An inquiry into cost systems used in production businesses: A research in the Manisa Organized Industrial Zone

For production businesses, the first step to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage in increasingly globalized market conditions of today's World has been established by the Industrial Revolution's mass production. While the decrease in defective products in the transition process to mass production has been the largest advantage of the businesses, a need of modern cost accounting systems has arose in parallel to increasingly growing production systems. Due to insufficiency of the widespread use of traditional cost accounting systems alongside contemporary manufacturing technologies, today, businesses use and recommend various contemporary cost systems. Under the light of inseparable tie between production and cost, the only way for contemporary cost accounting systems to be beneficial is to adapt the production systems to the business activities and cost minimization. For this purpose, the use of proper production technologies or the sole use of proper cost systems will not be sufficient alone. This research carries the purpose of creating a profile of Manisa Organized Industrial Zone's businesses' adopted cost accounting methods. The fact that the cost systems used by businesses have not been researched on Manisa Organized Industrial Zone has created a priority for this chosen issue. For this purpose, the goal has been set to do a situation analysis of businesses operating on Manisa Organized Industrial Zone in terms of application of cost systems. Furthermore, it has also been attempted to determine whether or not a relationship between cost systems and certain characteristics of businesses exists. The research has come to the conclusion that the production businesses of Manisa Organized Industrial Zone have been using traditional cost systems more in comparison to the contemporary systems, but the use of contemporary cost and administration accounting methods are also being used considerably. In comparison to similar research conducted in other application areas, the Manisa Organized Industrial Zone appears to be more conscious about using contemporary cost systems.