Review of \u3cem\u3eThe Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America\u27s Great Migration.\u3c/em\u3e Isabel Wilkerson. Reviewed by Richard Sherman.

Book review of Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America\u27s Great Migration. Random House, 2010. $30.00, hardcover

Measuring And Communicating The Value Created By An Organization

This paper offers a different perspective in measuring the value created by an organization. It does so in the context of an undergraduate course in managerial accounting.  In order to breakdown the functional silo approach to problem solving that has become the model of traditional business education, applications of shadow accounting, the balanced scorecard (BSC), Triple Bottom-Line (TBL), and other measures are introduced to challenge students to broaden their ideas of the function of the firm and the value that firm creates

Educational Games on File

Even in the best of budgetary times, classroom teachers are often in need of an assortment of educational games for reinforcing learned concepts. The teacher can accumulate files on a variety of such games inexpensively and with a minimum of storage need. The games are prepared on file folders and when not in use store flat in a file drawer or box. The labels for each game are clearly visible so that even the youngsters can retrieve them with little difficulty. The labels can be pictures or symbols for nonreaders and printed titles for children already acquiring recognition skills

The Triple Bottom Line: The Reporting Of Doing Well & Doing Good

Organizations struggle to tell their stories, to communicate the good - and sometimes the bad - they do in the marketplace, in the community, to and for the environment, and in society. Quite clearly, the challenge of telling the companys story is not being met by current corporate reporting practices. In particular, criticism has been directed at the failure of annual reports or other regulatory filings to tell anything about a company's environmental and social performance. Triple bottom-line (TBL) reporting, a term coined by John Elkington in his 1997 book Cannibals with Forks: the Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business, aims to remedy this shortcoming by explicitly considering not only the economic performance of a firm but also the companys environmental and social performance as well. This article gives an overview of the TBL concept and how it is changing the way in which corporations tell their story

Sustainable Mobility: A Look At The Automotive Industry

The purpose of this study is simple. It aims to find the most sustainable car company. As a first step, it explores some common and conflicting definitions and rankings of what it means to be the most sustainable automaker. This study then turns to the sustainability reports issued by the automakers themselves to see if these reports shed light on which company performs best in terms of its economic, environmental, and social dimensions. Particular attention is given to how these reports have evolved over successive iterations. By looking at some of the more objective and quantifiable performance indicators, particularly those which reflect environmental performance, a better understanding of what it means to be a sustainable car company may be achieved

Where\u27s the R in debit?

The common abbreviation for the accounting term debit is a puzzling one: Dr. Today, particularly with our depersonalized treatment of the accounting or bookkeeping debit, there is no obvious clue as to why there is an r in debit at all. An investigation of the history and evolution of the debit in bookkeeping reveals the reason for the abbreviation: a reason almost totally lost without historical perspective. Whereas the accounting debit is now viewed as a technical term, devoid of any value considerations, referring simply to the left side of a journal entry or ledger account, this was not always the case. Originally, debits did have a bad side. They were used to record the debts of the merchant or businessman. Debits were debtors. And the abbreviation for debtor is Dr

The Global Reporting Initiative: What Value is Added?

This paper explores the extent to which the Global Reporting Initiative G3 Reporting Framework adds value to the external reporting of a company’s financial, environmental and social performance. This inquiry takes the form of analyzing the content of the published sustainability reports of well-known companies to compare and contrast the information communicated in these reports.

Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Social Performance & Sustainable Stakeholder Accounting

Disclosures of a corporation’s socially responsible (CSR) activities and measurement of its per-formance in those activities are uneven, inconsistent, and incomparable. Given the absence of re-porting standards, this is not surprising. This paper explores ways to "account for" CSR and presents an example of “sustainable stakeholder accounting” that can be used to integrate corpo-rate social performance (CSP) into the financial statements which provide information for so many economic decisions. It suggests how the development of indices of social responsibility may facilitate analysis of a company's performance by quantifying and objectifying what is clearly a value-laden area. However, this will only be possible if current accounting standards are modified. Indeed, one of the primary objectives of this paper is to advocate changes in current accounting reporting practices so that a various aspects of CSR/CSP are made more transparent and can be more objectively assessed by the stakeholders who are impacted. To accomplish this, the form and substance of these disclosures must have “bottom line” meaning – and these disclosures should be mandated by accounting and securities regulations, not left to the discretion of individual companies