial costing systems. The book thus includes both academic researchers and industry practitioners, applying the contextual iterative solution development activities, i.e., (i) problem formulation and refinement, (ii) the solution design, and (iii) verification and validation of the proposed solution. The final (proposed) solution presented in the book is presented in a process model format, including systematic process flow illustrations and developmental guides, which are all supportive in enabling the design of effective managerial costing systems.

Pieter Buys is Professor and Research Director of the “Applied Research in Management Cybernetics” entity at the North-West University, South Africa. Pieter holds professional and post-graduate qualifications in management accounting and engineering management, and his research focuses primarily on applied management from managerial accounting and business operations perspectives. Before his appointment, he occupied senior management and project management positions at a Big 4 audit firm and industry in Canada and South Africa.