Perspectives on the meaning of “cost” – a quality management perspective

I recent read a research paper from the German “ControllerVerein” whcih I found quite interesting (controlling is the German word for management accounting by the way, and a controller is their nearest to the English term”management accounting” ). The paper is about business excellence and quality programmes. What I found interesting was the definition of “cost” from a quality perspective and well as a controlling (management accounting) perspective. I’ll do my best to translate them here.

According to the Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Qulaitaet (DGQ or German Quality Assoc in English) costs are:

The value of physical and intangible materials, activities and other tasks which realise and subsequently recovery a product or service.

The above definition has some added notes too:

These costs should include providing and maintaining the necessary capacity (of the product)
Too many error and failure costs are indicators of a need for organisational and process improvement.

Now here’s the definition of costs from the Internationler Controller Verein (a leading German management accounting body):

The value of goods and services used in the creation/delivery of business activities. The cost is calculated according to management needs. Different costs may be used according to the decision being made, the type of product or the organisational structure.

So what’s the difference between these two definitions? I think the most obvious one is the time focus of each. In management accounting, we are sometimes criticised for providing too much short-term information. For example, one criticism of traditional budgeting techniques is its short-term focus. Looking at the definition of cost from the DGQ above, it clearly perceives cost as a longer-term concept. Yes, management accounting does have techniques like “life-cycle costing” which makes us consider longer-term costs of product or services, but this is a more “specialised” technique and not normally within the armaments of the typical management accountant. Although having said that, nowadays the increased focus on longer-term sustainability has focused management accountants on much broader and longer-term concepts. However, I can’t help but think if the basic definition of cost were broadened to embrace longer term thinking, like how costs are perceived by quality professionals, it would be of great benefit to us.