Accounting for Decision Making and Control
9th Edition
0077185072
·
9780077185077
© 2016 | Published: April 1, 2016
Accounting for Decision Making and Control provides students and managers with an understanding appreciation of the strengths and limitations of an organization’s accounting system, thereby allowing them to be more intelligent users of these system…
Read More
Request More Info
After you purchase your eBook, you will need to download VitalSource Bookshelf, a free app or desktop version here. Then login or create an account and enter the code from your order confirmation email to access your eBook.
- Access the eBook anytime, anywhere: online or offline
- Create notes, flashcards and make annotations while you study
- Full searchable content: quickly find the answers you are looking for
1) Introduction
2) The nature of costs
3) Opportunity cost of capital and capital budgeting
4) Organizational architecture
5) Responsibility accounting and transfer pricing
6) Budgeting
7) Cost allocation: Theory
8) Cost allocation: Practices
9) Absorption cost system
10) Criticisms of absorption cost systems: Incentives to overproduce
11) Criticisms of absorption cost systems: Inaccurate product costs
12) Standard costs: Direct labor and materials
13) Overhead and marketing variances
14) Management accounting in a changing environment
Accounting for Decision Making and Control provides students and managers with an understanding appreciation of the strengths and limitations of an organization’s accounting system, thereby allowing them to be more intelligent users of these systems. The Ninth Edition demonstrates that managerial accounting is an integral part of the firm’s organizational architecture, not just an isolated set of computational topics.
Managers in all organizations, throughout their professional careers, interact with their accounting systems as it is both a source of information for decision making and part of the organization’s control mechanisms.
Conceptual Framework-This book relies on opportunity cost and organizational architecture as the underlying framework to organize analysis. These two concepts provide the framework and illustrate the trade-offs created when accounting systems serve both functions: decision making and control. This conceptual framework is the main difference between Accounting for Decision Making and Control and other managerial textbooks. When making business decisions, managers must focus on the “opportunity cost” (benefit vs. sacrifices of an alternative method of action), and “organizational design” (present structure, strategy, and incentives of a business). Zimmerman has students think about the entire organization, and how the decisions will impact the company as a whole.
End-of-Chapter Material-The end-of-chapter materials have been drawn from real companies, and are useful for facilitating in classroom discussion. End-of-Chapter material consists of problems and cases drawn from actual company applications described by Zimmerman’s former students based on their work experience and his consulting experience. These problems and cases help to develop “critical thinking” skills and require students to write a short essay after preparing their numerical analyses.
Economic Darwinism-Economic Darwinism implies that accounting systems that survive in competitive industries must be yielding benefits that are a least as large as their costs. This is a central theme of the textbook and it is useful to understand that today’s managers are struggling with the same accounting issues as their predecessors which entails that students will also be struggling with the same problems.
Business Orientation – Focusing on how organizations work, this text is ideal for those instructors wanting to teach their students how accounting impacts managerial decisions. Marketing, finance and human resources are considered throughout the text and in the end-of-chapter exercises.
Balance between Concepts & Practice – With more updated readings, students are able to apply theoretical concepts with how they are actually implemented in real business situations.