Material flow cost accounting and existing management perspectives

Material flow cost accounting (MFCA) has been developed worldwide as a major tool in environmental management accounting. The International Standard on MFCA was published as ISO 14051 in 2011. In Japan, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has been strongly supporting the promotion of MFCA, and the number of companies introducing this tool has been steadily increasing. However, in order to apply MFCA in companies continuously, it is necessary to overcome conflicts between MFCA and existing management perspectives. This paper argues that such conflicts are likely to be caused by the essential features of MFCA, and indicates some theoretical solutions based on organizational design. Then, by looking at three example cases of companies that have succeeded in the continuous use of MFCA, specific countermeasures for dealing with conflicts are investigated.