Accounting: Information for Decisions

Cunningham et al have added extensive coverage for the role accountants need to play in start-up companies. This is something quite new and exciting to find presented in a managerial accounting textbook. The older textbooks like Horngren were all focused on how you eliminate inefficiences found in the manufacturing process. So what do you do when much of that manufacturing is either contracted out or has moved to China? Outside of Silicon Valley the most needed skill for accountants in new technology companies is in performing their role during the start-up period. The successful completion of this phase is assumed in the older textbooks and dealt with from chapter 10 onwards here. Horngren and others did not really prepare their students for this situation. Cunningham et al have stepped in and dealt with this emerging need in accounting education. The authors should include more material on the nature of the accountants role in technology start-ups. Outside of Silicon Valley the accounting students are relying on people such as the authors to tell them what they might pick up from their working environment if they were working in the Valley. This certainly seems to be the case here in Israel. We have the high-tech companies, but accountants have yet to make the transition to this new way of thinking presented in this textbook.