Les mécanismes de contrôle utilisés pour gérer une réduction des coûts

Cost management is considered to be a matter of strategic choice or necessity, and reducing costs is a recurring preoccupation of management. This paper reports on an empirical study including a field study of six organisations and a postal survey of 83 other organisations. The research looked at four specific aspects of these cost reduction programmes: the control mechanisms used in the reduction of costs, factors that may determine the choice of control mechanisms, how is cost behaviour is modelled and the role played by the management accountant. The research reveals that organisations use a combination of mechanism to control cost reduction. However a preference is observed for treating the context in which costs are incurred over the more traditionally assumed practices of measuring and targeting specific costs. This tendency is shown to be stronger in organisations with certain cultural and technological characteristics. It is also observed that organisations use conflicting models to perceive and present cost behaviour.