Japanese firms tend to keep tangible investments within the range of internally generated funds especially their depreciation amounts. As far as our observations from the newspapers, journals and interviews, it holds true particularly for the firms exposed with financial constraints. Then, we raise the question whether firms will change the investments behavior, if their financial status improves. We made empirical studies using the panel data, consisting of 897 firms and 11 years in order to examine whether we can find the difference of the behavior of investments depending upon the firms' financial status and the pattern of the change of it. The results show when firms show the improvement of financial status, they will change more aggressively the behavior of investments. Additionally, we obtained the implication that firms, which have exited from the worst financial status after the improvement, tend to more aggressively invest than the firms, which have moved from the ordinary to the soundest one.

This paper investigates the cost behavior of selling, general, and administrative costs (SG & A) in Japanese firms. We confirm the basic results of Anderson et al. (2003) who investigated the cost behavior in U.S. firms. The results imply an asymmetric cost behavior-the magnitude of an increase in costs associated with an increase in activity is greater than the magnitude of a decrease in costs associated with an equivalent decrease in activity. However, we provide evidence that as compared to the U.S. firms, the Japanese firms require more time to adjust the SG & A costs to the desired level in response to a decline in demand. Furthermore, in order to investigate the reason for the asymmetric cost behavior, we examine whether the magnitude of the change in activity and current capacity utilization affect the cost behavior.

This paper examines what new knowledge of managerial accounting would be provided by recent advancement of strategies. It is very important to know that the theory of strategy diversifies itself. The relationship between strategies and management accounting becomes increasingly much more complicated than before. I would like to discuss potential progress of managerial accounting research through the following 2 areas; (1) budgetary control system; (2) capital budgeting (capital investment and its economic efficiency). I try to sort out problems and assumed future possible and promising directions of management accounting research from the perspective of diversification of strategy. Then I point out that the suitable design and operation of management accounting system may differ according to the assumption of strategy.

Since the creation of Balanced Scorecard (BSC) in 1992, BSC approach has developed several innovative models by effectively integrating some other management methodologies such as six sigma-based quality improvement programs, the value-based management using EVA, etc. This paper discusses the relationship between BSC-based strategic management and risk management, which has never been explicitly discussed in the context of such methodological innovation. In addition, the paper proposes a framework that efficiently integrates BSC and the COSO Enterprise Risk Management (ERM), which is known as the state-of-the-art risk management framework, as a means of blending strategy and risk management into a single framework.

Sharp Group started the strategic implementation in 2002. Then Sharp Group had just tried to change the organization which involved with the innovation of business structures, the innovation of operations, and the innovation of management systems. The aim of this paper is to find out the implementation of BSC and the alignment of the strategic objectives with the strategic management by objectives system in Sharp Group. This paper, especially, deals with cascading the strategic objectives and developing IT tools for the successive strategic exertion.

Today, the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and the strategy maps which support the BSC are permeating among not only business organizations but also even public sectors and non-profit organizations (NPO). Further, we can find the movement of including the strategy objectives which relates to corporate social responsibility (CSR) into the BSC or the strategy maps in pursuit of the sustainable growth for those corporations. However, it is difficult to connect logically the objectives orienting CSR with the BSC or the strategy maps in order to improve the shareholders’ value. The reason of its difficulty is that the former often act as the risk factor or constraint of the latter. This paper proposes the three-dimensional strategy map as an approach to identify and analyze the causal relationships and to search the trade-off between strategy objectives. According to this approach, we will be able clearly to discriminate the key-success factors from the risk or constraint factors for attaining the corporate mission, although both have previously been examined as the homogeneous favorable goals.