Accounting

In my last post, I talked about the ways you can use green data — footprinting information on your products and services up and down the value chain — to create enormous value for your company. As they say, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. And those with the best information can cut costs, […]

There may be fewer, but they'll be more useful.

In the wake of a series of gross corporate abuses around the turn of the century, Congress passed Sarbanes-Oxley, which was intended to make corporate...

For the last decade, the Gallup Organization has surveyed the people of China, as both consumers of goods and employees of the companies that produce those goods. The data provide a unique picture of changing consumer attitudes, market opportunities, and management challenges.

His strategy looks so easy. Almost too easy.

There's considerable waste in the system.

Hope Barrows, a partner at the national accounting firm Fuller Fenton, drove to the office on Sunday and swiped her access card to enter the parking garage....

Investors reward clear communication.

Companies are increasingly paying for acquisitions with stock rather than cash. But both they and the companies they acquire need to understand just how big a difference that decision can make to the value shareholders will get from a deal.

This blog post is written with Pepijn Veling, Utrecht University, Netherlands. There is a general consensus that U.S. healthcare needs major reform. Can...

Few economic decisions are as difficult as those involving the choice between present and future consumption. Some people, unable to place much faith in the future, happily borrow to fund present pleasures; others, with longer time horizons, are wary of such “fly now, pay later” policies. They fear that the required payments, when viewed up […]

Few, if any, articles on finance that have appeared in HBR have enjoyed the influence of the 1962 article reprinted here as a “Classic.” Gordon Donaldson’s analysis of how many companies haphazardly established their debt capacity, and his careful explanation of what he considered a better way, seemed to strike a chord among corporate administrative […]

In both entrepreneurial and larger companies, we too often spend time focusing on the desired financial performance target, rather than the inputs that...

The financial worries of New York City in the early 1970s began registering in the bond market in October 1974, when the city first encountered difficulty selling its securities. These problems reached a crisis stage in 1976, and it was not until then that the bond rating services reduced the city’s bond rating. In this […]

If you chose wealthy parents, yes.

As reported in the web-exclusive article "Consumer Credit: The Next Crisis," American consumers are carrying a dangerous, unsustainable amount of debt....

Don't burn all your cash on a fancy office.

Joe Knight, coauthor of Financial Intelligence, explains the financial statement—and why managers should get involved in finance.

90% of the global poor are now covered by a wireless signal.

Cisco’s CFO explains how the company has made real-time accounting a reality.