Managerial Accounting Reflective Journal: Costing Method Analysis

This report is a reflective journal on managerial accounting, focusing on two journal articles related to costing methods. The report analyzes standard costing in the context of the pharmaceutical and chemical industries in Bangladesh, highlighting its benefits and shortcomings, and contrasts it with target costing, emphasizing its role in enhancing competitiveness. The author reflects on their research experience, discussing the challenges of understanding different costing methods and the confusion surrounding cost minimization strategies. The report concludes with a reflection on the learning outcomes, emphasizing the importance of costing methods for organizations, the benefits of standard costing for cost control and decision-making, and the value of target costing for enhancing competitiveness. The author highlights the impact of these methods on their academic and professional understanding, and their ability to contribute to business strategy.

Managerial
Accounting:
Reflective journal

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
1. Reflection on selected two journal articles..............................................................................3
2. Reflections on the research experience....................................................................................4
3. Reflections on what were learned from the individual............................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Managerial accounting is the set of various practices which help the organizations to
identify, measure or analyse the financial information and further it communicate with the people
in order to pursuits business goals & objectives. With the help of reflective journal, individual
able to learn about their work and how it provide them personal growth. At the time of preparing
this report, what challenges, difficulties or issues they face but it also explain the individual
experience which helps in improving their performance as well as efficiency (Appelbaum and
et.al., 2017). In this assessment, we are going to reflect two journal articles which I used to
complement in my managerial accounting report. It also explained my personal experience and
what I actually learn from it.
MAIN BODY
1. Reflection on selected two journal articles
In the selected articles, both are based on the different cost and how it influence the
organization. First article is “ Standard costing in listed pharmaceutical and chemical industry in
Bangladesh ” and the second one is “The Impact of Target Cost Method to Strengthen the
Competitiveness of Industrial Companies”. First article is all about the standards costing which
become most popular in many sectors because of the limitations of traditional costing method. I
also observed that, 73 % UK companies and 86% Japanese organizations follow standard costing
systems. Still, standard costing is an essential tool for the management because they need to
forecast cost, decision making, reduction of cost and measurement of performance. This article
evaluate the current scenario of listed pharmaceutical and chemical organizations in the
Bangladesh. Another purpose is to identify that reason that why traditional method still used by
the pharmaceutical and chemical sector.
Pharmaceuticals and chemical industry one of the important sectors in the economy of
Bangladesh. Around 75% companies still use standard costing for different purpose. This
research conducted in various countries such as UK, New Zealand, Dubai and Turkey. They also
focus on the defect of standard costing system and what are the solutions to eliminate those
defects.
There are various shortcomings of standard costing which affect the organizations such as
52.38% respondent said that standards set by the firms because of quickly obsolete the internal

operating conditions or change in external environment frequently. Lack of data also reported by
the 14.29% companies that is defect of standard costing system.
Another article is all about the “The Impact of Target Cost Method to Strengthen the
Competitiveness of Industrial Companies”. Increase in the competition will increases the
progress of technology, short PLC, variety in customer needs etc.
This article face the issues regarding inability of organizations to use total costing
concept in the modern production environment to minimise the cost. One of the major question
arises that application of target costing affect the competitiveness or not.
Both articles is about the different costing method and how it will be beneficial for the
industries to implement or maximise their efficiency as well as effectiveness.
2. Reflections on the research experience
At the time of conducting research on two different articles, I analysed that purpose of
target costing is to aid the firm in order to retain or compete in the market. On the other hand,
standards cost used to ascertain the future production cost. Standards costing try to minimise or
control the overall cost but target costing only minimise the expenses in the existing level
because product life cycle has multiple stages. At the time of preparation managerial accounting
report, I learn many things such as different types of costing and how it help the organizations to
evaluate their cost. But, I was facing lot of issues because I heard about the standard costing but
total costing is new method which develop by Japanese. So I need to done research, exploring
internal or many sites to understand what it actually total costing mean.
Most of the time it happen that, all the collected information is similar with each other
and I am unable to make any difference. Standard costing is just a simple method which is used
to calculate the difference between actual cost of selling goods or cost of manufacturing that
product (Kim, Schmidgall and Damitio, 2017). But Total costing only applied on different level
of product life cycle and which is mostly used by the Japanese entities. I also found that,
organizations are very confused that how they can minimise their production cost or maximise
their profit margin.
3. Reflections on what were learned from the individual
With the help of both articles I learn that costing methods is very important for the
organizations to estimate or evaluate actual cost of production. Along with this, further analysis
based on the results. I learned that standard costing has various benefits for the organizations, it

helps in improving cost control over the production period. It provide useful information that is
advantageous for the managerial planning and future decision making process. It helps in
measuring inventory level or take further actions accordingly. On the other size, through
analysing another articles I am able to understand total costing concept and how it works. It
enhanced my knowledge or improve my learning process. Because this costing method not only
beneficial for the organizations but for the customers, employees etc. Basically it means
improvement and it is for everyone who related to the business. It is also used to reward
employees according to their efforts.
Standards costing is more relevant for the large organizations rather than small
businesses. Along with this, it is mostly used in the pharmaceutical sector and become applicable
for the medium to high automated sector. On the other hand, total concept is beneficial for those
organization which follow PLC strategy and identify the each stage cost and try to minimise it.
It helps in reducing waste in the area of employee skills, production, management of inventory,
quality of goods, transportation etc. Through reducing cost from these aspects will help the
organizations to perform well or improve their efficiency as well as effectiveness. Both costing
methods improve my knowledge or personal level understanding which is beneficial in my
academic life as well as in my professional career (Nitzl and Chin, 2017). Because in the future, I
have to manage company's accounts and need to analyse or build strategies to improve profit
margin. With the help of my knowledge, I am able to contribute in the business through giving
some essential inputs in terms of making strategic decisions.
CONCLUSION
On the basis of discussion it has been observed that, at the time of preparing this report, I
learn many things through analysing both articles which is about the standard and total cost
concept. It enhanced my knowledge on personal or professional level which further beneficial to
understand me, that what actual improvement I need to done for the better performance.
Reflective journals help me to re-evaluate my work or make me able to understand my mistake
which I previously done in my work.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Appelbaum, D. and et.al., 2017. Impact of business analytics and enterprise systems on
managerial accounting. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems. 25.
pp.29-44.
Di Vaio, A. and Varriale, L., 2018. Management innovation for environmental sustainability in
seaports: Managerial accounting instruments and training for competitive green ports
beyond the regulations. Sustainability. 10(3). p.783.
Kim, M., Schmidgall, R. S. and Damitio, J. W., 2017. Key managerial accounting skills for
lodging industry managers: The third phase of a repeated cross-sectional study.
International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration. 18(1). pp.23-40.
Nitzl, C. and Chin, W. W., 2017. The case of partial least squares (PLS) path modeling in
managerial accounting research. Journal of Management Control. 28(2). pp.137-156.