Implementing Management Innovations: Lessons Learned from Activity Based Costing in the U.S. Automobile Industry is the result of a long-term study of the implementation of activity-based costing (ABC) inside two of America’s largest automobile companies.

The research advances our theoretical and practical understanding of the implementation of management innovations by tracing the evolution of ABC from the corporate level down to its eventual rollout at the plants. Another distinguishing feature of the study is the blend of field research methods and hypothesis testing to determine the factors that led to implementation success for managers and ABC development teams. Many of the findings of the study have implications for the implementation of other types of management innovations.

The book won Anderson and co-author Mark Young from the University of Southern California the 2003 Notable Contribution to the Management Accounting Literature Award presented by the American Accounting Association’s Management Accounting Section.