The purpose of this study is to explore why and how product and service cost information is useful in start-up companies. We observed what kind of changes occurred providing the information to the managers of Company A, which had not used the information for management decision making. As a result, the managers recognized the problems in their management decision-making and the usefulness of the information. These results indicate that even in companies that do not recognize the usefulness of cost information, providing cost information may improve management decision-making.

This paper focus on an original financing method called as the “production committee system” in Japanese “anime” production. This paper reveals the characteristics of cost control through budget simulation at the planning stage, by comparison with existing cost control methods.

Along with organizing the preceding research survey on the content industry and the production committee system, the interview to key person in this paper will show the two results; 1) the production committee system enables management including the secondary distribution of content, and 2) it contributes to the established relationship between stakeholders.

In recent years, strategic behaviors of firms have become statistically estimable from financial statements, and our understanding of these behaviors is deepening from the perspective of management accounting. Generic strategies (such as cost leadership strategy, and differentiation strategy) and organizational capital (which is an invisible asset of an organization and a resource for earning profits) are examples of such behaviors. In this study, we empirically identify the extent to which these strategic behaviors affect future profits at any given time.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the change from the additive to the deductive method on commitment to target cost. This study conducted web-based surveys of engineers involved in target costing. The change from the additive to the deductive method was confirmed by measuring the target costing methods on the engineer’s previous and current projects. This study finds that the change from the additive to the deductive method is associated with a decrease in commitment. This study is one of the few empirical studies that focus on the effect of the change in the target cost setting methods and contributes to target costing research.

Although many contributions have already been published on management control in Japan, little is known about the characteristics of Japanese research. Comparing to international research trends, this paper presents the distinctive features of Japanese research based on the bibliographic method.

The purpose of this study is to identify the factors that influence the adoption of capital budgeting in SMEs and their economic consequences. Specifically, we focus on the adoption of economic evaluation techniques and the management processes. I conducted a Structural Equation Modeling using the results of a questionnaire survey of 175 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Kushiro and Nemuro regions of Hokkaido. The three main results are as follows. First, we found that the intensity of competition in the market affects the management process. Second, the study showed that the emphasis on ex-post evaluation of investments positively affects performance. Third, we found that the adoption of DCF has a negative impact on performance.

This study investigates the strategic disclosure of capacity choices made by downstream firms competing in quantities. In a competitive product market, the capacity choice, as a pre-production commitment, can convey the information about firm’s production decision to market participants. I show that the downstream firm withholds its capacity information and chooses a higher capacity level than under disclosure if the products become sufficiently homogenous. This is because a non-disclosure would convey a more aggressive production level than under disclosure to its rival firm. As the products become differentiated, however, the downstream firm chooses to disclose its capacity and a lower capacity level than under non-disclosure. This leads to a decrease in an input price by revealing a low production level to an upstream firm.

This paper investigates whether accomplishment work motivation mediates the relationship between budgetary goal difficulty and budget performance. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that the budgetary goal difficulty had a statistically significant positive effect on accomplishment work motivation and that accomplishment work motivation had a statistically significant positive effect on budget performance. Furthermore, the indirect effect test revealed that the budgetary goal difficulty has a statistically significant negative direct effect on budget performance, whereas it has a positive indirect effect through accomplishment work motivation.

This paper investigates the impact of sales targets released in medium-term strategic plans on cost behavior. Incorporating the sales targets announced in medium-term strategic plans as a proxy for managerial expectations for a change in medium- or long-term sales, we extend the empirical model developed by Anderson et al. (2003). The empirical findings of this paper indicate that regardless of the direction of an actual change in sales compared to the prior-year sales, the higher (lower) sales targets set in medium-term strategic plans have a stronger impact on cost behavior, suggesting that medium-term strategic plans substantially influence the managerial decision making on resources.

This study addresses whether the hybrid equity valuation model proposed by Gao et al. (2019) is applicable for evaluating Japanese firms, using management earnings forecasts. Three aspects on the quality of value estimates are examined: the degree to which the estimated equity value approximates the actual stock price; the bias, which is the difference between the actual and estimated equity value; the absolute valuation error measured by the absolute value of the bias; the coefficient of determination from regressing stock prices on estimated equity values. In addition, this study estimates the implied cost of capital by solving each valuation model in terms of discount rate and investigates how this implied cost of capital is correlated with various risk indicators. The results of this study demonstrate that the quality of equity valuation can be improved, specifically in terms of risk assessment, by introducing management earnings forecasts as an input to the hybrid model.