Ulteriori informazioni
Informationen zum Autor John Shank is Noble Professor of Management Accounting at the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College. He has published twelve books, and is an active consultant. Klappentext As often reported in Business Week and Fortune, most large companies today concede that their cost systems are desperately obsolete. In this eagerly awaited book, John Shank and Vijay Govindarajan, nationally known experts on the strategic use of cost information, address head-on the fundamental concepts of management accounting that are in desperate need of change. The authors demonstrate how strategic cost management, the first analytic framework to relate meaningful accounting information to a firm's business strategy, is revolutionizing accounting-and overall business practices in leading firms. With numerous extended examples including Ciba-Geigy, Ford, Texas Instruments, and many more, the authors show how the three key tools of strategic cost management-value chain analysis, strategic positioning analysis, and cost driver analysis-provide a sustainable competitive advantage over firms whose cost systems are in disarray.With persuasive evidence, Shank and Govindarajan demonstrate the strategic power of value chain analysis, i.e., linking external value creating activities all the way from basic raw materials, to component suppliers, and through to the ultimate end-use product delivered to the consumers. Next, they examine how cost management and cost control must be differentiated depending on the strategic positioning chosen by the firm, be it cost leadership or product differentiation. Finally, the authors offer penetrating in-sights on cost driver analysis using such examples as Champion International and Motorola to describe the uses and limitations of activity-based costing, quality costing, and technology costing.Traditional cost analysis, the authors show, is limited to assessing the financial impact of managerial decision alternatives, with no consideration for strategic business objectives. In this indispensable guide, Shank and Govindarajan show how Strategic Cost Management (SCM) relates to a broader context, where strategic elements become far more conscious, explicit, and formal, and cost data is used to develop superior strategies en route to gaining sustainable competitive advantage. Leseprobe Chapter 1 AN INTRODUCTION TO STRATEGIC COST MANAGEMENT New Wine, or Just New Bottles ? This book represents a new emphasis in managerial accounting. It is based on the premise that managerial accounting must explicitly consider strategic issues and concerns. We believe that the incorporation of strategic concerns into cost analysis represents a very natural, overdue extension of managerial accounting, which itself only became popular about thirty years ago. NEW WINE? In 1963 Sidney Davidson wrote a paper for the Accounting Review marking the fortieth anniversary of the publication of J. M. Clark's book, Studies in the Economics of Overhead Costs. Davidson titled his retrospective of Clark's book "Old Wine into New Bottles." Davidson's paper acknowledge Clark's contributions to the development of relevant cost analysis -- one of the "new bottles" of managerial accounting in 1963. Though times change, this metaphor remains apt. Are the new ideas fomenting today in management accounting really new wine, or merely old wine recycled in new bottles? It is our belief that we really have new wine. To coin a new mixed metaphor, although the winds of change are clearly blowing for management accounting, some observers believe that too many management accountants are asleep at the switch. What is the evidence that the fundamental concepts of management accounting are changing or that they need to change? What is the evidence that too many management accountants are lagging behind this change...
