Resources & Publications

Rising to the Challenge: Achieving Real-time Visibility across the Organization

Rising to the Challenge: Achieving Real-time Visibility across the Organization - This report expands on our prior research and focuses on the two issues identified by our respondents as being next in importance: improving the management reporting cycle and achieving real-time visibility across the organization.

Rising to the Challenge: Productivity in Accounting and Finance Organizations

Rising to the Challenge: Productivity in Accounting and Finance Organizations - This report, sponsored by Net Suite, is based on two recent surveys of IMA members. It examines the most critical challenges faced by accounting and finance teams today. The first study found that the most common concern is streamlining processes and improving.

Costing Methodologies and Cost Management Practices in the People's Republic of China (PRC)

IMA's "Costing Methodologies and Cost Management Practices in the People's Republic of China (PRC)" is a two-year study created to understand the development of Chinese accounting standards and accounting systems, as well as the cost accounting system and cost management practices of Chinese enterprises. The study examines the costing practices of a variety of Chinese enterprises, more than 200 Chinese state-owned enterprises, listed companies, and privately-owned companies.

Click here to download IMA's China Costing Study (in English)

Click here to download IMA's China Costing Study Report Summary (in English and Simplified Chinese)

Accounting Control Assessment Standards: The Missing Piece in the Restatement Puzzle

Financial restatements are of critical concern to businesses and regulators because they impact investor protections, a firm’s cost of capital and ability to preserve/grow shareholder wealth, and U.S. global competitiveness. Yet much of the attention being paid to solve the root causes of the financial restatement problem are overlooking a “missing piece”: the lack of effective Generally Accepted Control Assessment Standards (GACAS).

This paper draws on over three years of research to examine how a lack of effective control standards with an explicit objective of reducing “error rates” may be a more significant root cause of material financial restatements than the complexity of accounting standards and regulations. Intended to promote further discussion and research into the issue, the paper also proposes several potential solutions to help reduce the need for financial restatements in the long term.

Click here to download

COSO 1992 Control Framework and Management Reporting on Internal Control over Financial Reporting: Survey and Analysis of Implementation Practices

This research study focuses on the current usage, role, and extent of guidance the COSO 1992 Framework provides in helping management conduct its internal control evaluation to fulfill Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) requirements. Results show that the Internal Control—Integrated Framework issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) may be falling short of providing the needed guidance.

SOX Exec Summary

SOX Full Study

Powerpoint – SOX Research Study – By Parveen Gupta

Strategic Business Partner Research: The Call To Action For CFOs

"There is little doubt that the current content of professional accounting education, which has remained substantially the same over the past 50 years, is generally inadequate for the future Accounting professional. A growing gap exists between what accountants do and what accounting educators teach …. Accountants who remain narrowly educated will find it more difficult to compete in an expanding profession …".

Can you guess the year of this quote? The year was 1986 (Bedford Report), and fast forwarding 20+ years, has much changed in closing this gap? Many, including the IMA, believe that a significant gap still exists between what is taught in typical undergraduate accounting curricula, and what the CFO team needs to meet its challenges and expectations. Various studies of CFOs around the world strongly suggest that the CFO team must move beyond transaction processing, cost accounting, compliance cop and counter of wealth to strategic business partner, performance management, enterprise risk management, and creator of wealth.

IMA has developed a stream of primary research since 1994 to help close this gap, aiming to evolve the roles and activities of financial professionals working within organizations to become "full service" business partners.

What Corporate America Wants- 1994

Executive summary

Full report

What Corporate America Wants in Entry-Level Accountants, Management Accounting (now called Strategic Finance), September 1994

Colleges are not adequately preparing accounting graduates for first jobs, say corporate executives, Management Accounting (now called Strategic Finance), September 1994

A joint IMA/FEI position statement on the results of the survey: "What Corporate America Wants in Entry-Level Accountants" Management Accounting, (now called Strategic Finance), September 1994

The Practice Analysis of Management Accounting Report– 1996

Full Report The Practice Analysis of Management Accounting, Management Accounting, April 1996

Management Accountants’ Role on Cross Functional Teams, March 2000 What Do Management Accountants Do?, Strategic Finance, July 2000

Skills Needed for Entry Level Management, Strategic Finance, August 2000

The Changing World of Management Accounting and Financial Management- 1997

The Changing World of Management Accounting and Financial Management. Management Accounting. October 1997