A STUDY ON COST AND MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING PRACTICES BY SELECTED FIRMS AT HUBBALLI-DHARWAD

In today's time of rapid technological transformation, tough global and domestic competition, total cost management is central to sustained corporate profitability and competitiveness. The management mantra today is conquering costs, before these conquer firms. Cost means total cost to the customer. The cost leadership strategy does not mean compromise on either quality or technology or product differentiation. Low costs are no advantage if customers are not willing to buy the products of low cost firms. Cost management has to be driven with customer as the focus. The survival triplet today for any company is how to manage its product/service cost, quality, and performance. Customers are continuously demanding high quality and better performance products/services and at the same time they want the prices to fall. The challenge is being able to manufacture or provide service within the stipulated cost framework. Thus, cost management has to be an ongoing continuous improvement program. In this study an attempt is made to explore cost and management practices by selected 30 firms at Hubballi-Dharwad. The data collection methodology of the study is questionnaire survey. The content of the questionnaire survey is based on review of literature. Analysis, interpretation. Summary and conclusion of the survey are presented in the subsequent section of the paper