As often reported in Business Week and Fortune, most large companies today concede that their cost systems are desperately obsolete. In this eagerly awaited book, John Shank and Vijay Govindarajan, nationally known experts on the strategic use of cost information, address head-on the fundamental concepts of management accounting that are in desperate need of change. The authors demonstrate how strategic cost management, the first analytic framework to relate meaningful accounting information to a firm's business strategy, is revolutionizing accounting-and overall business practices in leading firms. With numerous extended examples including Ciba-Geigy, Ford, Texas Instruments, and many more, the authors show how the three key tools of strategic cost management-value chain analysis, strategic positioning analysis, and cost driver analysis-provide a sustainable competitive advantage over firms whose cost systems are in disarray. With persuasive evidence, Shank and Govindarajan...