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Asserts that for many organizations the key to management survival is to maintain performance equilibrium. Notes that management systems have essentially remained unchanged for many decades. Companies organize into functional groups with a hierarchical chain of command, they set strategic direction with a planned revenue and profit margin targets, they embed the revenue and profit targets in a budget, and they measure financial and operational performance results of the organization. Notes that successful performance is often a mirage, where good results mask a myriad of problems. Posits that process management can help organizations address these challenges and a process understanding enables managers to recognize why results are as reported and, more importantly, what results are likely to be in the future. Such insight enables managers to take proactive action to improve the results. Provides some guidelines.

Accounting—both public accounting, where the accountant serves a variety of clients, and management or “private” accounting, where the sole client is the accountant's employer—has long been a popular career choice. The increased needs of business, government, and not‐for‐profit organizations for skilled professionals to gather, report, and audit accounting information have fueled tremendous growth in the field in recent years.

The purpose of this research paper is to help managers improve their understanding of logistics costs and the accounting for those costs in order to optimize use of the total cost approach to managing logistics processes. This paper will discuss the history and evolution of logistics management and activity‐based costing (ABC), the driving cost factors affecting the key logistics activities, and the use of ABC systems to help improve the allocation of logistics costs to specific cost objects. This paper also includes several important managerial implications and implementation techniques for an ABC system.

The inadequacies of conventional management accounting (MA) systems increase the need of up‐to‐date MA information. However, critical non‐financial success factors are emerging in highly competitive technologically advanced business organisations, especially in the service sector with its increasing contribution to advanced economies and employment markets. As a result, the importance of the role of MA in measuring emerging non‐financial performance (NFP) is increasing in services, but comparatively little is known about non‐financial MA measures in services, and almost nothing in banks/financial institutions (BFI). This study attempts to review/investigate the practice of MA in NFP measurement of BFIs within the context of “new institutional sociology” theory and, consequently, to modify theory for further research that fits the dynamic nature of NFP in the financial services industry.

Control self‐assessment (CSA) has been discussed as an audit technique, but little practical guidance is available in the UK on the subject. A limited number of public sector organisations have implemented it. This paper describes a case study of CSA implementation in a Scottish Housing Association. The case study details the decision processes that led to the choice of CSA as a favoured audit technique, and the development of CSA skills within the organisation. This paper examines the broader benefits of a CSA approach, in terms of performance management and employee empowerment. This paper also uses a cost benefit analysis to examine the efficacy of CSA for small organisations.

Models of value creation that have been proposed for supporting value-based management are described and analyzed, including the Balanced Scorecard, the Baldrige Quality Award Criteria, the Deming Management Method, the Service-Profit Chain, and the Skandia Intellectual Capital Model. These models are compared, their potential for guiding the identification of value drivers and performance measures for value-based management is assessed, and management issues that must be addressed if such models are to contribute to long-run value creation are explored. These issues include causally linking value drivers to each other and to financial outcomes, the extent to which the models take a dynamic, or whole-system, view of value creation, and whether multiple value drivers should be explicitly weighted and combined to form a “value index.” Finally, the substantial body of research evidence linking intangible value drivers to financial outcomes is reviewed, and some directions for further research are offered.

The study provides an insight into the application and usefulness of activity management (AM) principles in an environmental context. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to examine the extent of use of environmental activity management (EAM) utilising Gosselin’s (1997) three levels of AM (namely, environmental activity analysis (EAA), environmental activity cost analysis (EACA), and environmental activity-based costing (EABC)). The study also examines the association between EAM and environmental performance, and the role of decision quality as a mediator in this relationship.

Data were collected from 208 Australian organisations across different industries using a mail survey questionnaire.

The results indicate a relatively high extent of EAA use but a low extent of use of EACA and EABC. In addition, organisations using each level of EAM to a greater extent were found to experience higher levels of environmental performance. Furthermore, the relationship between EAA and EABC with environmental performance was found to be mediated by decision quality.

The findings suggest that organisations should endeavour to increase their use of EAM, and modify their existing costing systems to consider the drivers and costs of environmental activities.

This is the first study to empirically examine the extent of use of EAM and its association with environmental performance.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether trait and state mindfulness alters the relationship between abusive supervision and interactional justice perceptions, which then predicts supervisor-directed retaliation.

Study 1 examined these relationships among 230 employees using a cross-sectional survey design. Study 2 further examined these relationships among 263 undergraduate students using a scenario-based, experimental laboratory study.

In Study 1, counter to predictions, individuals who were higher in trait mindfulness were most likely to view an abusive supervisor as unfair. Exploratory analyses suggested that this effect was isolated to the mindfulness dimension of being highly attentive to moment-to-moment experiences. Study 2 replicated this effect with state mindfulness (specifically, attention to one’s present moment).

Organizations should consider how mindfulness interventions might not always be useful – and potentially counterproductive – for affecting perceptions of and reactions to some stressful work situations like abusive supervision.

Little research has been done on how mindfulness affects perceptions of and reactions to abusive supervisors. The authors expected mindfulness could reduce the negative effect of supervisor abuse on interactional justice perceptions, as well as the effect of interactional injustice on retaliation. However, within the context of abusive supervision, training individuals to become more mindful may actually predict lower levels of interactional justice, resulting in more supervisor-directed retaliation.