Features

IMA Reborn: Executing the Strategy
The Institute of Management Accountants, symbolized by a new logo and website, has launched a strategy aimed at becoming the global leader in the field of management accounting and financial management. President & CEO Paul Sharman said IMA is rolling out a strategic plan that will increase its branding efforts, add new products and services, raise awareness within the business community as a whole, and bring more tangible value to a larger and more diverse membership base.

Integrating Global Organizations Through Performance Measurement Systems
By Cristiano Busco, Mark L. Frigo, Elena Giovannoni, Angelo Riccaboni, and Robert W. Scapens
As global corporations expand, incorporating units in different countries and cultures and creating diverse product lines, shared organizational knowledge is key to winning. Over the past 20 years, GE has grown by acquisition using a common culture of measurement to align the strategies of its global and heterogeneous businesses. With its decentralized operations, Nestlé Waters, on the other hand, is exploiting synergies and obtaining cost reductions by realigning its businesses into product categories.

Want to Be a More Effective CFO? Ask the Audience!
By Thomas Wunder and Jeff Thomson
A recent interactive CFO forum in Germany attended by 80 finance executives was designed to gather their opinions and experiences to derive optimum solutions to similar problems. The ultimate purpose of such recurring panel meetings is to drive new knowledge and innovation collaboratively - not just share existing knowledge. In other words, "invent" the global future of finance, management accounting, and controlling

Are Employee Model Option Plans for You?
By Bruce B. Thomas
Traditional stock option plans tend to be volatile and expensive for companies that want to reward key employees. The Employee Model Option Plan (EMOP), on the other hand, stabilizes changes in the value of leveraged, share - based compensation grants from one period to another by changing the incentive compensation plan's referenced asset value from the company's daily stock price to a moving average of the company's stock price.

Driving Financial Process Improvement
By Patrick Taylor
SOX has imposed new requirements on public companies that can be costly and time-consuming. Real-time monitoring and continuous auditing software can help strengthen a control environment with both detective and preventive controls, thus helping to ensure that the company won't suffer an "accounting surprise" at fiscal year-end.

Columns

PERSPECTIVES
Making a difference.

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
Globalization: turning threats into opportunities.

BEST PRACTICES
How to stop worrying.

CAREERS
Leadership strategies during mergers and acquisitions.

TAXES
Natural disasters and tax issues for business victims.

ETHICS
Strong ethics is a critical quality of leadership.

ACADEMIC CORNER
MERLOT-not just for wine connoisseurs.

XBRL
Why the SEC is bullish on XBRL.

FINANCIAL TRENDS
Mending SOX.

Departments

STREETWISE
Professional accountants in business are valuable
Hiring outlook is stable
Herbert Seiffert, 1929-2005
Advisory tax commission recommendations
Books: Financial management and marketing

TOOLS OF THE TRADE
New ways to save.

TECH FORUM
Evolutionary code.

END NOTE
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