44

Field research in management accounting has emerged twenty yean ago after the calls from R.S. Kaplan in the USA and A. Hopwood in Europe. In the area of cost management, the emergence of activity-based costing (ABC) has initiated an intensive research program in cost accounting. The research questions addressed in this program have focused essentially on the diffusion process for ABC, the determinants of the adoption and the influence of ABC implementation on performance. All these studies are based on the assumption that ABC systems are similar and correspond to the conventional ABC model that was developed in the early 1990s. This hypothesis contradicts initial and present observations. ABC implementations are not homogeneous. This assumption does not enable researchers to provide a better understanding of the way managers design, implement and use ABC systems. The development of a typology of ABC systems, based on design parameters, may help to improve this gap. However, this ambition implies that academics have to renew, at least partially the research methods that are being used.