Editor's letter

Management Accounting Quarterly, Wntr, 2004 by Kathy Williams

If you've noticed that IMA has been paying special attention to German cost accounting lately, you're right. See the article by Paul Sharman, "Bring on German Cost Accounting," in the December 2003 issue of Strategic Finance.

In continuing to examine this subject, we bring you two more related articles in this issue of Management Accounting Quarterly. The first is an introduction to Chapter 0 of the definitive German cost accounting textbook on this subject. Written by Anton van der Merwe, an expert in this area, it gives you an idea of what to expect when you read the chapter and offers you a look into the changes in management accounting over the past two decades.

The second article is a reprint of the textbook chapter. Gabler, the publisher, gave IMA permission to reprint it, and SAP provided the translation. We think you will enjoy the insights into the profession that these two articles offer.

Next, we turn to corporate governance with a conceptual framework on how to align corporate governance with enterprise risk management. The authors explain what corporate governance is, how it is related to ERM, and who in a corporation should be responsible for what aspects.

If your company operates in a global business environment, then take a look at the article on international budgeting. The authors discuss how foreign currency exchange rates, interest rates, inflation, and risks such as the September 11 terrorist attacks impact and influence the budgeting process.

Turning to customer relationships, are your customers making you more profitable, or are they draining you? Do you know how to find out? Look at the article on using activity-based costing (ABC) to assess channel/customer profitability for some guidance in this area.

Rounding out the issue is an overview of a grassroots mentoring program three IMA members established at the chapter level to partner students and professional management accountants. They explain the program and outline what worked best.

As always, we welcome any comments about these articles and suggestions for future ones. Please send me an e-mail at kwilliams@imanet.org, or give me a call at (201) 474-1576.