Kurtzman, Joel (1997), "Is Your Company Off Course? Now You Can Find Out Why," Fortune,
February 17, Vol. 135, Iss. 3, Pg. 58-60.
This article presents two schools of thought for assessing corporate performance. The first perspective furthered by organizations such as Motorola and Analog favors a corporate scorecard that keeps tabs on performance numbers like gross profit margin on new products but also measures softer measures such as employee satisfaction. The other school of thought led by Shell Oil believes that performance yardsticks must be completely financial. Indicators such as revenue growth and ROI are recommended.
Rao, Srikumar S. (1997), "Overhead Can Kill You," Forbes, February 10, Vol. 159, Iss. 3, Pg. 97-98.
This article recognizes that changes in the technological environment have made previous overhead allocation techniques obsolete. Arbitrary allocation of overhead can result in sub-optimal decision making and worse still act as powerful incentive to waste resources. The use of activity based costing and resource allocation is discussed. The author recommends this type of accounting to shed losing product lines and enhance overall organizational efficiency.
