Management and Cost Accounting: Tools and Concepts in a Central European Context

Management and cost accounting has been the basic toolbox in business administration for decades. Today it is an integral part of all curricula in business education and no student can afford not to be familiar with its basic concepts and instruments. At the same time, business in general, and management accounting in particular, is becoming more and more international. English clearly has evolved as the "lingua franca" of international business. Academics, students as well as practitioners exchange their views and ideas, discuss concepts and communicate with each other in English. This is certainly also true for cost accounting and management accounting.

Management Accounting is becoming increasingly international. "Management and Cost Accounting" is a new English language textbook covering concepts and instruments of cost and management accounting at an introductory level (Bachelor, but also suited for MBA courses due to strong focus on practical applications and cases). This textbook covers all topics that are relevant in management accounting in business organizations and that are typically covered in German and Central European Bachelor classes on cost accounting and management accounting.

After an introduction to the topic, including major differences between the German approach and the purely Anglo-Saxon approach of management accounting, the book describes different cost terms and concepts applied in German cost accounting, The book is much more specific here compared to US-American standard textbooks. Based on different cost concepts, the topic of cost behavior is discussed, including the determination of cost functions. The heart of the book guides the reader through the general structure of a fully developed cost accounting system following the German and Central European standard: It starts with cost type accounting, moves on to cost center accounting and finally deals with cost unit accounting, assigning cost to goods and services offered in the market.

The remaining parts of the book deal with decision making and how management and cost accounting data can support managers in this task. A comparison of absorption costing and variable costing introduces the reader to management decisions such as product portfolio and outsourcing decisions. Additionally, cost-volume-profit analysis (break-even-analysis) is covered. The book closes with a comprehensive treatment of cost planning and variance analysis.