Who would have thought that, of all the issues in the world, accounting would ever be foremost among hot-button discussion topics? Accounting? Boring accounting? A profession once derided in a famous “Monty Python” sketch as a “horrible debilitating disease” whose practitioners are “appallingly dull, unimaginative, timid, lacking initiative, spineless, easily dominated, no sense of humor and irrepressibly drab?” Interesting and intriguing? Never!

Yet in early 2002, accounting was pu...

A chief executive officer (CEO) spends months deciding on a corporate strategy. The plan probably includes a mix of changes in products, customers, and markets, as well as demands for increased efficiencies or information in a number of existing areas. The CEO then hands off the plan to a group of managers who are quite capable of implementing many of the changes, but who scratch their heads over how to squeeze greater efficiencies or information out of existing departments in order to meet their s...

The Butterworth-Heinemann Hospitality Management Series covers all aspects of the management of hospitality enterprises from an applied perspective. Each book in the series provides an introduction to a separate managerial function such as human resources or accounting, to a distinct management segment in the hospitality industry such as club management, resort management, or casino management, as well as to other topic areas closely related to hospitality management, such as information technol...

T his book has been written for business owners and managers who want to refine the accounting and financial operations of their companies. It provides detailed information about how to run these operations, track cash flows, conduct analyses, analyze key financial information, create a corporate risk management strategy, and manage tax liabilities—in short, all of the key accounting and financial information required to operate a small business....

This book explains the methods used in accounting and business valuations by using the fictional story of a new start-up business, from original concept to eventual acquisition. Enamoured with entrepreneurial spirit, a business woman buys her family’s secret salad dressing recipe from her brother and sets up a business. Chapter 1 illustrates double entry bookkeeping and how to prepare a Trial Balance, Profit and Loss Account and Balance Sheet and also discusses
the working capital cycle, ...

When I set out to write this book, my topic was stock options. Specifically, my intent was to explore the much debated issue of expensing stock options. While that remains an essential theme of this book, it is impossible to address stock options without looking at the broader picture. Put another way, stock options are the trees; executive compensation and effective corporate governance are the forest.

After completing this project, I am left with several compelling questions. What...

This book is about understanding and redesigning accountability systems. The accountability systems we write about are those established over the past 5 to 10 years, mostly at the state level, although a number of districts have similar systems. These systems are distinguished by their attention to school-level performance and by their inclusion of consequences for that performance. They are quite different from earlier approaches to accountability that attended primarily to district compliance ...

When the first systematic writings on NGO (non-governmental organization) accountability became available in the mid-1990s, NGOs still occupied a relative backwater in politics, international affairs and academic research. Ten years on, both NGOs in general and the accountability question in particular have moved to centre stage, for some good reasons and some not so good, and this book represents the new cutting edge of thinking and practice in this increasingly important and contentious arena....

This book studies the extent to which citizens control government. The chapters discuss what guides voters at election time, why governments survive, and how institutions modify the power of the people over politicians. The questions addressed include whether ideology or ethnic identity undermine the capacity of voters to assess the performance of incumbent politicians; how much information voters must have to select a politician for office or to hold a government accountable; whether parties in ...

Some of the most bitter controversies over U.S. environmental policies have occurred in small Western communities where timber, mining, and ranching interests have clashed with those seeking to preserve public lands for ecological or recreational purposes. Whether the conflict was over implementation of the Endangered Species Act, the National Forest Management Act, or any number of other federal or state laws, the out-come often was policy stalemate and local economic stagnation. At the national...