Table of Contents

EDITORIAL

Attributes of Adopters and the Diffusion of Benchmarking

By Davood Askarany and Hassan Yazdifar

To take advantage of the most recent advances, organisations may need to proceed with the adoption of benchmarking. However, the extant literature suggests that benchmarking is not widely adopted by many organisations.

Contributing to the literature, the current study is aiming to improve our understanding of the diffusion of benchmarking by exploring the impacts of attributes of adopters on the diffusion of benchmarking in organisations in Australia. Surveying Australian CIMA members, this study identifies 12 organisational factors that can influence the diffusion of benchmarking in practice.

Information Technology Integration, Extent of ABC Use, Business Strategy, and Performance

By Adam S. Maiga

A review of prior research reveals mixed results with respect to the organizational performance achieved from both Information Technology (IT) integration and Activity-Based Costing (ABC). Drawing from information systems, accounting, marketing, and management literature, this study extends prior studies and uses structural equation modelling (SEM) to assess whether manufacturing plant IT integration impacts its extent of ABC use and whether there is a direct relation between both IT integration and extent of ABC use and plant performance, or whether both IT integration and extent of ABC use impact plant performance through low-cost and product differentiation strategies.

Overall, the results indicate support for the theoretical framework. Plant IT integration significantly affects the extent of its ABC use, and both IT integration and extent of ABC use significantly affect low-cost strategy and product differentiation strategy that, in turn, impact both market performance and profitability. Market performance is also found to significantly impact profitability

Examining The Interaction Effect of Cost Information Types and Strategy on the Effectiveness of New Product Development: An Experimental Study

By Dyah Ekaari Sekar Jatiningsih and Mahfud Sholihin

Previous studies on the role of cost information in New Product Development (NPD) producing conflicting results. Motivated by those conflicting results whether cost information is beneficial or detrimental in the design process of new product, an experiment approach is adopted to examine the interactive effect of cost information types and strategy on the effectiveness of new product development.

The results of this study show that cost effectiveness of new product design is enhanced when designers are facilitated with specific cost information rather than relative cost information, with greater magnitude in low cost strategy orientation. Additionally, we find a trade off in low cost strategy orientation, namely as designers are provided with more precise cost information, their focus on product feature decreases.