Data base accuracy and integrity as a precondition for overhead allocations

Interest in more accurate assignment of overhead costs to establish credible product/service cost profiles has assumed substantial prominence in much of the recent debates on management accounting practices. While the promotion of new cost management systems and in particular Activity Based Costing (ABC) has promised to address many of the perceived shortcomings of more traditional and long established techniques, the lack of its implementation success raises some concern as to the validity and value of these new system designs. A major purpose of this thesis is the development of a mathematical model that is capable of computing overhead allocations on the basis of organisational specific dimensions other than DLH.While almost all data bases suffer from data entry and omission errors, the information content contained in the data bases often forms the basis for management decisions without first confirming the accuracy of the data base content. The model has been successfully applied and tested to detect internal consistency and data element detail accuracy. Future research may test the applicability of the model with more diverse data bases to confirm its generalisability as an investigative as well as predictive model.