Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(222)
- Faculty Publications (119)
- February 2002 (Revised November 2002)
- Case
Activity-Based Management at W.S. Industries (B)
By: V.G. Narayanan and Jeremy Cott
Describes activity-based budgeting at W.S. Industries. Also describes target costing-led product redesign, and product, customer, and order profitability. View Details
- summer 2001
- Article
The Impact of Activity-Based Costing on Managerial Decisions at Insteel Industries - A Field Study
By: V.G. Narayanan and Ratna G. Sarkar
- March 2001 (Revised August 2003)
- Case
Wilkerson Company
By: Robert S. Kaplan
The president of Wilkerson, faced with declining profits, is struggling to understand why the company is encountering severe price competition on one product line while able to raise prices without competitive response on another product line. The controller proposes... View Details
- March 2001 (Revised April 2001)
- Case
MiCRUS: Activity-Based Management for Business Turnaround
By: Robert S. Kaplan, Jonathan B. Schiff and Stanley Abraham
MiCRUS is a new company, spun off from IBM as a joint venture between IBM and Cirrus Logic to produce semiconductor wafers at world-class costs for its two parent companies. The senior management team needs to overcome the bureaucratic, internally focused culture that... View Details
- November 2000 (Revised November 2002)
- Case
Activity-Based Management at W.S. Industries (A)
By: V.G. Narayanan and Sanjay Pothen
W.S. Industries undertakes the design and implementation of an activity based costing (ABC) system, and the ABC information empowers workers to make process improvement decisions. Workers' incentive pay is tied to cost savings from process improvements. View Details
- February 2000 (Revised March 2000)
- Case
Owens & Minor, Inc. (B)
By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem
After a manager at Owens & Minor, a national medical and surgical distribution company, proposes and develops a formalized activity-based pricing and activity-based management approach to sales and service provision, this case explore the outcome. View Details
- January 2000 (Revised October 2002)
- Case
Cambridge Hospital Community Health Network - The Primary Care Unit
By: V.G. Narayanan, Lisa Brem and Ryan Moore
The Cambridge Hospital Community Health Network needed to gain a better understanding of its unit-of-service costs, which had been rising at a rate of 10% per year. The network's step-down costing system gave only aggregate costing information, and there was some... View Details
- 1999
- Chapter
Activity-Based Costing
By: Robert S. Kaplan
Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management
- April 1998 (Revised September 1998)
- Case
Classic Pen Company, The: Developing an ABC Model
By: Robert S. Kaplan
Classic Pen has diversified from its core blue and black pen business by introducing new specialized colors. But costs have risen and margins on blue and black pens are decreasing. The controller turns to activity-based costing (ABC) for an explanation. View Details
- March 1998 (Revised April 1998)
- Case
Lehigh Steel
By: V.G. Narayanan and Laura Donohue
Lehigh Steel is a specialty steel manufacturer that plummeted from record profits to record losses in less than three years, driven by an inability to distinguish between profitable and unprofitable business. The scale and growth of service activities and overhead... View Details
- February 1998 (Revised September 1998)
- Case
Insteel Wire Products: ABM at Andrews
By: V.G. Narayanan and Ratna G. Sarkar
Insteel implements an activity-based costing (ABC) system in 1996. It finds pallet nails to be its most profitable product and decides to expand the number of cells making pallet nails from two to four. A repeat of the ABC study in 1997 shows pallet nails have become... View Details
- November 1997 (Revised May 1998)
- Teaching Note
Indianapolis: Activity-Based Costing of City Services (A) and (B) TN
By: Robert S. Kaplan
Teaching Note for (9-196-115) and (9-196-117). View Details
- April 1997
- Background Note
Using ABC to Manage Customer Mix and Relationships
By: Robert S. Kaplan
Describes applying activity-based costing to manage customer relationships. Links cost-to-serve to net margins earned with individual customers. View Details
- March 1997 (Revised June 1999)
- Background Note
Using Activity-Based Costing with Budgeted Expenses and Practical Capacity
By: Robert S. Kaplan
Describes how activity-based costing (ABC) should be applied with: 1) budgeted, not historical, expenses and 2) assigning the costs of capacity resources. View Details
- February 1997 (Revised July 2001)
- Background Note
Introduction to Activity-Based Costing
By: Robert S. Kaplan
Introduces the fundamental notions of activity-based costing (ABC). Motivates ABC by means of a simple example, a single and a diversified pen factory. Proceeds to show how ABC assigns costs more accurately to products and customers by: 1) identifying the activities... View Details
Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management
- April 1996 (Revised April 1996)
- Case
Activity-Based Management at Stream International
By: Robert S. Kaplan and Norman Klein
Stream International's Crawfordsville, Indiana facilities undertake the design and implementation of an activity-based costing project. After analyzing the costs assigned to 161 work activities, Crawfordsville managers present five proposals for change based on ABM... View Details
- February 1996 (Revised November 2003)
- Case
Indianapolis: Activity-Based Costing of City Services (A)
By: Robert S. Kaplan
A new administration in the City of Indianapolis is initially determined to privatize many municipal services. Before taking this action, however, the city managers want to know the current cost of performing these services with the municipal workers. Existing... View Details
- February 1996 (Revised June 1996)
- Supplement
Indianapolis: Activity-Based Costing of City Services (B)
By: Robert S. Kaplan
Supplements the (A) case. View Details
- November 1995
- Technical Note
Analyzing Standard Costs: Technical Note
By: V.G. Narayanan
Explains variance analysis. Concepts of price variance and quantity variance are introduced to analyze prime cost variances. Spending variance and capacity variance are used to analyze overhead variance. Consistent with conducting variance analysis in an activity-based... View Details
- May 1995 (Revised April 1998)
- Case
AT&T Paradyne
By: Robert S. Kaplan
A company making data communication devices has adopted a Total Quality philosophy for working with suppliers, employees, and customers. The finance group finds its existing cost system has become obsolete because of a shift from manual to automatic production... View Details