Strategic financial management

The aim of the CIMA/Loughborough project is to encourage management accountants to "so complement their experience with research that they are able to encapsulate their knowledge into a thesis for the future benefit of the profession, and have the standard of the work and its importance recognised by the granting of a higher degree". This particular thesis opens with a recognition of the rapid rate of environmental change, and the consequent shift of emphasis towards the strategic level of management. It poses the question of the role of the finance function at this level, and demonstrates the inadequacies of the traditional accounting model in this context. Various techniques of adjusting accounts for the effect of changing price levels are looked at, but are all seen to be irrelevant in terms of decision-making and performance-monitoring. [Continues.]