Search results

This is an exclusive extract from The ValueReporting Revolution: Moving Beyond the Earnings Game, a new book published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and written by four senior PricewaterhouseCoopers experts. In this extract they discuss the dilemma of risk management and risk reporting. They argue that there are difficulties in disclosing risk on the grounds that it causes problems with competitors and investors alike. There is also a lack of consensus of how market risk should be measured. They assess how to quantify operational risk and conclude that the gap between improving risk management techniques and risk disclosures needs to be closed.

The author, one of the leading business thinkers in the USA and a former Harvard Business School professor, puts forward his hopes and fears for the year 2004. He hopes that the worlds of financial reporting and corporate governance will become clearer and more effective but he worries that resistance from company directors and a preference for rules rather than principles will hinder this process. On balance he concludes that he is more hopeful than fearful for the year ahead.

While the contributors to this recent addition to the Harvard Business Review Paperback Series may not encompass the entire population of the performance measurement Olympus they surely occupy some of the prime real estate on its upper slopes.

Reprises an earlier view by Robert Eccles, that what is important is how a company is doing compared with current competitors and not its past. Deplores short‐termism and the USA's drive for improved quarterly earnings which can mean objectives financially are endangered by short‐term considerations. Concludes that if formulas are kept simple they omit critical measures but that over‐complication may confuse or, worse, enable numbers to be played with.

Integrated management is the process of including environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance in close coordination between business processes, functions, groups, organizations, and systems. In this context, decision-makers can better understand the dynamic systems in which they operate; define success based on sustainability-based performance frontier; guide decision making with strategic valuation of environmental and social guidelines; adhere to a timeline of actions that moves the enterprise toward a sustainable society; operationalize dynamic goals, for example, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); and support processes for planning with decision analysis tools to monitor and guide change management. Information within this chapter will explore how sustainability in businesses, that is, integrated management, is already underway in leading multinational companies, and can be found within any business function, and in supply chains. The value that sustainability brings to an organization is important to understand as each day there is a growing amount of data to draw from. While 80% of the value of an enterprise is within intangibles, hundreds of ESG performance metrics are now available to researchers and practitioners to make the intangible tangible. With a look on how these ESG performance metrics and the social cost of carbon are used by practitioners and researchers, a number of research propositions call for improved financial decision analysis and a new performance frontier.

Corporate interest in non‐financial performance measures may be a phenomenon of the nineties but it is nothing new. But the extent to which it brings about a change in company behaviour and business results hinges on the recognition that it is not an end in itself but a crucial component in the performance management cycle.

There has been a steady increase in the amount of research and theorising in the area of interorganisational research, especially with regard to buyer‐seller arrangements in marketing channels (Andersen and Narus 1990, Bergen et.al., 1992, Boyle et.al., 1992). Alternative interorganisational governance models, such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, and sole‐sourcing are the reality of modern business management (Borys and Jemison 1989, Buckley and Casson 1988), and so interfirm governance has become a strategic management issue. The much‐cited work of Porter (1985, 1991) has focused on the optimal linkage of interfirm activities, and regards the planning and governance of interfirm relations as an important competitive strategic issue, a point reiterated by Heide (1994). The issue of channel relationships has been one of concern for both practitioners and academics, and theories such as those of transaction cost analysis (TCA), agency theory, and relational norms have on the one hand shed much light on the problems, and on the other provided a fruitful backdrop to much empirical research. Less attention has been given to the effects of time on these notions, both in the literature and in empirical research. In this article we provide an overview of the theories, and attempt an integration. The purpose of this article is to focus on transaction cost economics (TCE) and relational exchange theory to provide an overview of the areas of interorganisational research where relationships play a role. A number of areas where the theories diverge and converge are outlined. More importantly, we endeavour to bring the effects of time into consideration, and to develop propositions for further research.