The competitive nature of organizations in today's globalized world has led to the development of various approaches to increasing profitability and maintaining an advantage over rival companies. As technology continues to be integrated into business practices, specifically in the area of accounting and finance, professionals and educators need to be prepared for advancing economic techniques, and they need to maintain a high level of financial literacy. The Handbook of Research on Accounting and Financial Studies is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on advanced knowledge and emerging business practices and teaching dynamics in the fields of accounting and finance. While highlighting topics such as cost-benefit analysis, risk management, and corporate governance, this publication explores new initiatives in entrepreneurship and performance management. This book is ideally designed for business managers, consultants, entrepreneurs, auditors, tax practitioners, economists, accountants, academicians, researchers, and students seeking current research on modern advancements and recent findings in accounting and financial studies.

Corporate valuation underlies the interrelationship between corporate strategy, financial analysis and financial management. Acquisitions, mergers, ESOPs and private placements are becoming increasingly common in the middle-market as investment banks and non-bank entities become players in the field. Managers and financial professionals need to become conversant in corporate valuation methods in order to expand their relationships with customers and to create profitable opportunities for their organization.;This text provides a catalogue of valuation tools, together with guidance on analyzing and valuing a business. The author breaks down the topic to provide advice for any business, no matter how complex. He presents eight different methods of firm valuation and discusses the benefits and limitations of each method, supporting this information with examples from international markets.

Jurgen Weber is known for his behavioral perspective on controlling and has made a lasting impact in German speaking countries during the past three decades. This anniversary volume compiles some of his outstanding publications from that period and presents them for the first time in English. In addition, it contains a current publication index of Jurgen Weber's entire body of work.

Since the 1970s, globalization has created an economic environment of interdependency between nations. Now, many countries in European and the MENA (Middle East and Northern Africa) regions must grapple with the need to increase public revenue while maneuvering through a global "race-to-the-bottom" tax competition. The Handbook of Research on Public Finance in Europe and the MENA Region explores economic development and public finance by providing critical insight to the use of public finance and policy and illuminating the intricacies of these topics through discussion of theory, empirical work, and policy objectives. This book is ideally designed for business professionals, policy makers, financers, students and researchers in the fields of public policy and economics.

The food industry faces an unprecedented level of scrutiny. Consumers are not only concerned with the safety and quality of food products but also the way in which they are produced. At the same time the food industry has developed new ways of assuring appropriate standards for its products and their methods of production, developing systems such as TQM and HACCP to identify and manage key steps in production. These new methods require new skills in auditing. Auditing in the food industry provides an authoritative guide to the range of standards and the auditing skills they demand.
Part one sets the scene with an introductory chapter reviewing developments in standards affecting the food industry. There then follows chapters on how retailers audit their suppliers and how governments have moved from a traditional inspection role to one of 'regulatory verification' with its emphasis on auditing the robustness of a business's own systems for managing safety and quality.
Part two examines the key aspects of safety and quality. A first chapter reviews the ways retailers assess supplier HACCP systems. There is then a chapter reviewing TQM systems that provides a context for a discussion of auditing techniques for HACCP-based quality systems. A final chapter looks at standards governing the analytical methods used in safety and quality control.
Part three considers newer standards that are becoming increasingly important in the food industry. There are chapters on benchmarking an organisation against others as a way of improving performance, auditing the impact of food processing operations on the environment and auditing organic food processing.
Auditing in the food industry is a valuable guide to the range of standards facing the food industry and the ways it can audit, and thus improve the quality of its performance.

DISTRESS TO SUCCESS A Survival Handbook for Struggling Businesses and Buyers of Distressed Opportunities

Identity obesity-the excessive and inappropriate collection, retention, and sharing of personal information-tends to escalate over time, as people share and mismanage more details about themselves in various places. Like overeating, it can be extremely hard to reverse the effects. This behavior forms the root cause of an identity theft epidemic. Despite the dangers, consumers and companies handle personal information carelessly, without understanding the risks. Consider these startling statistics: In 2009, more than eleven million people were affected by identity theft, which was a 10 percent increase from 2008. The majority of victims don't detect identity theft until three months after fraud occurs. It takes some people years to discover that something went wrong. Stolen wallets and documents account for 43 percent of all identity theft cases, which shows that theft doesn't always involve technology. In more than 50 percent of all identity theft cases, the victim knows or has done business with the criminal. Businesses will lose millions of dollars a year because of identity theft, and fraud will destroy families and individuals. But you can trim your identity fat with a proven program that allows you to understand risks, identify bad habits, and implement best practices with an "Identity Diet."

If accounting is a means of communicating information for decision-making, then any attempt to define accounting must draw upon scholarly knowledge of communication and decision-making. This means understanding accounting as a professional jargon, a language, and also as a social and psychological object that influences individual and collective behavior. Only when all of these aspects are accounted for can we hope to achieve a truly descriptive, rather than normative, accounting theory that will stand up to the rigors of academic inquiry. Here Gaetan Breton provides a comprehensive overview of what accounting really is, not just what it is presumed to be for the purposes of ordinary, day-to-day, practicality-oriented accounting courses. Drawing upon frameworks employed in the human sciences-including those used in sociology, psychology, the communication sciences, and decision theories-Breton builds a multi-faceted theory of accounting. He explains why it should be conceived as a fundamentally social activity, one that puts preparers of financial statements in contact with users-with the state, shareholders, stakeholders, and citizens-in order to help them make economic decisions based on financial information. It is from this position that he analyzes both the behavior of preparers of financial statements (who only relate financial situations) and the behavior of users (in their own analysis, understanding, and decisions). The result is a groundbreaking move towards the first science of accounting widely acceptable within academic circles. For the fundamental questions it poses to the very heart of accounting studies, this book is a must-read for researchers and practitioners as well as teachers and undergraduate students of accounting.

In the Secret of the Ages, Robert Collier shares with us the secrets of success. This book gives you the tools to have a happier and more successful life. Collier will show you how the way you think and the decisions you make have a direct influence on how successful and happy you are. With out the foundation that Collier laid herein, Rhonda Byrnes' The Secret could never have been written. Long before Michael Losier and James Arthur Ray reminded the world just how effective the power of positive thinking could be in Laws of Attraction and The Science of Success, there was Robert Collier's Secret of the Ages. www.widerpublications.com

To perform audits and study auditors and the audit function demands a detailed understanding of audit components and their characteristics. The authors of this unique book--a blend of research findings, data analysis, and proprietary data base--provide just that: a comprehensive inventory of audit tasks and essential decision aids, all developed by highly experienced auditors. Describing how some parts of the audit are more structured than other parts this work demonstrates that more experience is generally required to perform less structured tasks. In addition, most audit tasks are not perceived as being suitable for decision aids.

Of special value is the authors' comprehensive inventory of audit tasks, constructed on a coding of approximately 2,000 variables identified from their examination of 433 audit tasks. Among them are such variables as judgments of task structure, years of experience, supervised instances of practice, professional rank, and applicable decision aids. The authors' detailed description provides a collection of useful tables, giving simple descriptive statistics about task structure, knowledge base, and decision aids. The authors borrow their framework of analysis from the management science literature, creating an important study for professionals and academics in management, accounting and specialists in psychology and behavior sciences.

The commonly used financial statements--balance sheet, income statement, and statement of changes in cash flows-- focus on a firM's financial structure and performance over a defined period of time. Although they may conform to generally accepted accounting standards they still fail to provide other information that is equally important to achieving true full disclosure. Riahi-Belkaoui proposes remedies for this neglect by taking a close look at other types of statements: the inflation, value added, employee, social performance, and human asset reports. His book is a concise, easily accessed summary of all types of reports, for practitioners, and especially useful as a text or review for students in graduate level courses in financial management and accounting.

The author begins by examining the traditional statements. He shows how they fail to disclose vital information on the measurement and impact of inflation; the measurement of total wealth generated by the total production team, not merely its return to stockholders; necessary information on employees, and about them, that can be useful in management decision making; the measurement of social costs and the benefits attributable to the effects of organizational behavior on the environment, and the measurement of the value of human assets. He takes up these failures and neglects one by one and provides concise discussions of the other, less widely used statements that could remedy them, statements that could provide a fully useful display of an organization's financial well being, if they were better understood and commonly available.

Now going into its 9th edition, the successful textbook Book-keeping and Accounts is a vital guide for students undertaking studies of book-keeping and accounting for the first time. Through its gradual introduction of topics, explanation of technical terminology in a clear, easy to understand way, this text provides an accessible and reliable guide for any student in their undergraduate career. New to this edition: * Fully compliant with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), with current IFRS terminology. * Questions and exercises to test your understanding and help with revision. * Selected chapters amended and re-structured. * Full explanation of HMRC changes in VAT relating to cash discounts. * Illustrations and diagrams to help explain key concepts. * Updated 'learning objectives' and 'chapter summaries', to reflect developments in the financial environment * Easy to understand to double entry book-keeping using the 'IN' and 'OUT' approach. With its highly regarded authorship this text is used by lecturers for teaching students undertaking the following qualifications and examinations; Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT), International Association of Book-keepers (IAB), A Level Accounting, Oxford Cambridge and Royal Society of Arts (OCR), and as a general foundation text for personnel employed in the accountancy profession. Accompanying the text is a collection of resources to support both lecturers and students which can be found at www.pearsoned.co.uk/wood - For instructors : Solution's manual, and Powerpoint slides - For students : Opportunities to practise and additional support with our companion website

Great and successful products do not just make money but they engender a love and devotion from their users. These are the Products People Love and they follow the six rules found in this book- the PPL Rules. Six Rules for Creating Products People Love provides clear and actionable guidelines for the design, development, and marketing of successful products. Make it Easy to get started Make it Useful Make it Easy-to-use Make it Valuable Make it Attractive Make it Trustworthy ______________________________________________ Praise for Six Rules for Creating Products People Love "Bruce D. Green's PPL Rules have forever changed the way I approach my work... a must-read for anyone looking to define optimal product development strategies." - Gwen Weinberg, Designer / Owner, Three by Three Seattle "Bruce D. Green has defined six essential rules that will successfully guide entrepreneurs to bring to market new products that will 'stick'." - Ken Krooner, Founder / President, ESRG, LLC

Since the first edition of The Financial Times Guide to ETFs was published in 2009, the number of ETFs in issue has doubled and ETFs are now common both on investor platforms and increasingly amongst financial advisors. This massive increase in demand has highlighted an urgent debate - just how dangerous are ETFs and how much do investors and advisers understand about the structure of the index tracker? The second edition of this book attempts to answer this debate and is the indispensable bible on trackers for professional advisers and serious private investors. This new edition also features a chapter based around the theme of Due Diligence and a new chapter on How to use ETFs and Index Funds for theLong-term, as well as a new Jargon busting section and a-new appendix looking at new ideas beginning to emerge.