The Value Reporting Revolution: Moving Beyond the Earnings Game [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

This book takes us long ways in pushing for such changes. Written by a group of people who know a lot about the topic - unlike most business books, which are typically written by those who know very little, because the ones in the know are too busy working - this sounds the first death knell of corporate reporting as we know it. It is a rather courageous set of arguments that the authors make, coming as it does from an institution, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, which, frankly, has plenty of incentives to maintain the status quo.

I would highly recommend this book to every manager, investor, and student of business. One of the nice aspects of the book is its international breadth, further reinforcing the argument that in today's global realities, the changes ought to be globally driven and required.

The best thing about the book is its rigor. The authors' authority of over their subject matter clearly comes through the book as does their hands-on experience in wrestling with tricky, complex, corporate reporting issues that companies face and shareholders need - issues that under today's requirements are typically not addressed, and therefore, lead to the kinds of deleterious effects that are evident in today's pump-and-dump markets.

Finally, in a world of superficial, shoddy, silly, ghost-written tripe that is published under the guise of management thinking, this book stands as a shining, stellar example of what good management writing is all about: rigor, clarity, and the kind of expansive and aspirational thinking that forces people to want to read a book and ask themselves, "where do I begin?" This book is a much needed call to action on probably the most important managerial, corporate, and financial issue.

"dialect" or implementation of the XML grammar) make it possible to implement Value Reporting; finally, the book explores deficiencies in XBRL and how they need to be corrected if they are to support implementation of Value Reporting.

The book is a lucid and pleasant read for accounting experts, software experts, and the much larger population of professionals who are potential users and consumers of Value Reporting.

The authors are multidimensional professionals -- they are developers and users of modern systems of financial reporting, and they are experts both in developing the theory of Value Reporting and in implementing specific real-life applications.

The book explains several unusual technical and managerial principles in clear and everyday terms, without getting sloppy or misleading for expert readers. Perhaps it is because of the authors' technical qualifications and their experience in applying their expertise to everyday managerial and reporting problems, that they are able to clarify without oversimplifying an almost obvious topic based on quite advanced accounting and software techniques.

In the interest of full disclosure to readers who should know something about the reviewer, he holds earned doctorates in Information Theory (Yale) and Mathematics (University of Paris). Between two tours of duty in the US Government at the level of assistant secretary, under secretary, and finally chief executive of an independent agency, he was founding chairman of a software company that was, for quite a few years, an acknowledged leader in designing and implementing financial reporting and control systems.

He is today chairman of two start-up technology companies, one of which is applying its technology and software to questions of Value Reporting.