La comptabilité de gestion a connu une évolution de sa dénomination :
- comptabilité industrielle à l'origine ;
- comptabilité analytique à partir de la seconde moitié du 20ème siècle ;
- et comptabilité de gestion depuis deux décennies.
Sous l'impulsion de Paul Sharman, le comité de rédaction de la revue Cost Management a fixé comme orientation prioritaire pour les prochaines années le "Cost Leadership". Dans son appel à contributions, Paul Sharman le définit ainsi :
“As the business environment becomes even more dynamic, a robust cost leadership strategy within the framework of corporate strategy is vital in order to ensure the success of the organization. It should provide the direction that the whole organization can pursue to secure the company’s future survival and success. Cost leadership is different from cost management and cutting cost, it will not hurt the competitiveness of its company’s business while doing so, as cost leadership must consider several factors: (1)Rationalize allocation of resources; (2) Removing unnecessary, unvalued or low valued activities; (3) Improvement: modifying, redesigning or enhancing a process and the underlying control structure to drive operational efficiency and effectiveness.”
“Cost leadership should align with corporate strategy, product and market life cycle expectations as well as long-term and short-term targets. Top executive, when we practicing cost leadership, should constantly ask: where can our organization go, how can we avoid pitfalls, what management processes should we excel at, how must our organization learn and improve, what do we need to do to improve our bottom line, where should we invest our money to increase growth and profit, what should we do to upgrade talent to improve organizational efficiency and effectiveness, how many resources do we need and what is the best way to allocate them? “
Le Cost Leadership semble effectivement aller plus loin que le Cost Management mais les évolutions par rapport à la gestion stratégique des coûts (Strategic Management Accounting ou SMA) paraissent beaucoup plus discutables.
Une lecture attentive des prochains numéros de Cost Management fournira probablement des éclaircissements.
Bibliographie
La Villarmois, O. de, Benavent, C., & Levant, Y. (2008). La gestion stratégique des coûts : proposition d’un cadre d'analyse. Revue Française de Comptabilité, (414).