The Usefulness of Cost information and Determination of Major Factors Affecting Implementation of the Activity Based Costing(The Case of Bank Keshavarzi Iran)

The major objective of the study is to find some answers to the following questions: 1) How do managers assess the usefulness of an information system?, 2) What are the major factors affecting the implementation of an information system?. We choose an action research approach to study the ABC system in Bank Keshavarzi from the management and employees perspective. The functionality of the ABC system was investigated via the following factors: system capability to provide details, cost classification, the frequency of presenting reports and the capability to provide reports and variance analysis. We assessed the usefulness of the ABC using questionnaires and multiple regression method and determined factors affecting to implement ABC based on views from IT and finance managers of the bank and by using factor analysis method. The results indicated that ABC can be useful in cost classification, and the frequency of financial reporting. Organizational, environmental, technological, and individual factors are also effective factors effective in implementing the ABC. Governmental grants, expert arguments, executives support, the overhead costs, and personnel training, were found to be factors affecting the implementation of the ABC.