LIBRI DI RICCARDO GIANNETTI

Negli ultimi anni le pubblicazioni sul tema del costing sembrano evidenziare un trend in calo a vantaggio delle ricerche sui sistemi di controllo e sulla misurazione e gestione delle performance. I lavori raccolti in questo volume contribuiscono ad attivare un nuovo percorso di sviluppo per la ricerca sul costing: trattano sia la misurazione dei costi, sia la loro gestione o comunicazione e coinvolgono sia l’ambito pubblico sia quello privato e, infine, affrontano anche la questione dell’attuale diffusione delle tecniche di cost management.

The literature on performance measurement in Research and Development addresses several topics. This paper investigates the role played by cost management in new product development activities. Particularly the adoption of Activity-Based Costing/Management, Target Costing/Design to Cost, Life Cycle Costing, Total Cost of Ownership is investigated through a survey of 65 companies working in Italy. The findings are interesting because they highlight how firms in Italy reacted to the increased competition and price stagnation during the economy slowdown. Firms respond to the crisis by developing new green products and services mainly in order to satisfy needs of loyal customers, acquire new customer in the same market and increase profitability of sales. Furthermore it emerges a significant strategic orientation towards sustainability and a considerable implementation of cost management tools on development activities focusing on Activity-Based Costing/Management and Life Cycle costing, mainly on those firms more oriented toward sustainability strategies.

The topic of cost management tools and performance measurement systems has been addressed in the field of management studies with the aim of identifying the factors that have caused and that determine the success of companies in global competition. It is believed that, today and in the next future, the key dimensions of competitive advantage of companies are the following: sustainability, intellectual capital and intercompany integration. These dimensions, having a common matrix represented by the complexity, must be integrated in the formulation of the business strategies. This requires the development of suitable cost management tools and performance measures to verify the achievement of the strategies. But what are the links that are created between strategy, in its various manifestations, and cost management tools and performance measurement? This special issue of the Journal is intended to analyze such links.

This paper responds to the call for more diffusion-theoretic work on sophistication and disposal of Value-Based Management (VBM) (Ansari et al., 2010). In particular, we examine how rational and social factors affect the VBM multidimensional construct sophistication and disposal (Burkert and Lueg, 2013). Our research is based on a longitudinal case study (Yin, 2003) of a private held Italian company. The results provide interesting findings on how shareholder characteristics and top management team (TMT) background influence VBM sophistication, as well as how little can be worthwhile to consider rational and social factors separately, since these factors have a "combined effect" in determining sophistication and disposal. While strategy and organizational structure are the main determinants of the potential of VBM sophistication (potential information needs), ownership structure and TMT background represent the precondition for VBM implementation. Technology and perceived environmental uncertainty affect negatively VBM sophistication.