Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

S. Rao Vallabhaneniis an educator, author, publisher, consultant, and practitioner in the business field, with more than thirty years of management and teaching experience in manufacturing, finance, accounting, auditing, and information technology. He has authored more than fifty books on business.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

All the best practices a manager and an executive need in a one-stop, comprehensive reference

Praise for Corporate Management, Governance, and Ethics Best Practices

"If you want a comprehensive compendium of best practices in corporate governance, risk management, ethical values, quality, process management, credible financial reporting, and related issues like the SOX Act all in one place spanning both breadth and depth, Vallabhaneni's book is the source of insightful thoughts as a reference manual. A must-read and a should-own for all institutions and libraries around the globe; I am pleased I read it and use it in my classes."
Professor Bala V. Balachandran, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

"Mr. Vallabhaneni has an excellent grasp of corporate governance principles. In particular, he shows how these principles can mitigate a broad range of corporate risks."
Steven M. Bragg, author of Accounting Best Practices and Inventory Best Practices

"Professor Vallabhaneni provides an excellent analysis of the corporate governance landscape. His discussion and categorization of risks confronting an organization will be very helpful to boards of directors."
Frederick D. Lipman, President of the Association of Audit Committee Members, Inc. and Partner, Blank Rome LLP

Representing a single and collective voice for the entire business management profession, Corporate Management, Governance, and Ethics Best Practices provides a cohesive framework for organization-wide implementation of the best practices used by today's leading companies and is an authoritative source on best practices covering all functions of a business corporation, including governance and ethics.

Aus dem Klappentext

Corporate Management, Governance, and Ethics Best Practices

Best practices are the processes, practices, and systems identified in public and private organizations that performed exceptionally well and are widely recognized as improving an organization's performance and efficiency in specific areas. Successfully identifying and applying best practices can improve business processes and increase organizational effectiveness. Based on author S. Rao Vallabhaneni's decades of management experience, Corporate Management, Governance, and Ethics Best Practices provides a one-stop, comprehensive reference guide to the best-of-the-best practices for corporate business practitioners and government employees worldwide.

Because every company's resources and budget is different, Corporate Management, Governance, and Ethics Best Practices takes a "big picture" approach, allowing managers and executives to tailor each practice based on organization-specific resource availability as well as management strategies and priorities. Each self-contained chapter begins with an over-view of the topic, a presentation of man- agement's roles and responsibilities, a dis-cussion of core topics, and ends with applicable laws, rules, regulations, standards, and principles.

When implemented properly, these best practices help organizations:

• Increase product sales and service revenues

• Achieve cost, production, and service efficiencies

• Increase effective utilization of financial and nonfinancial resources

• Improve organizational, operational, technical, and financial performance

• Increase the quality of products and services in the marketplace

• Increase market share, profits, and returns

• Adhere to ethical principles and values and comply with all applicable laws, regulations, and standards

• Enjoy a competitive edge in the industry

• Enhance the firm's posture of social responsibility

Within this trove of proven winning strategies, best-in-class employees working for world-class organizations will find a wellspring of information to help them think differently, act radically, discover their own best-of-breed solutions, and implement best practices to prosper and grow their organizations' business continuously and successfully.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Corporate Management, Governance, and Ethics Best Practices

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

(a) OVERVIEW. "Best practices" refers to processes, practices, and systems that are identified in top-performing public and private organizations and are widely recognized as improving the organizations' performance and efficiency in specific areas. Successfully identifying and applying best practices can reduce business expenses and can improve organizational efficiency.

A best practices review or best management-practices review can be applied to a variety of processes, such as payroll, travel administration, employee training, procurement, accounting and budgeting, transportation and distribution, maintenance and repair services, and information technology (IT). The decision to use a best practices review should be made in a larger context that considers the strategic objectives of the organization and then looks at the processes and operating units that contribute to those objectives. Ask questions like:

What drives the costs in a particular process?

Is the process effective in achieving its goals?

An initial step is to determine all the variables that contribute to the expenditures associated with the area. Another early step is to start with the areas that the customers think are of major importance to the organization being reviewed.

Identifying the scope of the process to review is not always easy. It is not always clear where to start and where to stop when one decides to benchmark a process. It is important that the entire process be considered, rather than just part of the process. If an organization fails to capture the entire process, then it is simply pushing costs into other areas of the process or creating an improvement that is inhibited by trying to marry old ways and new ways when the two conflict with each other. However, one cannot look at everything. At least initially, select a process that is about ready to accept change.

(b) BEST PRACTICES METHODOLOGY. Best practices methodology is a relatively new approach to improving business or government operations. Many organizations, in both the public and private sectors, are beginning to recognize that in order to survive in the future, they have to initiate major changes that will make them more productive and reduce costs.

The best practices approach to change, one of several approaches, involves identifying organizations that are widely recognized for major improvements in their performance and efficiency in a specific area, such as inventory management. The processes, practices, and systems identified in these organizations are referred to as best practices and provide a model for other organizations with similar missions and objectives. Frequently, benchmarking is used to gather information on these practices from a number of different organizations, which is then applied to improving operations. Benchmarking is also an effective approach for promoting organizational change. Best practices are intended to radically change and improve organizational processes.

In identifying best practices among organizations, the "benchmarking" technique is frequently used. When benchmarking, an organization (1) determines how leading organizations perform specific processes, (2) compares their methods to its own, and (3) uses the information to improve upon or completely change its processes. Benchmarking is typically an internal process, performed by personnel within an organization who already have a thorough knowledge of the process under review.

During a best practices review, one is forced to consider new approaches. Specifically, one compares how an organization performs functions with how another organization is doing them differently. The different approach may turn out to be a much better way of performing a function. Implementing this better way to perform a process throughout the organization is what allows an organization to make meaningful changes. In identifying best practices among organizations, the "benchmarking" technique is frequently used.

The best practices evaluation will look not only at quantitative data, such as costs, but also at how other processes and factors, such as organizational culture, might be affected by change. There are six elements that any best practices review should include, as described below:

1. Understanding the Process to Be Improved. The first step is to thoroughly understand the process before speaking with people in various organizations. This will help in recognizing opportunities for improvement. Understanding the process will ease analysis by defining a baseline for comparison and providing more focus to questions when making inquiries regarding the best practices identified in other organizations. Further, a good depth of understanding is essential to selecting appropriate companies for comparison. Discussing the process in detail with affected people and flowcharting the process will facilitate data gathering from the comparison organizations and the comparative analysis.

2. Researching to Plan the Review. Preliminary planning and research are key elements in preparing a best-practices review; both must be done before selecting the organizations for comparison. Performing a literature search, researching industry trends, and speaking with consultants, academics, and industry/trade group officials will provide valuable background information on the process under review. It will also provide the names of leading-edge companies and public sector organizations. Other sources for leading-edge companies and names of the people involved include telephone books, company annual reports, and commercial databases.

3. Selecting Appropriate Organizations. After you have reviewed the literature and conducted your discussions with consultants, academics, and industry/trade group officials, you will have compiled a list of many organizations cited as "best" in their respective industries for the process you are reviewing. The next decision is determining how many organizations to visit. There is a tradeoff in selecting organizations. Since visiting too many companies can cause "analysis paralysis," the list should be kept at five. It should not be limited to just one company for the sake of time and convenience. Depending on the process under review, you may want to select companies that are geographically dispersed. One needs to determine the criteria that best meet one's needs. The criteria need not require finding the "best of the best" if the difference in the process is not significant among leading-edge organizations. In these cases, what is important is to find companies that are considered by experts to be among the best at the process under review. Such companies may be able to give you more than the very best, which may be followed with requests to study them. Selecting appropriate organizations to visit is the most important and most difficult element of a best practices review.

4. Collecting Data from Selected Organizations. After you have researched and begun planning your review, you should develop a list of questions to use as a guide for discussions with consultants, academics, and industry/trade group officials. These questions need to be refined after the first interview with a company...