Experience of ABC implemented Australian universities : a case study

This paper investigates the experience of the ABC implementation in Australia by directly interviewing finance directors of the three universities. Their experience suggests that the important cost drivers, cost pools and collecting data in order to allocate overhead costs. However, they found more benefits of improved resource allocation and determination of true cost and budget surplus and well information for strategic decision. The experience of ABC implementation revealed that behavioral and organisational variables played an important role to achieve the success of ABC implementation. The paper has summarized individual model of costs pools and cost drivers for each of the universities studied. Finally, the paper developed a viable model of cost pools and cost drives of ABC implementation which the author believes that it will help the universities to improve resource allocation and to determine true cost and profitability, if this model is implemented.