| dc.description.abstract | Target cost management (TCM) is an innovation of Japanese management accounting system and by common sense has been considered with great interest by practitioners. Nowadays, TCM related
dissertations, papers, articles are widely being published in special journals both in North America and Europe; this may explain why seminars
and workshops about TCM are so frequent.
Even in the academicians' seminars and other meetings of research organizations, TCM related articles have a high probability to be accepted
and reported. Last year for example, the American Accounting Association's seminar held in Boston about "Japanese cost management" was focused on the formulation of TCM (Okano-Shimizu, 1994; Kato, 1995). The above situation shows that the attention put on TCM is very
different from that one put on JIT - "Japanese production system" - in the
1980s. So far, there were debates concerning the a priori that "The
competitiveness of Japanese industries" is the outcome of the management
system excellence. With many problems facing Japanese industries
recently, the originality in the research and development system prior to
the introduction of a new product becomes a point of great importance.
Nowadays' fiery competition is likely to speed up the TCM system.
Nevertheless, many of the published cases about TCM system have
been made in special journals. Academic journal publications are few in
comparison. Academic researches about TCM are now in the embryonic
stage.
In the light of that situation, this paper seeks to examine the
importance of the relationship between strategy, organization, and TCM.
Three directions of TCM are also presented, as well as the intertwines
between Product Manager Allowance, ABC/ABM. Then future TCM
research orientation is made. | en |
