Rachunek kosztów w Niemczech u schyłku XX wieku

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of high technology and growing competition on global markets on the structure and level of costs in Germany and other developed countries. Changes in the structure in the occurrence of such new phenomena as:a) rise in the level of indirect costs of manufacturing and the proportion of total costs they comprise; b) drop in the level and proportion of direct manufacturing costs; c) increasingly steep rise in the level of fixed costs; d) increased proportion of long-term costs, the level of which is not related to the volume of production (e.g. costs of education and training, research and development). In view of the tendencies set out above the currently applied models of cost accounting have become inadequate for depicting cost-creating processes in modern enterprises. Full (absorption) costing and direct costing are being criticized strongly in Germany and English- speaking countries and work has been undertaken on the development of new costing models. This paper presents new tendencies in accounting research in Germany in the 1990s, includign Horvath and Mayer’s (1989) system of cost accounting for elementary processes and logistics costing by Weber (1987).