Gold_medal

2008 Articles of Merit

Tell Us What You Think

IFAC's Professional Accountants in Business (PAIB) Committee is inviting professional accountants to help select the winner of its 2008 Articles of Merit Award Program for Distinguished Contribution to the Roles and Domain of Professional Accountants in Business. Please rate the usefulness of the articles below. To rate the articles, go to the star of your choice, and then left-click on your mouse to make your rating choice.

  • one star = not useful
  • five star = very useful

We'd like to hear from you by January 11, 2009. We will announce the winning article in early 2009.

1. Black Holes in Accounting

By Ron Lutka, CMA

Black holes — areas of undesirable activities that go unchecked — can destroy an entire organization.  This article considers common areas for black holes to form and how to deal with them.

2. Financial Leadership: What's it all About?

By Jeffrey C. Thomson

Explores what financial leadership means in practical terms.

3. Pricing Power

Using Price Strategy Roadmaps and Tools to Maximize Bottom-Line Results

By Scott Miller, CMA

This article helps professional accountants in business to consider best practice tools and processes in pricing.

4. Anatomy of a Plan

Better Practices for Management Accountants

By Jeffrey C. Thomson

An analysis of better practices for the multi-year strategic planning process and for planning and budgeting.

5. Redefining Management Accounting

Promoting the four pillars of our profession

By Peter C. Brewer, CPA

Introduces a management accounting framework that describes the full spectrum of skills that should be espoused by management accounting leaders in organizations and management accounting professors in the classroom. The framework moves beyond the rules-based languages of accounting to properly emphasize the management orientation of management accounting.

6. Ignore Strategic Risk at Your Peril

By Gillian Lees

Companies that disregard strategic risk are gambling with their long-term survival.  This article explains how the CIMA Strategic Scorecard™ can help boards efficiently manage strategic risk.

7. The Pitfalls of Pay for Performance

By Wim Van Der Stede

Pay-for-performance is often seen as a virtually guaranteed means of achieving employee alignment and motivation and hence superior business performance.  This article considers the potential pitfalls.

8. Measuring the Success of the Board

By Sir Andrew Likierman

How do you measure your board’s performance? The article describes the 10 key qualities every board needs for success, and explains how to measure them.

9. Wheels of Change

By Chris Fuller and Martin Fahy

Finance and accounting outsourcing (FAO) has already had a major impact on finance business partnering and analytics, but as we broaden our understanding of the issues, FAO itself is growing more complex. This article looks at how market leaders are ushering in a second wave of FAO, and gradually moving towards a new paradigm: knowledge process outsourcing.

10. IFRS Creates Tougher World for M&A

By Dimitris Karydas and Kenneth Lee

This article explores how accounting changes have dramatically altered the way mergers and acquisitions are analyzed.

11. Solving the Supply Chain Cost Riddle

By Kevin Gaffney, CMA, and Valeri Gladkikh

12. Articles of Merit - 2008 Competition

For information on the activities of IFAC's PAIB committee and for resources for professional accountants in business, visit http://www.ifac.org/PAIB/.