The Creation of Architecture

Abstract

The five parameters we have just used for characterizing costing systems tell us nothing about their internal structure. These fairly general param­eters position costing systems in an organization and allow a preliminary approach to their respective places within management systems. They say nothing about the internal structuration of the cost systems, structu­ration which is essential for analysing both their relevance and internal coherence. In reality it is at the level of fine-tuning that the reliability of data, its traceability and potential impact on behaviours can be appraised. In this chapter, I will review five new criteria, which, if applied to our two families of systems resulting from the foregoing phase of analysis, offer us a new road map of costing systems.