Práticas de gestão de custos adotadas por empresas estabelecidas nas regiões noroeste e oeste do estado do Paraná

Abstract

This research has, as its object of study, the identification of cost management practices in the context of their acceptation as necessary to the new operational environment of the companies, as well as their adoption in the managerial context. To start with, the work describes the transformations occurred in the world of business during the last decades, as well as the new and/or improved practices for the measurement and management of costs, with special attention to cost and management based on activities, the cost of quality, the target-cost, the cost of the life cycle and the analysis of the chain of values, considered by some authors as adequate to the new environment. Based on this approach, the basic content of the concepts is thoroughly examined as well as the reasons which involve the practices of cost management, object of this study, thus allowing highlighting the concepts under a critical point of view, confronting the opinions of several researchers. As a complement to this study, some national researches about the theme are taken in consideration, which allow the establishment of a comparison between this study and studies from other regions of the country. The study is based on a research carried out with thirty middle-sized and big-sized companies, located in the western and northwestern region of the state of Paraná and the results which were achieved allow the conclusion that the new and/or improved cost management practices have not deserved the attention by the parties involved in the generation of the information regarding costs, motivated by the opinion of the parties who were interviewed, among other reasons, for not knowing about such practices, the low cost-benefit relationship for its implementation and for the predominant preference for the improvement of conventional practices.