Blocher/Stout/Cokins/Chen: Bringing the Big Picture into Focus for Your Students

Once viewed simply as technical experts in accounting methods and procedures, accountants now play a critical role as participants on multifunctional management teams. Along with the important traditional cost management methods and procedures, Cost Management provides a context for students by using a unique strategic framework. This organization helps students gain an understanding of how learning cost accounting techniques can better serve the company as a whole.

Part I: Introduction to Cost Management
• The introductory chapters develop important strategic concepts like strategy development and implementation, the Value Chain, Cost Concepts, the Balanced Scorecard, and Activity-Based Costing (ABC).

Part II: Planning and Decision Making
• Part II examines how cost estimation, budgeting and decision making help companies maintain a competitive advantage.

Part III: Process Costing and Cost Allocation
• Part III examines how process costing and cost allocation are used to determine product costs and to evaluate a company’s operations.

Parts IV and V: Operational Control and Management Control
• Parts IV and V examine performance measurement at the operational and managerial level, with the goal of linking management incentives to strategy.

Part VI: Advanced Topics in Cost Management
• Part VI examines three strategically important advanced areas in cost management: executive compensation, business valuation, and capital budgeting.

Real-World Focus. All firms strive to have a competitive edge—for some it may be low cost, for others it might be high quality or unique product features. Cost Management, 4e teaches how accounting systems can add value to the organization by providing relevant data for planning, control, and decision-making. The Real-World Focus boxes take real companies and demonstrate strategy in action.

To augment this coverage, the Blocher team encourages students to further explore real-world companies through Cost Management in Action boxes. This feature poses important questions that make students think critically about how cost accounting affects management strategy. The authors then supply their comments for the Cost Management in Action boxes at the end of each chapter.

The Blocher team has taken great care to develop problems and cases that effectively demonstrate the strategic issues presented in each chapter. Included is a variety of exercises and problems that deal with strategic, international, service, and ethics issues. All problems are marked appropriately for easy identification, including problems that require the use of Excel.

The supplemental Cases and Readings Manual challenges students to think about and use cost management information in a real-world setting. The longer articles in the manual help integrate case studies and articles into more detailed discussions about cost management.