Access to data, corporate best practices, international business, and preparing accounting and finance students for their careers are high on the list of concerns for industry and academic leaders. The articles in the Winter 2003 issue of Management Accounting Quarterly address these topics.

For example, every finance and accounting professional needs ready access to financial, marketing, sales, demographic, and other kinds of data to be able to answer questions and give advice when necessary. They can do this easily with data mining software. But do companies take advantage of it? Three authors conducted a survey of Fortune 500 companies to find out whether they use data mining and, if so, what tools they employed.

Four other authors participated in a major study sponsored by CAM-I, the AICPA, and the University of Akron to benchmark best practices in target costing. They highlight four companies: Boeing, Caterpillar, DaimlerChrysler, and Continental Teves.

Two more studied the role of strategy and culture in the performance evaluation of international strategic business units (SBUs). They found that if multinational companies don’t consider these factors when setting up managers in SBUs, the managers could make decisions that actually conflict with corporate goals and objectives.

And two professors explain how business and academic leaders can devise real-world projects for students to work on that will help prepare them for their careers, give companies some much-needed help with projects they might not be able to afford otherwise, and give educators contemporary material for the classroom.

We welcome any feedback and especially article ideas, so please give me a call at (201) 474-1576 or send me an e-mail at kwilliams@imanet.org. Thanks.

Kathy Williams
Editor-in-Chief