The research investigated the dynamics affecting the implementation of target costing in startups in Thailand. Startups face turbulent and competitive environments, lack of market demand and regulatory hurdles, which require effective cost management strategies. The study used quantitative methodology to evaluate the effect of various factors - perceived environmental uncertainty, competitor influence, product diversity, firm revenue, and business strategy for the adoption of target costing. Primary data from a sample of 314 respondents were used. The constructs validity and reliability were analyzed using Confirmatory Factor Analysis while Multiple regression analysis was used to evaluate the study hypotheses. The findings indicated that adoption of target costing was positively and significantly influenced by perceived environmental uncertainty, competitor influence, firm revenue, and business strategy, while product diversity has an insignificant influence. The study recommended that startup managers should consider using complex cost management techniques, as a means of acquiring competitive market advantage, strategic alignment of cost management and using competitors as a benchmark to evaluate their market competitiveness.

The current study proposes a new method to account for production spoilage in process costing system, not previously discussed in cost accounting literature and/or textbooks. It differs from traditional methods discussed in cost accounting textbooks in determining normal spoilage units and assignment of production cost. The study used data from a real factory that makes men’s suits for January 2018 to illustrate and explain the proposed method and its impact on cost reduction. The obtained results prove the study proposition that traditional methods to account for production spoilage overstate normal spoilage cost, and hides or understate actual abnormal spoilage. The proposed method reduced normal spoilage cost by 27%, compared to traditional methods. Thus, the significant reduction in normal spoilage resulted also in a cost reduction of good units manufactured. In addition, the abnormal spoilage cost under the proposed method increased by 35% thus, it would be noticeable by management to focus on, control and eliminate. The study recommends that manufacturing firms adopt the proposed method to account for production spoilage as it is more accurate and helps management focus on production spoilage and take corrective actions to control and eliminate.

Construction projects are always problematic and difficult to manage in certain stages. Management in construction industry has been characterized as being weak, insufficient, nebulous, backward and slow to react against changing conditions. This study aims to identify risk and cost managed in the change management of the construction projects. Quantitative study is organized and questionnaire as an instrument is used to collect the information from the construction experts in Klang Valley, Malaysia. Random sampling techniques is used to collect the data, 105 questionnaires are distributed and 90 ones are returned. The correlation analysis shows significant relationship between cost, risk and change management. The reliability test indicates satisfactory result to continue the questionnaire where Cronbach coefficient alpha value exceeds the level of 0.70. The study finds that design changes, client and contractor related changes are mostly occurred in change management of construction projects. Tendering on the basis of an incomplete design, which then changes during the course of the construction has been found as the key reason of the changes. Through a paper based exercise, site memorandums (SM), quoted rates (QR), variation orders (VO) and monthly payment certificates (MPC) are the activities managed by the engineers. Proper planning is the most leading change management in the risk management. Implementation of risk man-agement was found the applied risk management in practice to hindrances. Since this is very vast debated subject, the study has recommended further investigation to include consultant firms for better understanding of the design changes leading to the cost and risk associated.

During the past few years, there have been increasing competitions in insurance firms around the world and most insurance firms try to find appropriate methods to reduce the cost of their products. In this paper, we perform an empirical investigation to find important factors influencing cost management in insurance industry. The proposed study of this paper detects five items including human productivity, economic inflation, competitions within industry, information technology and rate of damage paid to customers, which are effective on four important cost components. The implementation of analytical hierarchy process on ranking four cost components indicate that the amount of damage paid to customers is the most important factor followed by administration expenses, commission and advertisement.