Marc J. Epstein - Böcker

After a decade of treating the topic of e-commerce with awe and confusion, we can now step back and analyze the subject more objectively. From launching an electronic storefront to managing complex supply chain operations, most companies have ventured into e-commerce; but even the best-run bricks-and-mortar enterprises have run into snags in the virtual world. Even mighty Wal-Mart, for example, took its website through several redesigns and sales strategies, and Borders eventually outsourced its Internet sales activites to rival, Amazon. Despite the horror stories of abysmal customer service, lost information, catastrophic meltdowns, and the excesses of the dot.com boom, the Internet is now an essential tool and medium for conducting business. Today, the key question is not whether your firm should invest in e-commerce, but how you can do so most profitably.In Implementing E-Commerce Strategies, Marc Epstein goes beyond the hype to focus on the practical angles of designing, executing, and successfully managing an e-commerce strategy that works for your company. While many books have addressed the what and why of e-commerce, Epstein zeroes in on the elusive how. Showcasing the experiences of 32 companies (both successes and failures) in a wide variety of industries, he explores such issues as corporate culture and strong leadership from the executive suite, integrating e-commerce into corporate strategy, aligning goals, accountabilities, and performance metrics to support e-commerce initiatives, and building systems that can measure the value of your e-commerce investments. No business can avoid e-commerce—and its capacity for creating spectacular opportunities or wasting precious time and resources. How your firm handles these challenges may very well determine whether or not it will survive.

Often business executives serve (or are asked to serve) as board members of nonprofit organizations. However, without a clear understanding of how nonprofits work, service on a board can be a frustrating experience. Joining a Nonprofit Board offers an important guide to the roles and responsibilities of a nonprofit board member. Marc J. Epstein and F. Warren McFarlan provide a step-by-step guide to how board members can work with a nonprofit organization to achieve the organization’s overarching mission, attain financial sustainability, and develop and execute the systems needed to accomplish both. Based on more than 10 years of research from Rice University and Harvard Business School and filled with illustrative examples, Joining a Nonprofit Board explores the basic structure of a nonprofit, explains how to build and monitor a nonprofit’s mission, and identifies how the board performs an effective assessment of a non-profit. The book also explores the challenges posed by the duality of leadership between the unpaid volunteer non-executive chairman of the board and the CEO. Joining a Nonprofit Board includes a helpful explanation of a “board member’s life cycle.” The authors start with the decision to join a board and explain how to prepare for the first meeting. The book explores how to serve effectively the first two years and reveals what it takes to develop your ongoing role as a trustee. Finally the book describes how to transition off the board to other forms of service with the organization. Joining a Nonprofit Board is a comprehensive resource for anyone who wants to take their experience in the business world and serve a nonprofit with passion and clarity.

This volume covers such topics as prior evidence on corporate annual reports, research methodology and the demographics of the corporate shareholder, investors' investment objectives and their information sources, and the readership and usefulness of corporate financial statements.

This volume develops and applies a power control exchange framework of accounting that incorporates both the structural-functional (SF) (rational choice model) and the conflict-pluralistic (CP) (political choice model) to study management/organizational control systems as a resource exchange process. The framework proposes that control as an exchange process depends on two factors: basis of power, classified as SF-rational or CP-political and perceived availability of resources, dichotomized as relative slack or relative scarcity. The relationship between these two factors yields four types of resource exchange: co-operative, competitive, distributive or unequal. These resource exchange typologies are discussed and applied to study management accounting/control systems within the context of divisionalized business organizations. The book concludes with a chronological review of research together with applications for for-profit organizations.

"Advances in Management Accounting" (AIMA) publishes well-developed articles on a variety of current topics in management accounting that are relevant to both practitioners and academicians. As a respected professional journal, "AIMA" is well poised to meet their information needs. Featured in recent volumes are articles on the practice and research of management accounting in the new century, the creation of customer value and outside-in cost, the drivers of customer and corporate profitability, product costing for manufacturing and service industries, performance measurement, capital budgeting, brand valuation, target costing, kaizen costing, and executive compensation issues. Accountants at all levels who work in corporations and not-for-profit organizations would be interested in the AIMA articles.

This annual publication is devoted to the advancement of ethics research and education in the profession and practice of accounting. It aims to advance innovative and applied ethics research in all accounting-related disciplines on a global basis and to improve ethics education in the field.

An analysis of fuzzy sets and the theory of evidence to accounting. It is divided into parts, covering: methodology; inference; prediction; and neural networks.

In "Corporate Governance, Accountability, and Pressures to Perform: An International Study", Professor Demirag provides an up-to-date review of the structures and characteristics of the various financial and corporate governance systems that exist in different countries around the world. The scope of this book is wide-ranging and reflects the authors' extensive experience in this area. The book provides a useful framework for addressing variety of key issues including why and how some companies take advantage of differences in corporate governance practices, while others fail, in the performance and management of their research and development practices. This book explores how corporate governance systems in various European countries, the United States, Australia and Japan are embedded in their overall national financial systems and whether the national corporate governance systems are converging to some extent. Through the use of a survey, the book examines how various financial and corporate governance systems protect companies from, or expose them to, short-term pressures. An attempt is also made to measure the short-term perceptions of over one thousand top company executives internationally and to show how they react to these pressures in the management of their research and development. The ultimate aim of this book is to identify those financial systems and corporate governance structures where short-term pressures are resisted and longer-term investment decisions are encouraged.

This volume offers a collection of papers that further our understanding of the broad uses of management accounting information. Papers presented reflect the diverse applications that the discipline has observed in recent years with topical coverage including: product pricing, performance measurement, budgetary participation, activity-based costing in different countries and adoption issues, strategic control systems, managers' quality effort decisions, budgetary control, research and advertising spending and its allocation, accounting information and conflicts, activity-based management support, ABC implementation in a service firm, and the role of managerial accounting system.

This book applies John Maynard Keynes' theory of investor liquidity preferences to the examination of the stock market literature on the January effect and other seasonal anomalies. Keynes' theory provides a common theoretical framework and represents a paradigm shift for the examination of all seasonals. An extensive literature review is provided along with identification and empirical examinations of the intergenerational transfers hypothesis, special closings of the New York Stock Exchange, tax (estimated tax) payment effects, and an historical/contemporary retail merchandising industry seasonal. Databases used for empirical tests include the Stock Index and Market Seasonals (SIMS) database, the Cowles Index and contemporary Standards and Poor's counterparts, and the Internal Revenue Service's Statistic of Income public use file.

"Advances in Management Accounting" (AIMA) publishes well-developed articles on a variety of current topics in management accounting that are relevant to both practitioners and academicians. As a respected professional journal, AIMA is well poised to meet their information needs. Featured in recent volumes are articles on the practice and research of management accounting in the new century, the creation of customer value and outside-in cost, the drivers of customer and corporate profitability, product costing for manufacturing and service industries, performance measurement, capital budgeting, brand valuation, target costing, kaizen costing, and executive compensation issues. Accountants at all levels who work in corporations and not-for-profit organizations would be interested in AIMA articles.

This text applies sociological approaches to organizational change and development to explain process innovation and diffusion in internal auditing and management accounting systems. While management accounting reports have emphasized the measurement of quality and improved organizational performance, the extent to which process innovation strategies of total quality management (TQM) and reengineering have been integrated into behavioral accounting research has been limited. The book broadens quality and process innovation research by incorporating theories from organizational development, systems analysis, organizational learning, contingency theory, population ecology and collaborative management. In doing so, it integrates the study of TQM and reengineering into management accounting, internal auditing and control systems. TQM and process reengineering are presented as specific process innovation approaches, which can bring about either incremental or radical organizational change and development in management control systems, particularly in internal auditing and accounting control systems.

This publication offers well-developed articles on a variety of topics in management accounting that are relevant to both practitioners and academicians. As a respected professional journal, AIMA is well poised to meet their information needs. Featured in recent volumes are articles on the practice and research of management accounting in the 21st century, the creation of customer value and outside-in cost, the drivers of customer and corporate profitability, product costing for manufacturing and service industries, performance measurement, capital budgeting, brand valuation, target costing, kaizen costing, and executive compensation issues. Accountants at all levels who work in corporations and not-for-profit organizations would be interested in the AIMA articles.

This is a monograph that examines US individual federal income taxation. It is suitable for academics, graduate students, and those interested in tax policy and the historical evolution of contemporary individual federal income tax issues.

Advances in Management Accounting (AIMA) publishes well-developed articles on a variety of current topics in management accounting that are relevant to both practitioners and academicians. As a respected professional journal, AIMA is well poised to meet their information needs. Featured in volume 10 is an article reporting on the findings of an in-depth field study at Bell Atlantic, now Verizon. The impact of teaming on productivity, quality, and employee satisfaction was measured using research design methods not commonly found in field study research. Another article reports field research describing how two firms used accounting in new product development and proposes a conceptual framework hypothesizing how management accountants' participation can enhance the firm's performance. The remaining nine articles deal with a variety of topics such as the frequency and perceived usefulness of strategic management accounting, the relationship between a product's revenue and cost functions and much more. The eleven articles represent relevant, theoretically sound, and practical studies the discipline can greatly benefit from, providing a high level of contributions to management accounting research and practice. Accountants at all levels who work in corporations and not-for-profit organizations will be interested. Contents

The fields of performance measurement and management control have changed dramatically. Industry has recognized the importance of the implementation and co-ordination of strategy with organizational structure, management systems, and managerial behavior. Managers as well as researchers are attempting to find better ways to link performance metrics to strategy through systems like balanced scorecard and shareholder value analysis and to drive improved corporate performance. Researchers are also trying to better understand the drivers of corporate performance, the linkages between them, and how to measure their impacts on profitability. They are examining which of the various performance measurement and management control systems are more or less effective, how they fit with alternative organizational structures and strategies, and the causes of their successes and failures. This book contains a compendium of some of the papers presented at a workshop on Performance Measurement and Management Control in October, 2001. Sponsored by the European Institute for the Advanced Study in Management (EIASM) and held in Nice, France, this workshop attracted scholars on management control and performance measurement from around the world. The contents of this book represent a collection of leading research in performance measurement and management control and provide a significant contribution to the growing literature in the area.

This monograph seeks to provide a theoretical foundation and linkage between financial and managerial accounting. Just as the lines between the CPA-auditor or the financial analyst and consultants, underwriters, and management have been blurred through the Enron audit failure, so, too, will the lines between research streams relating to management (management accounting) and external parties (financial accounting) be less easily drawn. After providing the theoretical foundation for information asymmetry in the first three sections, emphasis shifts to case studies. Section four focuses on case studies and issues relating to the transmission of symmetric and asymmetric information on the Internet.

Advances in Management Accounting (AIMA) publishes well-developed articles on a variety of current topics in management accounting that are relevant to both practitioners and academicians. Featured in Volume 11 are articles on managers' perceptions of the physical reality of the firms' utilization of its physical assets; the perspectives used in analytical and empirical cost system research; operational planning and control involving activity-based costing; effects of benchmarking and incentives on organizational performance; organizational control and work team empowerment; budget slack creation in organizations; taxonomy for the mass customization approach; top management involvement in R&D budget setting; the role of self-interest in project continuation decisions; agency theory determinants of managers' adverse selection in resource allocation; process innovation and adaptive institutional change strategies in management control systems; and change in management accounting controls after implementation of electronic data interchange. Accountants at all levels who work in corporations and not-for-profit organizations would be interested in the AIMA articles.

This research monograph is an empirical examination of cultural influences on judgments of professional accountants from Australia, India and Malaysia in relation to a number of ethical issues in accounting including auditor-client conflict resolution, whistle blowing as an internal control mechanism and social desirability response bias. The study informs and guides both the theoretical specification and treatment of culture and its operationalization and methodology. It is shown that enhancement in the quality of cross-cultural research in accounting can be accomplished by providing greater insight into the depth, richness and complexity of cultural similarities and differences between and across nations by complementing the quantified dimensional based cultural measures with relevant historical, sociological and psychological literature. The findings of the study have implications for the management of multinational enterprises, the international convergence and harmonisation of accounting and auditing standards, and for cross-cultural accounting research. This research monograph would be particularly useful for researchers and research students interested in international dimensions of accounting and in ethical issues in international business.

Publishes well-developed articles on a variety of current topics in management accounting that are relevant to researchers in both practice and academe. As one of the premier management accounting research journals, AIMA is well poised to meet the needs of management accounting scholars. Featured in Volume 12 are articles on new directions in management accounting research, profit impact of value chain reconfiguration blending strategic cost management (SCM) and action-profit-linkage (APL) perspectives, the measurement gap in paying for performance, cost accounting practices used in advanced manufacturing environments, compensation strategy and organizational performance, accounting for cost interactions in designing products, relationship quality in performance measurement, measuring and accounting for market risk tradeoffs, connecting concepts of business strategy and competitive advantage to activity-based machine cost allocations, corporate acquisition decisions under different strategic motivations, and some new findings on the balanced scorecard adoptions. Researchers in both practice and academe, as well as libraries, would be interested in the articles featured in the AIMA.

Performance measurement and management control are critical components of improving organizational performance. But, researchers have historically had little success in determining the specific actions that lead to superior performance. After several decades of research in this area, we have few clear conclusions. But, recently researchers have provided some clarity. Managers and researchers have more carefully collected and analyzed data to better understand the most effective management control and performance measurement mechanisms to drive and measure superior organizational performance. This book contains a compendium of some of the excellent papers presented at a workshop on Performance Measurement and Management Control: Superior Organizational Performance in September, 2003. Sponsored by the European Institute for the Advanced Study in Management (EIASM) and held in Nice, France, this workshop attracted leading scholars on management control and performance measurement from around the world. The contents of this book represent a collection of leading research in management control and performance measurement and provide a significant contribution to the growing literature in the area. The primary questions relate to the specific managerial actions that can be taken to drive superior organizational performance and the most appropriate measures of long term organizational success. The papers in this volume address these questions using a variety of research methods. Experimental, analytical, empirical, and field studies are all used to explain how management control and performance measurement can aid in the implementation of strategy and the improvement of organizational performance. The approaches are used in both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. We are hopeful that this book will continue the search for additional understanding and development in performance measurement and management control and provide guidance for both academics and managers as they work toward improving organizational performance.

"Advances in Management Accounting" (AIMA) publishes well-developed articles on a variety of current topics in management accounting that are relevant to researchers in both practice and academe. As one of the premier management accounting research journals, AIMA is well poised to meet the needs of management accounting scholars. Featured in Volume 13 are articles on expanding management accounting researchers frontiers in the next decade, innovation strategy and the use of performance measures, performance effects of financial incentives, evaluating product mix and capital budgeting decisions, performance-based government organizations, a nomological framework of budgetary participation and performance, organization-mandated budgetary involvement and managers budgetary communication, effects of individual and group performance feedback and task interdependence, fairness perceptions and managers use of budgetary slack, and effects of responsibility and cohesiveness on group escalation decisions. Researchers in both practice and academe, as well as libraries, would be interested in the articles featured in the AIMA.

"Advances in Management Accounting" (AIMA) publishes well-developed articles on a variety of current topics in management accounting that are relevant to researchers in both practice and academe. As one of the premier management accounting research journals, "AIMA" is well poised to meet the needs of management accounting scholars. Featured in Volume 14 are articles on: quality-based incentives in measuring non-financial performance of healthcare industry; revenue drivers in the accounting literature; judgemental effects in the use of performance measurement systems; the influence of IS quality information, corporate environmental integration, product innovation, and product quality on organizational performance; managing and controlling environmental performance, implications of strategic organizational development (the Pyramid) in accounting, information, and control; interactive effects involving product development organizations and target cost management; antecedents and consequences of budget participation; the impact of employee rank on attitudes, motivation and performance; expectancy theory as the basis for activity-based costing systems implementation; and dysfunctionality in performance measurement when outputs are difficult to measure. Researchers in both practice and academe, as well as libraries, would be interested in the articles featured in the "AIMA".

"Advances in Management Accounting" (AIMA) publishes well-developed articles on a variety of current topics in management accounting that are relevant to researchers in both practice and academe. As one of the premier management accounting research journals, "AIMA" is well poised to meet the needs of management accounting scholars. Featured in Volume 15 are articles on: low-intensity R&D and capital budgeting decisions in IT firms; investment decision in modular manufacturing systems within a critical thinking framework; reliability and validity of balanced scorecard measures and dimensions; decision outcomes under activity based-costing; presentation and decision commitment interactions; decision control of products developed using target costing; strategic budgeting and information symmetry; a performance management model; CEO compensation and firm performance; specialized journals and management accounting research paradigms; knowledge management systems for knowledge-products organizations; and, trust and commitment as intangible drivers of interorganizational performance. Researchers in both practice and academe, as well as libraries, would be interested in the articles featured in the "AIMA". This work addresses many management accounting issues: budgeting and investment decisions, compensation and performance, research paradigms, and more. It includes both theoretical and practical discussions - a valuable reference for both academics and practitioners. This book series is available electronically at website.

The previous conference in Nice in 2003 focused on the determination of the specific actions that lead to superior organizational performance. This included the characteristics of superior performance and the identifiable features of management control and performance measurement systems that drive improved performance along with relevant performance measures. But, there are often dysfunctional consequences of the drive for superior organizational performance. Numerous stakeholders are often impacted both positively and negatively by the drive for superior organizational performance. These stakeholders often include employees, customers, suppliers, the community, and others. Much current research focuses on how organizations and managers can minimize negative internal impacts and externalities and use management control and performance measurement to improve both organizational performance and the impacts on employees and society. This book contains a compendium of some of the excellent papers presented at a workshop on Performance Measurement and Management Control: Improving Organizations and Society in September, 2005 in Nice, France. Sponsored by the European Institute for the Advanced Study in Management (EIASM) and EDHEC School of Management, this workshop attracted leading scholars on management control and performance measurement from around the world. The primary questions addressed at the conference relate to the specific managerial actions that can be taken to drive superior organizational performance and the determination of the most appropriate measures of long term success in organizational performance. Many papers also addressed the social impacts of these actions. The papers in this volume approach these questions using a variety of research methods. Some are more theory based and most include some empirical research including interviews, surveys, and field studies. These methods are used to explain how management control and performance measurement can aid in the implementation of strategy and the improvement of organizational and societal performance. The approaches are used in both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. The answers are not yet clear. But it is hoped that the papers included in this volume contribute to this growing body of knowledge and lead us to an improved understanding of how to build better organizations and evaluate and understand their performance. This work discusses how superior organizational performance affects employees and society. It is based on a workshop on Performance Measurement & Management Control (Nice, France - Sep 2005). Content includes some empirical research including interviews, surveys, and field studies.

"Advances in Management Accounting" (AIMA) publishes well-developed articles on a variety of current topics in management accounting that are relevant to researchers in both practice and academe. As one of the premier management accounting research journals, "AIMA" is well poised to meet the needs of management accounting scholars. Featured in volume 16 are articles on: Value-Creation Models For Value-Based Management - Review, Analysis, And Research Directions; Performance Standards And Managers Adoption Of Risky Projects; The Effects Of Organizational Culture On Budgetary Conflict - Integrative Versus Distributive Conflict Resolution; The Intervening Effect Of Information Asymmetry On Budget Participation And Segment Slack; Do Accounting Performance Measures Indeed Reduce Managerial Ambiguity Under Uncertainty; Capacity Utilization And The Befcu Model - A Field Study; and, an Application Of The American Productivity And Quality Center Approach To The Evaluation Of Hospital Performance. It also features articles on: The Application Of The Verified Perceptual Bias To Negative Compensation Situations In Management Accounting Research; Activity-Based Cost Management And Manufacturing, Operational And Financial Performance - A Structural Equation Modelling Approach; Team Performance Measurement - A System To Balance Innovation And Empowerment With Control; An Experiment Of Group Association, Firm Performance, And Decision Dissemination Influences On Compensation; and, A Note On The Readability Of Professional Materials For Management Accountants. Researchers in both practice and academe, as well as libraries, would be interested in the articles featured in the "AIMA". This book series is available electronically at website.

In order to be successful in today's world wide competitive environment, companies must be capable of manufacturing products of high quality at low cost and providing a first-class customer service. Many companies have responded to these competitive demands by implementing Advanced Manufacturing Technologies (AMTs) and Innovative Managerial Practices (IMPs) as well as emphasizing quality, delivery, innovation and flexibility to meet customer needs in their corporate objectives. The adoption of such practices and technologies and the redesign of work processes has altered the stakes of corporate well being over the past two decades. This study provides a framework for exploring the relationships between the measurement of non-financial performance at the shop-floor of manufacturing firms across four different countries (UK, Italy, Japan, and Canada) and a range of twenty-eight contingent factors incorporating technological, managerial, organisational and environmental factors. In particular, the book examines whether these twenty-eight contingent factors are associated with the existence and importance of 19 non-financial performance measures used at shop-floor level for each country. The book also aims to develop models for each of the four countries which will determine the amount of change in the use and existence of each shop-floor non-financial performance measure that is associated with levels of the contingent factors. A better understanding of non-financial performance measures at shop-floor level in manufacturing firms will contribute to a more effective management of manufacturing enterprises in the four countries. It also will enhance organisations knowledge about the use of non-financial measures in performance measurement systems.

In 2001, we gathered a group of researchers in Nice, France to focus discussion on performance measurement and management control. Following the success of that conference, we held subsequent conferences in 2003, 2005, and 2007. This volume contains some of the exemplary papers that were presented at the most recent conference. The conference has grown in number of participants, quality of presentations, and reputation and this year attracted leading researchers in the field from North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. Though the conference has been generally focused on performance measurement and management control and has included presentations on many facets of the topic, each year we have also focused on a particular theme of current interest. This year's theme was directed at measuring and rewarding performance. This includes evaluating and rewarding the performance of organizations, units, teams, and individuals. It includes empirical, analytical and experimental research. In addition to the three plenary sessions, this volume also includes some of the other excellent papers presented at the conference. The contents of this book represent a collection of leading research in management control and performance measurement and provide a significant contribution to the growing literature in the area. This collection of papers also covers a representative set of topics, research settings, and research methods. We are hopeful that this book will continue the search for additional understanding and development in performance measurement and management control, and provide guidance for both academic researchers and managers as they work toward improving organizations.

Featured in Volume 19 are articles on a call for future research on management accounting service quality; budget ratcheting and performance; effect of trust-in-superior and trustfulness on budgetary slack; relationship between purposes of budget use and budgetary slack; selection bias and endogeneity issues on the relationship between IT and firm performance; strategic budgeting in public schools; using a management accounting perspective to evaluate the production of future accounting professionals; the links between management control approaches and performance measurement systems; and, antecedents and consequences of cost.