ABSTRACT:

Management accounting has been criticized recently for a failure to provide information that is relevant to the changing critical success factors of modern organizations. One reason given for this failure is the dependence of management reporting on information systems that were developed primarily to support financial accounting applications. This paper describes CO-STAR, a semantic representational schema that has been designed specifically for cost management and that can be used as a basis for the development of cost management applications. The design has been guided by the Cost Management Systems Conceptual Design Document of Computer Aided Manufacturing - International, Inc. (CAM-I). CO-STAR provides for an interface to the transactions of financial accounting and incorporates both declarative and procedural constructs. The schema is illustrated using case studies developed by CAM-I. The paper also discusses the limitations of semantic modeling in the domain of cost management and argues that subsequent research should focus on the development of specialized representations.