Change in costing: a longitudinal case study of an Italian Airport

Prior research (e.g. Drury and Tayles, 2005) suggests costing system design may be contingent on factors including cost structure, competitiveness of environment, organisation type, strategy, level of output customisation and information importance in decision making. Such contingency based research is valuable in confirming the existence of a relationship between these variables and specific aspects of a costing system's design. However it provides only a static insight into the relationship and moreover only one which pertains at one point in time (the time of the survey which generates the data). This study takes a more dynamic view of how costing system design is established, modified and used over time. Its main purpose is to identify the contingencies affecting the costing system design and to investigate how these factors come to exercise their influence. Thus the study involves the contingencies as they relate to the role of participants and the mechanisms and processes which they have established to create and modify the costing system. To achieve the latter aims an intimate knowledge of the subject organisations is required and therefore the purpose of this research is pursued through a twelve year longitudinal case study. The case subject is a fast-growing Italian airport which, although regulated, has showed an increasing rate of managerial innovations and faced a very dynamic context during the period of the research. These give the added bonus of pre and post managerial innovations comparison and allows consideration of the importance of regulation which has already been highlighted as an important contingency in another setting (Bromwich and Hong, 2000).