COMPARISON OF THE DIFFUSION OF ACTIVITY BASED COSTING AS A STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT TOOL IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

The evolution of the economic, technological and organizational environment is accompanied by numerous innovations in different segments of their business, which very often condition each other. The process of innovation diffusion takes a long time and requires numerous adjustments to both organizational structure and organizational culture. According to research by numerous authors, the diffusion of the concept of activity-based costing as one of the innovations within cost accounting takes place at a different pace in developed countries compared to developing countries in all sectors of the economy. The speed of the process of diffusion of the concept of activity- based costing in the service sector, and especially in higher education institutions, is influenced by many factors, such as, for example, the size of the organization, the percentage of overhead costs in the structure of total costs, the support of employees and management, satisfaction with the costing that is currently used, availability of training and resources, adoption of IT innovations in order to improve the administrative function and others. The general goal of the paper is to examine the potential impact, relationship and contribution of appropriate contextual variables to the spread of the concept of activity-based costing in private and public higher education institutions in the Republic of Serbia. The paper can be useful to strategic management accountants of higher education institutions and other organizations because it can provide them with guidelines on the basis of which they could more easily implement the process of diffusion of the concept of costing by activity in their organization.