(p/b) cost management // strategies for business decisions (international edition)

This book is a comprehensive, international and broad textbook on cost management. It is designed for use in courses at undergraduate and graduate levels in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Mainland Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. The book is written not only for management and accounting students, but it is also relevant and usable for students in engineering and related study programmes. Our philosophy is that 'Costs don't just happen', and we believe that with a proactive approach toward costs, students can grow into cost managers who can add value to organizations. The book is a completely rewritten, international edition of the very successful fourth edition of Cost Management by Hilton, Maher and Selto. Major improvements include: - Diverse and truly international examples of organizations. Examples used throughout the book are from all over the world. This applies to the chapters' focus companies, the 'Cost Management in Practice' examples, the organizations mentioned as illustrations in the text, and the organizations pictured in the end-of-chapter material. We know of many great companies and we have not limited ourselves to the usual and sometimes worn examples often mentioned in US-centred textbooks. Each chapter is built around a focus company, based closely on the practices and experiences of an actual organization, whose story continues through the chapter. They represent manufacturing, retail, not-for-profit and service firms in many different countries. - Completely restructured and rewritten text. The book has been rewritten, restructured and also shortened significantly, from 21 to 16 chapters. The overall structure has been improved by developing better links between chapters. We realize that instructors want flexibility to structure their own course, and we chose a modular design so that instructors can customize their class-topic sequence. - Integral use of spreadsheets. All the way through the book, spreadsheet software is used for explaining the techniques and making the applications more realistic. These are also widely used in the end of chapter items to help students build their financial modelling skills. Also Excel templates are provided for instructors to assign to students - they nudge students toward good solutions and are easier to grade or critique. - Research connected. We provide more and updated summaries of research studies that address important cost management issues - the Research Insight boxes. We also included many more references to recent research findings in endnotes. While much academic research may not be directly applicable tomorrow, research is valuable for making us think more critically and creatively about the applicability of cost management techniques. - Intuitive explanation of accounting. It is not an introductory textbook, and students are assumed to have an understanding of basic accounting concepts, such as assets, liabilities, revenues and cash flows. However, they do not need any prior knowledge of journal entries or T-accounts. In fact, in Chapters 10, 11 and 13 where the accounting treatment of particular events is explained, we use a very intuitive approach to explain accounting entries. We show directly how events impact the balance sheet and profit and loss account. We avoid T-accounts for good pedagogical reasons, and nobody needs to unnecessarily worry about debits and credits.