In today's increasingly litigious climate, corporate directors can be held personally liable for the financial misconduct of corporate employees. In this comprehensive volume, Fertakis provides the practical information corporate board members need to correctly interpret the financial data and operating statements presented to them for review and approval. Written in a style accessible to directors who are not financial specialists, the book shows how to spot clues in financial statements to potentially serious underlying problems, how to evaluate and understand financial presentations, and how to obtain an accurate picture of a company's financial affairs.

Fertakis here offers a comprehensive discussion of administrative controls as they apply to major organizations, with particular emphasis on the interrelationship between accounting and administrative controls. As Fertakis notes at the outset, control in organizations is often poorly understood and inadequately implemented. His clear, practically oriented discussion of the design, purpose, and effective implementation of an administrative control system is intended to enable the reader to obtain a working familiarity with both the methods and problems involved and the benefits to be derived from establishing such a system.

Fertakis' extensive coverage of the subject encompasses such critical aspects as the structure of operations controls, the relationship between organizational goals and the control environment, the measurement of performance, and the characteristics of a good business plan. He explains the operations controls process, taking the reader through the manufacturing, marketing, service, and project stages. Separate chapters are devoted in turn to financial, audit-related, budgetary, asset, and system-related controls. Finally, three chapters address special administrative control applications including controls in the legal environment, in the international organization, and in various nontraditional types of organization. Financial executives will find this volume a useful and frequently consulted resource.