Organizational encounters with risk range from errors and anomalies to outright disasters. In a world of increasing interdependence and technological sophistication, the problem of understanding and managing such risks has grown ever more complex. Organizations and their participants must often reform and reorganise themselves in response to major events and crises, dealing with the paradox of managing the potentially unmanageable. Organizational responses are influenced by many factors, such as the representational capacity of information systems and concerns with legal liability. In this collection, leading experts on risk management from a variety of disciplines address these complex features of organizational encounters with risk. They raise critical questions about how risk can be understood and conceived by organizations, and whether it can be 'managed' in any realistic sense at all. This book is an important reminder that the organisational management of risk involves much more than the cool application of statistical method.

The place of money capital in the theory of the firm has remained a relatively neglected question in traditions of economic analysis. In this highly integrative work, issues in production, pricing, capital investment and financial theory are brought to new levels of interdependence. Developing a three-part argument, Money Capital in the Theory of the Firm deals successively with the theoretical issues and analytic motivation, the neoclassical tradition and postclassical perspectives. In doing so, it presents a self-contained foundation in the basic structures of microeconomic analysis relating to optimize decision making in the firm and in the accounting concepts and statistical apparatus of probability theory relevant to the neoclassical aspects of the argument. Additionally, the book provides the essential mathematical development of such advanced topics as utility functions defined over stochastic arguments, the equilibrium theory of financial asset prices and yields, the cost of money capital, and investment decision criteria. This book makes an important contribution to the formation of new and analytically richer perspectives in the important area of economics it addresses. It will be of particular interest to those working in economic theory and microeconomics, and their advanced students.

Drawing on the expertise of business professionals and academic analysts, this volume explores country trends in the areas of public policy, government debt, taxation changes, political stability, corruption, and foreign investor risk trends. The handbook enhances its data and analysis through graphs, charts and boxed summaries of key points. It helps business professionals better understand the often volatile investment climates in Asia, and prepare them for the challenges ahead.

This book for advanced students and professionals in management and finance explains the financial appraisal of capital budgeting projects. It develops basic concepts, principles and techniques and applies them to case studies in forestry, property and international investments. Resource constraints are introduced to the capital budgeting decisions with a variety of worked examples using linear programming techniques. All calculations are extensively supported by Excel workbooks on the Web, and end of chapter questions.

This study focuses on the role of institutions and organizations in the development of corporate finance from the Italian merchant banks of the Renaissance through the formation of conglomerates and leveraged-buy-out partnerships in contemporary Wall Street. It also puts forth a compelling argument for the closer integration of historical and quantitative research methodologies in financial theory. The epilogue contains an original algorithm that explains the relationship between the short-term, firm-specific factors and longer-term environmental elements that have shaped the historical development of finance.

Praise for IT Best Practices

"The work of the financial manager revolves around a company's financial systems. Ms. Roehl-Anderson's latest offering addresses the two key aspects of these systems--how to buy and install them. The book covers every conceivable aspect of these systems, including ERP, software as a service, shared services, and supporting controls. As a bonus, the book contains substantial coverage of information technology considerations in an acquisition. This is a definitive desk reference." --Steve Bragg, CFO, XeDAR Corporation, and author of Accounting Best Practices

"Sage advice from one of the most adept project managers in the industry Jan and team have delivered a practical, yet comprehensive guidebook for software selection, implementation, rollout, and ongoing updates. This guidebook will become a valuable reference for every financial manager and IT project manager undertaking ERP implementation."--Valerie Borthwick, former senior vice president, Oracle Consulting

"Written by one of the best in the IT business, this book is a must-read for all CFOs and controllers. In one volume, it addresses everything a financial executive needs to know about IT and its impact on the financial function, while also featuring practical guidelines, current hot topics, and IT best practices. This book covers it all."--Jo Marie Dancik, Regional Managing Partner (Retired), Ernst & Young

One of the most fundamental issues in health care delivery is who should decide which items of medical care are not worth their cost. This book is a fresh and comprehensive exploration of how health care rationing decisions are made. Unlike prior works, its focus is not on the specific criteria for rationing, like age or quality of life. Instead, the author provides comparative analysis of alternative social mechanisms for making medical spending decisions: (1) consumers paying for their medical treatment out of pocket; (2) payers, government officials, or other centralized authorities setting limits on what doctors can do and what insurance will pay for; and (3) physicians motivated to make these decisions at the bedside level. His analysis of each of these mechanisms reveals that none is uniformly superior, and each is better suited for certain decisions that others. Therefore, a mix of all three is inevitable. The author develops his analysis along three dimensions: political economics, ethics, and law. The political economic dimension discusses the practical and theoretical aspects of each method for making spending decisions, synthesizing empirical studies of the situations in which each mechanism has been tested. The ethical dimension is based on several strands of philosophical theory, principally classic liberalism, social contract theory, and communitarianism, as well as conceptual analysis of terms such as autonomy and coercion. The legal dimension addresses recent developments in legal doctrine such as informed consent, insurance coverage disputes, and the emerging direction of federal regulation. Hall concludes that physician rationing at the bedside is far more promising than medical ethicists and the medical profession have traditionally allowed. The best way to allocate authority for making medical spending decisions in both public and private systems, he believes, is the informed purchase of different types of health insurance in a managed competition framework.

Just as Europe consists of countries with different languages, cultures, histories, wealth levels and systems of jurispridence, and exhibits a mosaic of different tastes and preferences, so do accounting's roles and functions differ widely across European countries. Differences in management accounting practices and control approaches abound. the question is no longer whether there is variety but its extent and explanation. In considering European variety in management accounting, it may be asked what trends if any are discernible in management accounting practices generally? What historical factors have conditioned management accounting wherever and in whatever form it exists? Are there links between management accounting research and practice? Are there competing theories within the field which are nation-specific? To what extent is the implementation of emergent cost-management approaches evident within companies? Such issues are explored in this book which also provides some basis for exploring national specifities in management accounting whilst offering room to ponder over its commonalities. Distinguished European commentators provide comprehensive analysis of past and existing management accounting practices and conceptual thinking. The contributors give a sense of whether modern management accounting approaches are evident in enterprises withing their nation and discuss findings of empirical investigations in constructing `country perspectives'. Each chapter successfully presents an informed overview of country features indicative of a rich and diverse European tapestry of management accounting thought and practice. Ultimately the book provides a useful starting point not only for making cross-national comparative observations but also for identifying opportunities and trends in management accounting systems changes.