Abstract:

Modern management of university does not differ fundamentally from the management in a company. Universities are usually complex and sophisticated organizations, their monitoring requires access to detailed management information, specially cost information. A tool which can be used in academic environment is activity based costing (ABC). There is no shortage of experiences in this field, a lot of them is documented, for example the work of [Cox K.], [Doyle K.], [Goddard A., Ooi K], [Mitchell M.], [Tatikonda L.U., Tatikonda R.]. The analysis of the processes of the universities identified three main areas of activity: teaching, research and services. Without a doubt, the area which is most analyzed is the area of teaching. While, in the area of research is hard to find models of cost record and cost calculation. However, the area of research is, next to the area of teaching, the core of university functioning. Most of costs being incurred by research teams and services to support them are not direct costs, and there is a need to make correct measurement and calculation of them. The need is confirmed by the formal requirements raised by research funding institutions. In the paper it is discussed the possibility of using activity based costing as a tool of cost management supporting research projects in universities. The authors analyzed the existing state of knowledge to find the guidelines to create a model of cost calculation of research and formulated proposals which can be used in developing the cost model based on the ABC. The paper presents an analysis of resources which can be used in research process and proposes the way of grouping costs supports their subsequent settlements. The paper includes also activities characteristic for the research process and an attempt to identify the products of those activities that constitute the cost objects in the model of cost calculation. The authors suggest the solutions of cost flow modeling connected with Time-Driven ABC, taking into account the typical for research process path of costs consumption. There are formulated the potential benefits and difficulties related to the proposed approach and identified directions for further works.