Full Cost Accounting in the Automotive Industry: A Systematic Review and Methodology Proposal

To date, it is not known how Full Cost Accounting (FCA) can be applied in the automotive context. Therefore the objective of this paper is to review existing methodological approaches in FCA studies and identify the most appropriate for the automotive sector. This systematic literature review of FCA studies extracted ten different methodological approaches in this field. The Sustainability Assessment Model (SAM) is the most developed FCA methodology applicable to automotive organisations. Its strengths are the ability to provide both physical and monetary metrics for sustainability assessment, its flexibility and the ability to combine multiple sustainability dimensions. The SAM takes the full life cycle approach for the sustainability assessment which allows managers to make the best possible choices at the design stage with knowledge about all possible economic, social and environmental costs of the vehicle throughout its lifetime.