Newswise — A new book by two Babson professors blends human reasoning into a new kind of business management system. In Delivering Results, Managing What Matters, Management Accounting Professors Lawrence Carr and Alfred Nanni paradoxically develop a management system built on human rather than quantitative reasoning.
For any organization to perform and compete successfully, it must have the systems and processes in place to translate goals into achievable actions—and to measure and monitor results. Moreover, the organization must be able to adjust and adapt as market conditions, technologies, the competitive environment, government regulations, personnel, and other variables evolve, sometimes gradually and sometimes dramatically.
In Delivering Results: Measuring What Matters (Springer; 1 edition; August 12, 2009), Carr and Nanni show managers how to avoid the common pitfalls and mistakes when implementing corporate or business unit strategy, and instead create a management system—unique to their organization—that aligns internal resources with objectives, motivates and rewards employees, and continuously provides feedback.
Delivering results is not merely measuring and reporting; it is the amalgamation of all the decisions made and all the actions taken by the organization's people. Thus a management system is more about human judgment than quantitative analysis.
Illustrating their concepts with numerous real-life examples (both successes and failures), practical tools and models, and a glossary of key terms, the authors acknowledge that designing and implementing an effective management system can be daunting for many reasons, including:
"¢ Different strategies call for different competencies
"¢ Specific competitive environments may reorder the priorities of these competencies
"¢ Leadership styles influence behavior
"¢ Information technology can enhance or limit the flow of necessary data
"¢ Skills and knowledge change over time
"¢ No two people are exactly the same
Arguing that there is no silver bullet or one-size-fits-all approach to strategy execution, the authors demonstrate that managers who can navigate these variables and chart a route for their own organization's strategy will reach their goals faster and more efficiently than their competitors. Ultimately, knowing how to create and direct management systems that deliver results is, in itself, a strategic resource.
For more about Delivering Results and to order a copy, go to: http://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Results-Managing-What-Matters/dp/1441906207.
To join the book's Facebook page, visit: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/pages/Delivering-Results/97466739486?ref=ts.
About the Authors
Lawrence P. Carr is Professor of Management Accounting at Babson College. He teaches in the Graduate School of Business and the School of Executive Education. His courses include Measuring and Achieving Strategic Results, Management Planning and Control, Strategic Cost Systems and Managing and Measuring Performance. He has served as the Dean of the Graduate School, Curriculum Coordinator for the first year MBA program, and has received the Kennedy Award and the Dean's Award for teaching excellence. He is a management consultant and has published over thirty articles and fifteen teaching cases, and is a co-author of Total Quality Management: A Cross-Functional Perspective, Guide to Cost Management.
Prior to his academic career, Dr. Carr spent eighteen years in industry. For eight years he was a Division Controller and Vice President for Kollmorgen Corporation, a publicly held diversified electronics company. As President and CEO of OSRAM, Corp., the U.S. and Canadian subsidiary of OSRAM GmbH, part of Siemens, he developed and managed the dramatic growth (over 31% per year) of this lighting company for eight years. He led the corporation as it established distribution systems and centers, developed a manufacturing facility in the U.S., introduced new product lines to the market and executed two acquisitions.
Dr. Carr earned a BA in Psychology from Marist College, an MA in Industrial Administration, an MBA and a Ph.D. from Union College. His consulting clients include Fidelity, Heinz, Accenture, GE, IBM, Siemens, Pitney-Bowes, Xerox, and others. He has been published in Management Accounting, The Journal of Cost Management, Strategic Performance Measurement, International Journal of Strategic Cost Management and Sloan Management Review.
Alfred J. Nanni, Jr., is Professor of Management Accounting and Vander Wolk Chair in Management Accounting & Operational Performance at Babson College. His central research interest is performance measurement and strategy execution. He has written a wide variety of articles within this research domain for both academic and practitioner audiences. He is co-author, with J. Robb Dixon and Thomas E. Vollman, of The New Performance Challenge: Measuring Operations for World-Class Competition. Dr. Nanni has also consulted extensively on strategic cost and performance measurement with large manufacturing and service firms.
At Babson College, Professor Nanni has taught in the undergraduate, graduate, and executive programs. He was, until 1999, the original Director of the Intermediate Management Core Program, Babson's innovative multi-disciplinary, multi-year core business program for undergraduates. Prior to his arrival at Babson College, Dr. Nanni held positions at the Pennsylvania State University College of Business Administration, and Boston University School of Management. At Boston University, he was Chair of the Accounting Department as well as Director of the Accounting Doctoral Program. Professor Nanni earned a BA (cum laude) from Syracuse University and a M.S., B.A., Ph.D., from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., is recognized internationally as a leader in entrepreneurial management education. Babson grants BS degrees through its innovative undergraduate program, and grants MBA and custom MS and MBA degrees through the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College. Babson Executive Education offers executive development programs to experienced managers worldwide. For information, visit www.babson.edu.
RSS