The development of the Activity-Based Costing method: A comparison between France and China

ABSTRACT. In France, like in the USA, ABC was considered as a remedy for the crisis of management accounting. Now, the level of diffusion in France is as important as in Anglo-Saxon countries. Not surprisingly, the ABC method is more developed in western countries than in China. Chinese scholars began to do researches on ABC in the 1990s and at the beginnings of the 21st century, we can observe some ABC implementations in Chinese manufacturing enterprises and then in the service industries. We can also find a similarity between the Chinese and French situations. In France, we have observed some resistances to the Anglo-Saxon way of manage firms and at the beginnings, a tool like ABC has been strongly criticised