Management-accounting

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.

The great take away from this book is that executives try hard to achieve the optimal solutions for management problems, but that they seldomly succeed. The reason: they underestimate the creativity of their sub-ordinates (and their superiors).
For ages students and lecturers thought management accounting was dull. Zimmerman shows how fascinating this subject can be. The decision making parts show how to calculate optimal solutions for management accounting problems, the control parts make your realize how difficult it is to make the optimal solutions come true. The implication: the amount of consulting work to be done is infinite.

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.