Tax-savvy executives

Review of Accounting Studies - We investigate why firms include individuals with significant professional tax experience on their senior management team and the consequences associated with the...     

What executives should remember

In more than 30 essays for Harvard Business Review, Peter Drucker (1909-2005) urged readers to take on the hard work of thinking--always combined, he insisted, with decisive action. He closely analyzed the phenomenon of knowledge work--the growing call for employees who use their minds rather than their hands--and explained how it challenged the conventional wisdom about the way organizations should be run. He was intrigued by employees who knew more about certain subjects than their bosses or colleagues but who still had to cooperate with others in a large organization. As the business world matured in the second half of the twentieth century, executives came to think that they knew how to run companies--and Drucker took it upon himself to poke holes in their assumptions, lest organizations become stale. But he did so sympathetically, operating from the premise that his readers were intelligent, hardworking people of goodwill. Well suited to HBR's format of practical, idea-based essays for executives, his clear-eyed, humanistic writing enriched the magazine time and again. This article is a compilation of the savviest management advice Drucker offered HBR readers over the years--in short, his greatest hits. It revisits the following insightful, influential contributions: "The Theory of the Business" (September-October 1994), "Managing for Business Effectiveness" (May-June 1963), "What Business Can Learn from Nonprofits" (July-August 1989), "The New Society of Organizations" (September-October 1992), "The Information Executives Truly Need" (January-February 1995), "Managing Oneself" (March-April 1999 republished January 2005), "They're Not Employees, They're People" (February 2002), "What Makes an Effective Executive" (June 2004).     

财务高管三级跳

财务管理是企业管理中一个重要组成部分,财务战略是企业战略实施的重要组成部分。企业要面向利益相关者,为出资者服务,这给CFO提出了高于以前的要求。     

Chief executives define their own data needs.

Identification of information needs of top management is discussed in this article by comparing four methods now in use with a new approach, "identification of critical success factors," developed at the Sloan School of Management. The author argues that the CSF method, implemented through a series of two to three interview sessions, helps top management define its own current information needs. Critical success factors are those performance factors which must receive the on-going attention of management if the company is to remain competitive. While not intended for strategic planning purposes, the identification of critical success factors can help top management by: (1) determining where management attention should be directed; (2) developing measures for critical success factors; and (3) determining the amount of information required and thus limiting gathering unnecessary data. The author concludes that the CSF method is both effective and efficient and should be seriously considered by top management as an important tool in assessing data needs.     

Why hard-nosed executives should care about management theory

Theory often gets a bum rap among managers because it's associated with the word "theoretical," which connotes "impractical." But it shouldn't. Because experience is solely about the past, solid theories are the only way managers can plan future actions with any degree of confidence. The key word here is "solid." Gravity is a solid theory. As such, it lets us predict that if we step off a cliff we will fall, without actually having to do so. But business literature is replete with theories that don't seem to work in practice or actually contradict each other. How can a manager tell a good business theory from a bad one? The first step is understanding how good theories are built. They develop in three stages: gathering data, organizing it into categories highlighting significant differences, then making generalizations explaining what causes what, under which circumstances. For instance, professor Ananth Raman and his colleagues collected data showing that bar code-scanning systems generated notoriously inaccurate inventory records. These observations led them to classify the types of errors the scanning systems produced and the types of shops in which those errors most often occurred. Recently, some of Raman's doctoral students have worked as clerks to see exactly what kinds of behavior cause the errors. From this foundation, a solid theory predicting under which circumstances bar code systems work, and don't work, is beginning to emerge. Once we forgo one-size-fits-all explanations and insist that a theory describes the circumstances under which it does and doesn't work, we can bring predictable success to the world of management.     

Optimal strike prices of stock options for effort-averse executives

This paper evaluates the common practice of setting the strike prices of executive option plans at-the-money. Hall and Murphy [Hall, Brian, Murphy, Kevin J., 2000. Optimal exercise prices for executive stock options. American Economic Review 90 (2), 209–214] claim this practice to be optimal since it maximizes the sensitivity of compensation to firm performance. However, they do not incorporate effort and the possibility that managers are effort-averse into their model. We revisit this question while explicitly introducing these factors and allowing the reward package to include fixed wages, options, and stock grants. We simulate the manager’s effort choice and compensation as well as the value of shareholders’ equity under alternative compensation schemes, and identify schemes that are optimal. Our simulations indicate that, when abstracting from tax considerations, it is optimal to award managers with options that will most likely be highly valuable (i.e., substantially in-the-money) on their expiration date. Prior to 2006, the tax code and financial reporting standards provided incentives to award options that are closer to the money when issued than the options that were optimal in the absence of these considerations. Recent tax and reporting changes voided these incentives and thus we predict that these changes will induce firms to issue options with lower strike prices than those that were issued prior to 2006.     

给自己一个更好的职业路径

在IMA（美国管理会计师协会）与中国国家外国专家局（简称外专局）2009年签订战略合作协议后,经过双方共同努力,CMA（美国注册管理会计师认证）资格认证得以在国企和央企迅速铺开,并获得高度认可。2010年10月11日,国资委系统下的200名财务高管,其中许多人都是大型央企的总会计师,将集中参加一个为期一个月的CMA培训班,     

会计职场的SWOT分析

我们可以把SWOT模型应用到职场的决策中去,对自己的现状进行系统全面的了解,通过分析,从而制定未来的行动方案。     

“两法一指引”对企业集团的影响及应对措施

本文首先比较了企业集团在组织形式、组织结构、资本连结、经营模式、产业与金融相结合等方面区别于单个企业的特点,对比了2009年中国银行业监督管理委员会发布实施的《项目融资业务指引》、《固定资产贷款管理暂行办法》、《流动资金贷款管理暂行办法》（以下简称＂两法一指引＂）与原有的贷款管理制度在账户管理、受托支付管理方面的不同,在此基础上分析＂两法一指引＂可能对企业集团的业务扩展、风险管理、财务管理、资金集中管理、预算管理产生的影响,并提出为规避对企业集团的不利影响企业集团应在整合内部资源、筹融资管理、信息化建设、争取监管当局的理解等方面可采取的应对措施。     

Leadership in your midst: tapping the hidden strengths of minority executives

All companies value leadership-some of them enough to invest dearly in cultivating it. But few management teams seem to value one engine of leadership development that is right under their noses, churning out the kind of talent they need most. It's the complicated, overburdened but very rich lives of their minority managers. Minority professionals-particularly women of color-are called upon inordinately to lend their skills and guidance to activities outside their jobs. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, who heads the Center for Work-Life Policy, and her coauthors, Carolyn Buck Luce of Ernst & Young and Cornel West of Princeton, present new research on the extent to which minority professionals take on community service and other responsibilities outside the workplace and more than their share of recruiting, mentoring, and committee work within the workplace. These invisible lives, argue the authors, can be a source of competitive strength if companies can learn to recognize and further cultivate the cultural capital they represent. But it's hard to convince minority professionals that their employer respects and values their off-hours responsibilities. A lack of trust keeps many people from revealing much about their personal lives. The authors outline four ways companies can leverage hidden skills: Develop a new level of awareness of minority professionals' invisible lives; appreciate the outsize burdens these professionals carry and try to lighten them; build trust by putting teeth into diversity goals; and, to finish the job of leadership development, help minorities reflect on their off-hours experiences, extract and generalize the lessons, and apply what's been learned in other settings.     

麦肯锡调查:亚洲CEO看在华从商

本文是今年1月麦肯锡全球研究所与新加坡国立大学李光耀公共政策研究院针对全球各大公司的亚洲区CEO进行的一次调查。尽管目前在中国经营业务或者进行对华贸易的公司不到三分之二,但绝大部分被调查者相信所在公司会在未来五年内来华从商。被调查者指出了威胁中国经济持续增长的一些潜在因素,不过许多人认为,即便这些问题短期内得不到充分解决,公司收入也基本上不会受影响。     

Does top executives’ US experience matter? Evidence from US-listed Chinese firms

Foreign firms face enormous obstacles in attracting investors and analysts when issuing securities in the United States.We use US-listed Chinese firms as our re...     

Social connections between media and firm executives and the properties of media reporting

Review of Accounting Studies - We study how social connections between top executives of media and listed firms affect the properties of media reporting. We find that socially connected media are...