For over thirty years, students have benefitted from this comprehensive, theory-based guide to accounting, its application to management decision-making and its impact on our wider global society. In this substantially revised eighth edition of the text, the authors reflect contemporary developments in the subject while continuing to encourage critical analysis of the usefulness and relevance of accounting practices.

The author discusses the nature of the Social Conscience and the moral values that it embodies. Seeking to do what is right, motivated by a sympathetic awareness of others, driven by the instinct to care and acknowledging the necessity to share, the Social Conscience expresses innate moral values. In these troubled times, satisfactory solutions to economic and social problems will not be found through either capitalism or socialism. The Social Conscience is the third way to defining social policy that reconciles economic progress, social justice and individual freedom. Glautier poses the two questions above in the context of: - The social effects of globalisation - Rapid scientific and technological changes and their impact on society worldwide - Moral values, family values and shareholder value - Problems of identity and social cohesion - The role of education in a society that seems to have lost a sense of purpose and direction - A market economy with a value system that affronts the Social Conscience - Freedom that rejects authority and is surrendered to permissiveness - The widespread loss of confidence in government. He argues that, driven by profit seeking and emphasising shareholder value as the primary objective of business, the market economy undermines traditional values of caring and sharing. By identifying family values as those that explain, sustain and justify a caring society, he reaches out to man's fundamental nature and to what is common to all beliefs.

Author Dr. Michel Glautier brings his knowledge of business and his love of French culture together in his first work of fiction, "The Affairs of Monsieur Bonpied." And like any good French novel, this tale is by no means rational.

Offering insight into the traditional and eternal sides of French culture, Glautier centers the plot on an ordinary hero with a rural background: Andre Bonpied, whose surname hints at his well-intentioned, happy-go-lucky attitude. The story takes on a fable-like quality, filled with rich characters-some typical, some not so typical-and a continuous stream of problems; each chapter begins with hopeful relief and ends with yet another catastrophe as Andre tries to navigate married life and being a new businessman.

Readers will meet Andre's supportive (and jealous) wife Angele, his clever Bridget Bardot secretary Colette, his steady foreman Henri Paul, and his aristocratic business consultant Count de Brunac de la Bresse and watch as these and other characters heighten and diffuse the drama in each other's lives on a daily basis.

Glautier's tale is an amusing, informative glimpse into the everyday world of France, its culture, people, and way of life.