Attributes of Innovation and Management Accounting Changes

This study provides evidence for the adoption and diffusion of activity-based costing (ABC) in the Sultanate of Oman (as a developing country) and examines the significance of the effect of characteristics of innovation on the adoption and diffusion of ABC (as both a practice and a process). It further explains some of the variations in the ABC's adoption rates in the literature.The findings show that the adoption and diffusion of ABC in Oman is not very popular. The results provide no conclusive evidence to support the significance of innovation characteristics on the adoption and diffusion of ABC in developing countries, such as Oman. While the diffusion of innovation theory suggests that innovation characteristics could have a significant influence on the adoption and diffusion of innovations, the current study suggests that the diffusion of certain innovations (such as ABC in our study) in a particular environment and situation (such as developing countries-case of Oman in our study) could follow other ideologies (e.g., fad fashion philosophy or institutional theory) rather than the diffusion of innovation theory