Cost accounting nelle cooperative vitivinicole: problematiche e aspetti metodologici

The knowledge of production costs represents an essential information for management in order to develop successful business strategies. In the case of cooperatives, these data are even more relevant as they allow the measurement of a company’s performance in relation to its very purpose, that is to say management’s ability to remunerate products conferred by partners more than their market value. In reality, however, cost accounting tools aimed at improving business competitiveness are scarce. This is mainly due to the high costs incurred for planning and managing such systems, the lack of specialist educational offer and executives’poor corporate culture, since the latter are more focused on technical functions rather than on managerial ones. The purpose of this research is to analyze the typical processes of a winery through the case study of a local cooperative, i.e. the Cantina Sociale di Dolianova. Understanding its processes and dyamics will be functional to the elaboration of a cost accounting pilot model aimed at calculating manufacturing costs. This pilot could serve as a guideline for cooperatives in the wine sector that want to improve their performance. This research brings innovation (to the relevant field of study) in two ways: in designing a cost accounting system based on the latest scholarly contributions, i.e. Time-Driven Activity Based Costing and in proposing the cooperatives a model targeted at determining an estimate of the minimum remuneration for their partners, which should be derived from sales revenues.