GA2020.7.29

David's Time With Peter F. Drucker 2020.7.29 冠鼎学院（GA）——识别·培养·考验未来的领导者 And it is a fixed cost over any given time period. The famous distinction between fixed and variable costs, on which traditional cost accounting is based, does not make sense in services. Neither does another basic assumption of traditional cost accounting: that capital can be substituted for labor. In fact, in knowledge-based work especially, additional capital investment is likely to require more rather than less labor. A hospital that buys a new diagnostic tool will not lay off anybody as a result. But it will have to add four or five people to run the new equipment. Other knowledge-based organizations have had to learn the same lesson. But that all costs are fixed over a given time period and that resources cannot be substituted for each other are precisely the assumptions with which activity-based costing starts. By applying them to services, we are beginning for the first time to get cost information and control. ——《Management Challenges for the 21st Century · Chapter4 Information Challenges》(Peter F.Drucker,1999)