Drawing upon cost accounting, mathematics, operations research, economics, and the behavioral sciences, Riahi-Belkaoui answers the call for a unique, multifaceted approach to the study of management accounting. His goal: to enhance performance in the essential tasks of cost estimation, allocation, planning, control, and performance evaluation. He covers the traditional techniques, but expands into quantitative methods and applications, then extends further into the behavioral unification of these techniques. His book is state of the art, ingenious in the way it adapts quantitative methods'...

The successful evaluation of capital projects requires not only a thorough understanding of traditional techniques of capital budgeting but advanced techniques as well. Riahi-Belkaoui examines the multidimensionality of capital budgeting in its various facets and in ways that executives with no special facility in the subject can follow. He covers replacement decisions, capital rationing, capital budgeting under inflation uncertainty, capital budgeting in a multinational setting with attention to political risks, social project evaluation, and concepts of wealth measurement and...

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...

Among many factors contributing to a corporation's success, none is more crucial than reputation. It affects the way management makes decisions and the positions it takes, and how it takes them, on critical issues. A good reputation is also a signal to the market--one way that stakeholders will know that a corporation is successful. Riahi-Belkaoui looks at the most crucial functions and influences that determine corporate reputation, among them, the way it affects a firm's market value; the quality of its disclosures; how well its earnings are managed, how its executives are compensated....

There are linkages, ramifications, conditions, and demands made by the global economy on domestic as well as multinational firms--and executives must be aware of all of them. One way is through the medium of accounting information and the special way it reflects the realities of international business. Providing this crucial information is the task of accounting executives and their staffs worldwide. Dr. Riahi-Belkaoui sees it as a distinctly new type of information that applies to external and international users of all kinds, operating in different nations and cultures. He identifies the...

Producers and users of management accounting information are confronted with crucial behavioral phenomena--factors that can affect the communication of this information and its use. Riahi-Belkaoui shows what these factors and phenomena are and how to understand and cope with them. In doing so, he shows how producers and users together can improve the efficiency of management accounting itself.

He explains the judgment process in management accounting, identifies and explains the major behavioral phenomena, and then provides ways to use them for the firm's benefit. Thoughtful and...

The impact of multinationality on the operations of a firm is clear and strong. Riahi-Belkaoui shows how it affects the known relationships between earnings, efficiency, disclosure, and market valuation by its role as a dependent, moderating, intervening antecedant or consequent variable. Its impact can be felt, for example, in relationships and phenomena such as the timeliness and the informativeness of earnings, the underreaction of securities analysts, post-earnings announcement drifts, and the level and quality of disclosure. An understanding of multinationality in the...

A well developed system of internatinal accounting is essential, if an accounting order, one that serves as a basis and guarantee for the conduct of business and economic growth, is to be created. Similarly, essential to the creation of an economic order is economic development. Riahi-Belkaoui explicates the relationship between accounting and economic order and between that and the determinants of accounting development. He then studies the relationship between accounting and economic development, and between their respective determinants. Accountants, specialists and executives concerned...

Distinguishing between accounting by design, in which accounting techniques and solutions are selected because they fit a pre-established goal, and accounting by principle, in which accounting techniques and solutions are selected according to principle and regardless of whether they mesh with preconceived ideas about the outcome, Riahi-Belkaoui describes designed accounting in detail. Characteristics of accounting by design can be found in income smoothing, earnings management, creative accounting, fraud, and slack. Preparers and users of accounting information, and anyone interested in...