In this website some aspects of modern management and
leadership practices are presented, focusing mainly on:
- Expand the outlook from hindsight to foresight and
to include the entire life-cycle when desirable.
- Organize management around processes and activities.
- Understand the nature of
knowledgee.
- Manage risk and analyze uncertainty realistically.
- Expand the measurement dimensions from economic- and
non-economic measures to also include environmental measures.
These issues, and more, are discussed in two books and
many papers. The
first book concerns the overall framework for a method called
'Activity-Based Cost- and Environmental Management' that facilitates the
three aforementioned points, while the second book is about a
costing method called 'Activity-Based Life-Cycle Costing'. This approach
allows you to look forward and manage costs and risks before they are incurred.
Title: Activity-Based Cost and Environmental Management: A Different
Approach to the ISO 14000 Compliance
Authors:
Jan Emblemsvåg, Ph.D. of
Considium Consulting Group AS
and Professor Bert Bras of Georgia Institute of Technology.
Jan is now working for
Stokke Gruppen AS.
Publisher: Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston
Book information: Hardbound, 317 pages, ISBN 0-7923-7247-6
Book Summary
It is clear that our environment is changing, and not for the better. Companies
cannot ignore environmental issues anymore. Public awareness is growing, legislation is
tightening, and demand for ISO 14000 compliance is rising. For many, however, the field of
environmental management (including ISO 14000) is full of unfamiliar terms, high learning
curves, unproductive approaches, much frustration, and often little action. If
environmental management is to become widely accepted and self-motivated in industry, it
must connect to the basic motivators for business: increased competitiveness and
profitability.
Activity-Based Cost And Environmental Management: A Different Approach to the ISO
14000 Compliance demonstrates how environmental assessment and management can be
performed based upon familiar principles: cost accounting and cost management.
Specifically, this book describes how the well-established Activity-Based Costing and
Management principles can be extended with non-monetary environmental dimensions. The
result is a single, integrated framework called Activity-Based Cost and Environmental
Management that provides the tools and abilities to do both environmental management and
cost management in an integrated manner and according to modern management principles.
This integration of economic and environmental dimensions based upon familiar cost
accounting and management principles makes it easier for decision-makers to not only
include the environment in their decision-making, but also to identify, rank and
prioritize opportunities for win-win situations where competitiveness is increased and
environmental impact reduced at the same time.
In this book, the basic concepts of Activity-Based Cost and Environmental Management are
described, as well as how to make your own integrated Activity-Based Cost and
Environmental Management implementations and how to get the most out of them using
uncertainty distributions, Monte Carlo simulations, and sensitivity charts. Among others,
the book includes chapters on environmental management and Activity-Based Costing, as well
as several real-life case studies from companies for which the authors implemented
Activity-Based Cost and Environmental Management systems.
Endorsement
The Founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board of the world's leading carpet tile
manufacturer Interface, Inc. and Co-Chairman of the President's Council on Sustainable Development
Ray C. Anderson described the method as
... a major step forward in the field of environmental management.
Other
Click
if you want to read a short paper published in 1999 at CIRP's Life-Cycle Engineering
Conference in Kingston, Ontario, to get an idea of what this book has to offer you and
your organization.
Title:
Life-Cycle Costing: Using Activity-Based Costing and Monte Carlo Methods to
Manage Future Costs and Risks
Author:
Jan Emblemsvåg, Ph.D. of
DNV Consulting. Now working for
Ulstein Verft AS.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, New York
Book information: Hardcover, 320 pages, ISBN: 0-471-35885-1
Book Summary
Most cost management efforts concern understanding the past but this
book focuses on future costs, their uncertainties, and risks. It presents a new
approach toward Life Cycle Costing based on the principles of Activity-Based Costing, uncertainty and risk management, and Monte Carlo methods. This book
provides a how to methodology and shows readers that they can perform any type
of cost management better than before if they introduce uncertainty into their
models and exploit to the maximum what happens.
Endorsements
“This book skillfully combines the ideas of life cycle costing and activity
based costing to come up with an approach to effectively manage costs in an
uncertain environment.”
Dr.
Arnold Schneider
Professor of Accounting,
Georgia Institute of Technology
“Traditional cost cutting has always had a backward focus
and created lots of negative reactions - both rational and irrational. In his
new book Jan Emblemsvåg introduces a new forward looking life-cycle approach to
cost management. Employing foresight instead of hindsight puts the focus on
processes, uncertainty and risks and future value creation.
The author’s strong side – besides having a good holistic
concept – is the ability to express himself accurately and clearly on very
complicated and sophisticated theory. Managers, consultants and others with
interest in cost management will be enlightened and inspired by the book – and
no doubt find it of great help in applying the methods and processes that are
presented.
The idea of turning uncertainty into an asset for managers
is quite unique. Making budgeting less data oriented and more risk oriented is
another good idea. The next step now is to make operative approaches and apply
the theory in practical situations!”
Senior Partner John-Erik Stenberg
Considium
Consulting Group AS
Contact Information
- Mail address:
- Jan Emblemsvåg
- Emblemsvåg
-
6013 Ålesund
- Norway
- E-mail:
- jan@emblemsvag.com
-
