Customer Reviews

Accounting for Decision Making and Control

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Too often management accounting is completely subsumed in cost accounting. Yes, they are part of the same topic, but they have somewhat different emphases. This book covers costs, but it is really more focused on how you allocated decision rights, set measurement criteria, and how you reward people to get the behavior you want. It is also very helpful in clarifying thinking about what could be going wrong if you aren't getting the behavior you wanted out of a given system of measurement and reward.

The writing is very good and the organization of the book is sound and helpful. While there are charts and graphs it is not a book full of color and pictures. It is a book with words and ideas that are helpfully supplemented as needed. But the self-study problems and cases are set off from the main text by being on different color pages. This helps in locating what you are after.

There is a wealth of thought provoking problems and short cases to help promote discussion and provoke your thinking on the topics discussed in each chapter.

Another aspect of the book I really like are the concept questions in each chapter that help you gauge your understanding of what you have just read. The solutions for these are provided in the back of the book so you can know if you are "getting it" or not.

This is a fine and very useful text.

From a student's perspective this is a perfect example of a bad text book. For example: one of the problems I had with the text is that the chapter material did not relate to the problems at the end of the chapter. There is no solution manual available and there are no answers to any of the problems presented in the text. So--- unless you are extremely bright and somewhat clairvoyant you will probably have similar problems. In a word or two - this text has little value to someone who is trying to learn the concepts associated with accounting for decision making and control.

I feel sorry for any student who is required to use this book for a class. The author is brilliant, but does not know how to write a text book. Over 1/2 the book is homework, and there are very few examples, most of which are not beneficial for reference with the homework.

If the author reads this, you know your stuff, but change your style of writing. Don't make the book like a John Grisham novel and then here is your homework. Learn from authors like Garrisson and Noreen in regards to writing style. I suggest your next edition (should you publish another) to be a complete re-write.

The most surprising thing was how much of the book is homework problems (blue pages). Viewed edge-on they appear to be ~50% of the pages. Many problems are excessively wordy, fine as novellos but reading 2 pages to get to the issues is often tedious. The text is well written, but I didn't find the subject to have as much meat as other MBA subjects like Finance or Operations Research. I understand it is one of the better books on Managerial Accounting. I have 27 years experience at many companies, so others might find the material more enlightening.

It is a very solid text on the MA topic.

There are exciting ideas in the book,and it's well orgnized

Beware ! This book does perhaps the poorest example explaining any concepts. I have never had so much stress in my life than taking a managerial accounting class with this book. I mean I actually couldn't sleep because of this book!

I took this class last year and I just finished my MBA and I am working on my Phd now, and I thought I would reflect and give some valuable advice to you, my fellow students.

If you don't have a prior managerial accounting background, go read as much as you can before you get into this book. Or you will be completely stressed out, lost and feel that you are a dummy. This book makes smart students feel dum. I mean really dum. You are not dum, the book just lacks clear explanations.

This book deals mostly with managerial accounting. For example if you are paid $100 per day at your job, really you are costing the company more than what you are being paid, really you use resources, like from human resources who hired you, electricity costs, phone costs, IT, etc, so your true cost to the company broken down is probably $160 per day. This is called cost allocation, in a crude example.

Easy concept right?, Just that you will not be able to learn this easily from this book unless you have a deep prior background in this. The good examples Zimmerman(author) gives are spoiled by the majority of his jargon and bad examples.

I honestly found myself at one point reading 1 page for over an hour to understand! (and I am a high A student). In my entire MBA program, I never had a worse book, nor more stress!!!

Ultimately, I had to do many exhaustive Internet searches to learn cost allocation theory.

Some reasons why this book is so bad:

(1) Does not explain many concepts with clear explanations

(2) Uses too much jargon

(3) Shows graphs and vital data one the next pages instead of including them on the same page, Imagine as you read you have to constantly change the page to see the graphs and charts, Very poor!

(4) Zimmeran doesn't want to teach, rather he wants to prove to you that he is smart!

(5) THE WORST

Perhaps the worst is the homework problems in the back. Zimmerman (the author) does not give sufficient examples of how to solve these examples. Nor does the book give the answers. Also, some problems are extremely hard, even the professor of the class had difficulty solving and explaining this. What is the goal of a book if students have to search elsewhere and be stressed out to learn?

I would say that this book is like taking a class in Algebra and having questions and concepts explained in Calculus.

Again, if you don't have a prior background in any of this, go take a class at a junior college on cost accounting to prepare for this book, you will need it. Or you too will be so stressed out!!

Jerold Zimmerman, please don't take personal offense, you may be a smart guy, but the art of education is explaining concepts easily and showing your work, which in my opinion and my fellow students' opinion, overall this book lacks.

GOOD LUCK to all students, and my prayers are with you if you have this book.

This was a required book for our MBA program. It's verbose and full of accounting history. I can appreciate a book aimed at providing the benefits, shortfalls, and even history of each type of accounting practice but this book is ridiculous. It fails to employ executive summaries, has no clear examples, and its format is over-the-top frustrating. A long 3 page explanation of a principle will be explored in depth and then its corresponding diagrams and financial statement impact will be referenced 10 pages away. The reader will have to flip back and forth between several pages just to view the referenced principle on a balance sheet. I am completely disappointed that by 2010, a textbook company aimed at educating busy professionals completely fails to understand its market. Leave it if you can. There are much better textbooks out there-I discovered this after several students in class starting bringing some alternative textbooks they found on the web to quickly explain the principles this book attempted to explain.

While sellers may claim that the international edition is the same as the North American version (ISBN 0-07-297586-5), it is not true! While the content is similar, it is not the same. Just in Chapter 1, the problems do not match up. So, if you are an MBA student in a North American university, I recommend buying the North American edition. You think you will save a few bucks (like I did), but in the end you will have to buy the same edition as the rest of your class and get stuck with two books.

It contains philosophy and present contept to apply to the decision making. Managerial accounting is more than journal entry and computation. It's about decision making and performance evaluation.

Zimmerman does a good job laying out many different cost allocation schemes. He gives an unbiased review of the strengths and weaknesses of each system. The angle Zimmerman takes is to point out the differences between using cost information for decision making,and for decision (behavioral) control. There is a good deal of organizational theory involved. I took a course in cost accounting at the University of Chicago GSB with a colleague of Zimmerman's. They taught together at U of Rochester. The professor did a better job of getting the point across. Zimmerman tries not to put much opinion into the text, and as such, comes up short on making his point in most cases. If your looking for a simple layout of various costing systems, this might be the book for you. If you like a little more persuasion in your academic reading, skip this one.

Additionally, the examples used are often too long and drawn out. I dont think he gives the reader enough credit.