Relevance sought! What do practitioners want to know about ABM implementation

This paper has been produced as part of a research project that seeks to generate knowledge about the process of implementation of Activity Based Management (ABM). Implementation is identified as important by Robin Cooper, (Cooper, 1996) thus “the focus of research must broaden to include studies of the problems associated with implementing new cost management techniques”. The project is informed by the research literature addressing cooperation between practitioners and academics, (for example Kaplan, 1994; Scapens 1980, 1994; Spicer, 1992). Our aim in this paper is to meet the objective attributed to Ken Merchant (Drysdale, 1996) “it is the role of the researcher to go to managers and determine what their problems are, and to help managers articulate these”. It also takes account of the preceding research into activity based techniques, including recent work funded by CIMA (Friedman & Lyne, 1995; Innes and Mitchell, 1995). Friedman & Lyne found that the consequences of implementing these techniques were significant for management accountants, and had far reaching organisational consequences.