Managerial Uses of Accounting Information

Book excerpt: This book is an invitation to study managerial uses of accounting infonnation. Three themes run throughout. First, the accounting system is profitably thought of as a library of financial statistics. Answers to a variety of questions are unlikely to be found in prefabricated fonnat, but valuable infonnation awaits those equipped to in the accounting library is most interrogate the library. Second, the infonnation unlikely to be the only infonnation at the manger's disposal. So knowing how to combine accounting and nonaccounting bits of infonnation is an important, indeed indispensable, managerial skill. Finally, the role of a professional manager is emphasized. This is an individual with skill, talent, and imagination, an individual who brings professional quality skills to the ta sk of managing. This book also makes demands on the reader. It assumes the reader has had prior exposure to financial accounting, economics, statistics, and the economics of uncertainty (in the fonn of risk aversion and decision trees). A modest acquaintance with strategic, or equilibrium, modeling is also presumed, as is patience with abstract notation. The hook does not make deep mathematical demands on the reader. An acquaintance with linearprogramming and the ability to take a simple derivative are presumed. The major prerequisite is a tolerance for (if not a predisposition toward) abstract notation. This st yle and list of prerequisites are not matters of taste or author imposition.