الفهرس 
Research problemOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
Abstract
The traditional cost accounting systems were developed decades ago to provide cost measures that can help in decision making. Nevertheless, those systems were only suitable in a time when organizations depended on labor more than machines, and most of the labor costs were variable costs. Thus the major portion of the production costs were variable. This indicates that the traditional cost accounting systems may only be suitable for organizations that produce/provide a narrow range of products/services.
The activity-based costing system (ABC) developed by Cooper and Kaplan in (1988) was viewed to have more benefits over the traditional cost accounting systems. These benefits are represented in providing more accurate product cost information and more accurate product and customer profitability measurements.
Inspite of the benefits of ABC over the traditional costing system, ABC was criticized because of some weaknesses. In order to solve the problems of the ABC system -which only pays attention to monetary side and ignores the quantity-based resource information- the focus should be shifted to resources. This can be achieved by using the resource consumption accounting approach (RCA) which blends the advantages of the German managerial accounting known as grenzplankostenrechnung or GPK with the activity/process view provided by ABC.
Theory of constraints (TOC) is a management philosophy that was developed by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. Its purpose is to achieve continuous improvement by managing the constraints that restrict operations. And as the major aim of managers is to improve efficiency and speed of operations continuously. This philosophy can be applied to enhance the profits and performance of the organization in an effective way.
As the main aim of RCA is to manage and rationalize the unused capacity of resources. And as the pace of production is determined by the constrained resources. TOC can be used to manage the constrained resources that are found in the system and leads to the existence of unused capacity in other non-constrained resources, in order to rationalize unused capacity.
This attracted the researcher’s attention to suggest a management accounting framework that aims to integrate RCA with TOC to effectively manage the capacity of resources, including resources that represent bottlenecks, in order to improve capacity utilization decisions. So that, the major objective of maximizing profits can be attained.
The research problem can be viewed as follows:
The rapid development in the contemporary economic, technological, and political systems has led to the increase in the number of operations and product diversity which require a varied set of activities, in order to cope with these developments. Expanding operations may lead to problems such as the existence of unused capacity or bottlenecks. The existence of capacity problems can lead to misleading decisions. In order to avoid incorrect decisions, management attention should be shifted to the effective planning of resources.
Thus, organizations should create a balance between the effective utilization of available resources and the effective management of bottlenecks. Integrating RCA and TOC will help to provide information about bottlenecked and non-bottlenecked resources, which will lead to better utilization of resources through capacity planning.
The research problem can be illustrated by the following questions:
1. Does the RCA approach represent an effective costing model that can rationalize capacity utilization in order to overcome the problems of unused capacity and constraints? Or does the successful implementation of the RCA approach require other complementary systems that can overcome the limitations and constraints associated with the consumption of resources?
2. Does the integration between the RCA approach and TOC help to provide the information needed to achieve an effective capacity planning, in order to manage the unused capacity and constraints? The main objectives of the current research are as follows:
1. Analyzing the RCA approach in terms of its concept, objectives, and principles, in order to find out its role in managing the capacity of resources, which can help to enhance the operations and activities of the organization.
2. Evaluating the role of TOC in providing information about existing bottlenecks and how these bottlenecks can be managed regarding current capacities and capabilities.
3. Suggesting a framework based on both RCA and TOC to identify the optimal level of unused capacity at each resource that will help in managing constraints, through information about the bottlenecked and non-bottlenecked resource pools.
The research importance is:
The research represents a theoretical and applied framework that provides organizations with better costing and quantitative information about unused capacity and constraints, so that organizations can be able to take effective decisions that rationalize capacity utilization.
The research hypotheses can be formulated as follows:
Hypothesis 1: There is a significant relationship between only applying the resource consumption accounting approach and the rationalization of capacity utilization decisions.
Hypothesis 2: There is a significant relationship between the integration of the resource consumption accounting approach with the theory of constraints philosophy and the rationalization of capacity utilization decisions.
Testing the research hypotheses:
The researcher performed a case study on Dice Sports and Casual Wear organization in order to test the research hypotheses, where the researcher collected the actual detailed cost information from this targeted organization, and after that the researcher compared the cost information resulting from only applying the RCA approach with that resulting from the integration between RCA and TOC, in order to test the validity or the non-validity of the research hypotheses.The research limitations can be described as follows:
1. This research will only study and analyze physical resources without addressing the non-physical resources.
2. The application of this study is limited to one organization without extending to cover a range of organizations, due to the considerations of time and cost.
3. The researcher will depend on the costing information obtained from the targeted organization under study, with the assumption that there is an acceptable level of measurement accuracy in the costing system used; therefore, this research will not assess the degree of the measurement accuracy of the costing system used by the targeted organization.
In the research methodology two approaches will be used:
1. The inductive approach:
where the researcher would depend on revising the Arabic and English books, articles, and conferences in order to construct the theoretical framework of this study focusing on capacity problems in organizations.
2. The analytical approach:
The researcher depends on analyzing the actual detailed cost data of Dice Sports and Casual Wear organization to test the research hypotheses.
In order to achieve the research objectives, the research was divided into the following chapters:
Chapter one will be an introduction to the basic research problem and objectives. Chapter two will give an overview about the previous studies related to this research. Chapter three will discuss the conceptual framework of the resource consumption accounting approach. While chapter four will talk about the theory of constraints and how it can be used to manage constrained resources. After that, chapter five will be about rationalizing capacity utilization decisions. Finally, chapter six will present the applied study, the testing of the research hypotheses, results, recommendations and opportunities for future research, English and Arabic references, research summary in English, and research summary in Arabic.
A mixed-integer programming model was used to integrate RCA with the capacity of resources found in the organization. The solution to the mixed-integer programming model gave the optimal product-mix that maximizes profits, additionally the solution identified the constrainted and non-constrained resources and their capacity.
The following results and recommendations must be highlighted:
(1) The accuracy and effectiveness of the RCA approach is due to its dependence on grouping homogeneous resources in the same resource pool and the allocation of the cost of used resources only to products, thus, unused resources costs are not included in the products costs.
(2) The applied study has proved that RCA and TOC are not mutually exclusive, but they can be used as complementary approaches to improve the performance of the organization.
(3) The application of RCA and TOC can achieve a number of objectives:
- RCA helps in the process of determining and analyzing the interrelationships between resources, and calculating the products costs accuracy. Additionally, this approach provides accurate information about activities, resources, and their costs and capacities.
- Then comes the role of TOC in determining and managing the constraints in the short-run, and in eliminating them in the long-run.
- This integration maximizes profits and reduces the amount of unused capacity available.
(4) This integration also helps in the determination of the amounts and points of idle capacity, therefore, management can make decisions regarding the reuse of this capacities in other productive uses or by producing more products that can utilize this idle capacity.(5) In order to manage capacity effectively management should not only focus on activities, but also on how to efficiently utilize and exploit the available capacity of resources.
(6) The implementation of this integrated model is highly recommended for organizations to achieve a competitive advantage, this is because it allows organizations to determine their optimal product-mix that maximizes profits and reduces unused capacity. Additionally, the points of constraints will be determined so it can be managed effectively.
(7) RCA provides accurate cost information, which helps TOC to identify the constraints of the production process and the optimal product-mix, in order to improve capacity utilization decisions.
(8) TOC is a philosophy that aids management to deal with the constraints and bottlenecks of the production process in a continuous way.
(9) The integrated model can achieve a continuous improvement in the performance of the organization, this can be achieved by continuously detecting the different constraints available, therefore, management can make the correct decisions regarding these constraints.
Recommendations and opportunities for future research can be illustrated as follows:
(1) The gap between the scientific and academic research, and practical reality must be removed, where organizations should develop their information systems and train their employees in order to be able to apply the newly arising cost management approaches successfully.
(2) Organizations should focus on resources capacity and areas of constraints in order to achieve the best utilization of the capacity of resources and to maximize profits. This model will help organizations greatly to achieve this objective.
(3) As this study is applied on a manufacturing organization, it is recommended for future research to apply this proposed model on services organizations to validate and confirm the results obtained.