Costing system as an instrument for enhancing environmental performance of entities in agribusiness

Abstract

Acquiring and preserving competitive advantage requires companies to closely monitor and analyze their business costs and take timely corrective actions. The fact that business sustainability requires the consideration of not only economic aspects, but also the social and environmental dimensions of business, has created the need in cost management to understand the implications of business operations for the broader environment of entities. The greatest number of modern techniques and methods of cost calculation and analysis put primary focus on the costs that arise from the production phase. From the perspective of global competition, taking into consideration the imperative of maintaining sustainable business in the long run, the obtained information is not sufficient for the needs of designing, implementing and revising competitive strategies. This is particularly significant for entities operating in the fields of agriculture and agribusiness, whose activities, as it is well known, have a significant impact on the environment and its degradation. The aim of the paper is to point out the importance of creating cost accounting information that goes beyond the traditionally understood operating costs in order to quantitatively encompass and give a monetary presentation of environmental business aspects, which are very important in a modern business environment for capturing, analyzing, managing and improving the overall performance of an entity. For those purposes, the paper considers true cost accounting and points to the specificity of its application in agribusiness entities.

Sticanje i očuvanje konkurentske prednosti zahteva od preduzeća da pažljivo prate i analiziraju troškove svog poslovanja i blagovremeno preduzimaju korektivne akcije. Okolnost da održivost poslovanja zahteva respektovanje ne samo ekonomskih aspekata, već i socijalnu i ekološku dimenziju poslovanja, iznedrila je potrebu da se u naporima upravljanja troškovima sagledaju implikacije poslovanja na šire okruženje entiteta. Najveći broj savremenih tehnika i metoda obračuna i analize troškova primarni fokus stavljaju na troškove koji nastaju u fazi proizvodnje. Iz perspektive globalne konkurencije i imperativa održivog poslovanja u dugom roku, dobijene informacije nisu dovoljne za potrebe koncipiranja, implementacije i revizije konkurentskih strategija. Ovo je posebno značajno u domenu poslovanja entiteta iz poljoprivrede i agrobiznisa čije aktivnosti, kao što je poznato, imaju značajan uticaj na životnu sredinu i njeno degradiranje. Cilj rada je da ukaže na značaj kreiranja informacija od strane računovodstva troškova koji izlaze izvan okvira tradicionalno shvaćenih troškova poslovanja. Ovo iz razloga kako bi se kvantitativno obuhvatili i monetarno iskazali ekološki aspekti poslovanja, koji u savremenom poslovnom ambijentu imaju izuzetan značaj za potrebe obuhvatanja, analize, upravljanja i unapređenja sveukupnih performansi entiteta. Za navedene potrebe u radu se razmatra "true cost accounting" i ukazuje na specifičnosti primene navedenog koncepta u entitetima u agrobiznisu.