Accounting

John Campbell explains modern asset pricing theory and the links between Fama, Hansen, and Shiller.

Something strange is happening in the debate about the U.S. federal budget deficit. Across the land, in books and on editorial pages, the message seems to be changing. In October 1987, Peter Peterson wrote in the Atlantic Monthly that the federal deficit is the centerpiece of many grim scenarios, including global depression, severe inflation, a […]

Several years ago, my colleague Dave Ulrich and I looked at how leaders build value by building employee confidence in the future. Our findings bear revisiting...

Providing earnings guidance-publicly releasing managerial forecasts of a company's profits-has become a highly controversial practice, with critics ranging...

An intermediate step can help make the transition to outcomes-based payment for health care.

To compete effectively in international markets, a nation’s businesses must continuously innovate and upgrade their competitive advantages. Innovation and upgrading come from sustained investment in physical as well as intangible assets—things like employee skills and supplier relationships. Today the changing nature of competition and the increasing pressure of globalization make investment the most critical determinant […]

Four approaches.

A new initiative, the International Sustainability Standards Board, holds promise.

And it could lower costs in the long run.

Lincoln assumed that its manufacturing prowess and fabled culture would allow it to succeed anywhere in the world. The company’s former CEO recounts how that thinking was put to the test.

After looking at hundreds of small businesses and working on a number of them, I have seen certain patterns of conduct recur again and again that lead to eventual failure. If a company is in difficulty, it is almost always a management problem, scarcely ever bad luck. When a company survives for many years but […]

They can amount to 50-80% of customers - and consume about 40-60% of a company's costs.

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, […]

Few truisms apply universally in the business world, but four related ones are valid in every business situation. 1. Over the long term, it is absolutely essential to be a lower cost supplier. 2. To stay competitive, inflation-adjusted costs of producing and supplying any product or service must continuously trend downward. 3. The true cost […]

Next time you're deciding about a big investment, NPV can help you make a more informed decision.

Illegal? Maybe not, but many of today’s accounting moves are clearly aggressive. Shareholders—and their representatives on corporate boards—need to be aware of six danger zones.

Kaiser Permanente has a tool for that.

And it will transform the way your company reports profits.

Taking responsibility for something one is incapable of doing has never been a particularly good idea. Politicians get in trouble for promising their...

When Liberty Mutual told vendors to cut the paper and submit their bills electronically, it discovered a gold mine in the mountain of new data.