| page 2 The magazines Accounting Today, Accounting Technology, and Practical Accountant are at www.webcpa.com, which is maintained by their publisher Thomson. Searching at the Accounting Today, Accounting Technology, and Practical Accountant site demonstrates the desirability to understand the variability in search systems from website to website. Because of this variability, you should review the search instructions usually provided at the site. Searching at this Accounting Today site using “activity costs” yielded only one hit, but using “activity and costs” yielded 100 hits. Depending on the system, the system can automatically apply the search operator “and” in “activity costs”, but not at this site. One of the 100 hits is an interesting article on what benchmarking is and how it might or might not help profitability. BusinessFinanceMag.com, apparently only an on-line publication, published by Penton Media, Inc., has a search system and much content at www.businessfinancemag.com. Searching BusinessFianacneMag.com on “activity costs” yielded 16 hits, including an article on the use of activity-based management in service companies. The Institute of Chartered Accountants In England & Wales maintains its publication Accountancy at www.accountancymag.co.uk. Apparently only titles and subtitles can be searched for terms. The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland maintains its publication Accountancy Ireland at www.icai.ie/, which is searchable and articles can be read. Most articles available at Accountancy Ireland deal with accounting standards and their interpretations and applications. 3. Business and Management-Focused Magazines. Publications in this category will generally contain opinion and analysis articles dealing with topics that relate to business and management principles and practices. The range of topics, because business and management encompasses so many principles and practices, is wide. Management accountants can benefit in the performance of their duties from quick access to analysis and information relating to topics written about in these publications. Publications and sites linked to in this category are: The Chamber of Commerce website Harvard Business School website BetterManagement.con website American Society for Quality website FindArticles search engine The McKinsey Quarterly Corporate Board Member Online Entrepreneur Industry Week Inc. Magazine Online CanadianBusiness.com The Chamber of Commerce gives search access at www.uschamber.com/research/default to many reports and statistical studies covering such topics as costs, taxes, and regulation. Harvard Business School maintains a site, hbsworkingknowledge.hbs.edu/index.jhtml, called Working Knowledge, where articles on management and business-related topics can be searched and read. Using the advanced search menu at the Harvard Business School site, and the terms “activity and costs”, yielded 449 hits. One of these is an interesting article defining six essential principles to follow for a company to be successful. The site, www.bettermanagement.com, maintained by BetterManagement.com, Inc., has search access to articles appearing at other sites, like the Wharton Business School’s Wharton Knowledge site. Topics include management and decision-making. Searching at Bettermangement.com, on "activity and costs” yielded 323 hits. One interesting article discusses a concept of estimating the present value of future cash sales for customers to help determine which customers are worth keeping. The American Society for Quality’s site, at www.asq.org/index.html, has articles on quality, including the costs of quality. At the American Society of Quality site, an “activity costs” search yielded 37 hits. One interesting article relates the use of an activity based costing system to reducing the costs of poor quality. The FindArticles search engine, at www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/PI/index.jhtml, searches dozens of business magazines. Using the FindArticles search engine and searching on “+activity +costs” yielded 15,757 hits. Searching on “activity costs” (here the search is on the phrase “activity costs”) yielded 51 hits. One of these is an article from Logistics Management Distribution Report, which discusses the use of activity based costing to determine the costs of logistics activities. The on-line McKinsey Quarterly, containing articles written by personnel from the consultant McKinsey & Company, has articles on a wide variety of topics, such as corporate finance, organization, strategy, and operations, at its site www.mckinseyquarterly.com. Some articles at the McKinsey site require a subscription. Corporate Board Member, at www.boardmember.com and maintained by Board Member, Inc., has articles for board of directors and company personnel who support and interact with the company’s board of directors. Entrepreneur.com, at www.entrepreneur.com, maintained by Entrepreneur.com, Inc., provides information on many aspects of starting and growing businesses. Searching on the term “activity and costs” yielded 22 hits. Several of these are general articles on better cost management in various company activities. Industry Week magazine maintains a site at www.industryweek.com. Full articles from previous issues can be searched and viewed. Searching at Industry Week using “activity and costs” yielded 10 hits. One interesting article identifies those industries where companies dominate because of price, and discusses when price can be best strategy. Inc. magazine maintains an on-line site at www.inc.com/home. This site has articles from the print issues, as well as a section on business improvement. Searching at the Inc. site demonstrates more searching principles in the use of search systems at websites. At Inc., the simple (quick) search system works differently from the advanced search system. Searching on “activity and costs” with the quick system yielded 10,000 hits, and searching “activity and costs” using the advanced search yielded 121 hits. The difference is that in the quick search "and" is included as a search term; so any article containing "and" is returned. In the advanced search, "and" is an operator – meaning that both activity and costs must be present for the article to be returned. Another point about search systems is that they usually will return the results on the basis of relevancy as the default, but other criteria for returning the articles may be an option. The more often the search terms appear in the article, the higher the article will appear in the ranking of returned articles. CanadianBusiness.com, at www.canadianbusiness.com/homepage/index.jsp, has a search system and many articles related to Canadian subjects. click here to go to the next page |
| Finding Accounting and Business Articles On the Internet |