Cost Management: Measuring, Monitoring, and Motivating Performance (Management Accounting)

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Cost Management" was written in response to changes in the global business environment. Unbridled access to information and intense competition has meant that cost accounting has become an increasingly important tool for managers and accountants alike. Most textbooks focus on content knowledge and then expect students to 'magically' demonstrate skills such as decision-making and critical thinking. "Cost Management" better prepares students for professional success by bridging the gaps between Knowledge, Skills and Abilities. Many students fail to recognize the assumptions, limitations, behavioral implications and qualitative factors that influence managerial decision-making. The dynamic, new author team focuses on cost accounting methods, techniques and the quality of cost accounting information used for decision-making to deliver a thoroughly modern treatment of cost accounting topics.

Cost Management, Problem Solving Guide: Measuring, Monitoring, and Motivating Performance

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Cost Management, Problem Solving Guide: Measuring, Monitoring, and Motivating Performance
Leslie G. Eldenburg , and Susan K. Wolcott
Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0471655651

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Cost Management - Measuring, Monitoring and Motivating Performance

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Cost Management - Measuring, Monitoring and Motivating Performance
LESLIE G. WOLCOTT, SUSAN K. ELDENBURG
Manufacturer: JOHN WILEY AND SONS LTD
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N5A54I

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With forty well structured and easy to follow topics to choose from, each workbook has a wide range of case studies, questions and activities to meet both an individual or organization's training needs. Whether studying for an ILM qualification or looking to enhance the skills of your employees, Super Series provides essential solutions, frameworks and techniques to support management and leadership development.

* Developed by the ILM to support their Level 3 Introductory Certificate and Certificate in First Line Management
* Well-structured and easy to follow
* Fully revised and updated

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In this book, developed by a group of collaborating scholars in bioethics from different European countries, an overview is given of the most salient themes in present-day bioethics. The themes are discussed in order to enable the reader to have an in-depth overview of the state of the art in bioethics. Introductory chapters will guide the reader through the relevant dimensions of a particular area, while subsequent case discussions will help the reader to apply the ethical theories to specific clinical problems and health policy queries. The book focuses on perspectives typical for the European context. This highlights not only particular bioethical themes such as social justice, choices in health care, and health policy (e.g., in post-communist countries), it also emphasizes specific approaches in ethical theory, in relation to Continental philosophies such as phenomenology and hermeneutics.
Because of its articulation of what is typical for the European health care setting as well as for bioethical debate, this book is unique in comparison to existing textbooks in bioethics.
The book is an introductory textbook acquainting the reader with the major issues in present-day health care as well as the various theoretical and practical approaches to clarify these issues.

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Geological Evolution of Antarctica is a collection of papers presented at the Fifth International Symposium on Antarctic Earth Sciences, held under the auspices of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) at Robinson College, Cambridge, 23–28 August 1987. Contributors were invited to address problems related to the tectonic evolution of the Antarctic crust and the palaeoenvironmental evolution of Antartica since the Late Mesozoic. One hundred and seventy two papers and posters were presented, of which one hundred and fifteen are included in this volume. Papers dealing with the crustal development of Antarctica are divided into major geographical areas and arranged in chronostratigraphic order. The first four sections in this group cover the craton, the Transantarctic Mountains, Weddell Sea-Ross Sea region and the Pacific margin; the last addresses aspects of Gondwana break-up. A final group of papers discusses some of the environmental changes arising from the break-up of Gondwana.

Origins and Evolution of the Antarctic Biota (Geological Society Special Publication)

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Origins and Evolution of the Antarctic Biota (Geological Society Special Publication)

Manufacturer: Amer Assn of Petroleum Geologists
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Binding: Hardcover

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Tectonic Evolution of a Forearc Terrane, Southern Scotia Ridge, Antarctica (Special Paper (Geological Society of America))

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Tectonic Evolution of a Forearc Terrane, Southern Scotia Ridge, Antarctica (Special Paper (Geological Society of America))
Ian W. D. Dalziel
Manufacturer: Geological Society of Amer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Digital Speckle Interferometry and Related Techniques provides a single source of information in this rapidly progressing field. Containing contributions from leading experts, it provides the key background information, including the fundamental concepts, techniques, and applications, and presents the major technological progress that has contributed to revitalization in the field over the past fifteen years, including digital speckle photography and digital holographic interferometry.

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These stories, written over the past 13 or so years, after Jim Huston retired from the practice of law, deal with a variety of subjects, characters, and life issues. They represent and contain the author's FURTHER THOUGHTS about the human condition.

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Spymasters is a collection of interviews revealing enlightening perspectives on the covert operations of this powerful, secretive arm of the U.S. government. Here former top-ranking CIA officials shed light on some of the most sensitive issues and p

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CIA Bosses, not Field Officers !!.......2001-04-01

And this is the whole point of this book, nevertheless interesting and well written : Interviewed are only CIA former Directors. So it's really the Bosses pont of view rather than the field operative's one. Mislead by the title, I was not that impressed by the book content. Most of the stories are already old news (some interviews have been published at length), about overtold events such as JFK's assassination or the Bay Of Pigs. If you wanna hear it from the guys doing the actual work, stay away.

I wouldn't have bought it if I had seen it on a shelf. But I guess it's one of the risks of online purchasing.

Interesting!.......2000-05-10

I suppose all I have ever thought of the CIA is the mysterious "wet ops" assassination stuff. This book certainly gave me a LOT more insight!

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A middle of the road biography
Ted Shackley - CIA BS Master
Essential, Incomplete, Deceiving
My(?) Life in the CIA
Omissions, omissions, omissions

Spymaster: My Life in the CIA
Ted Shackley , and Richard A. Finney
Manufacturer: Potomac Books Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1574889222

Book Description

The death of CIA operative Theodore G. "Ted" Shackley in December 2002 triggered an avalanche of obituaries from all over the world, some of them condemnatory. Pundits used such expressions as "heroin trafficking," "training terrorists," "attempts to assassinate Castro," and "Mob connections." More specifically, they charged him with having played a major role in the Chilean military coup of 1973.

But who was the real Ted Shackley? In Spymaster, he has told the story of his entire remarkable career for the first time. With the assistance of fellow former CIA officer Richard A. Finney, he discusses the consequential posts he held in Berlin, Miami, Laos, Vietnam, and Washington, where he was intimately involved in some of the key intelligence operations of the Cold War. During his long career, Shackley ran part of the inter-agency program to overthrow Castro, was chief of station in Vientiane during the CIA's "secret war" against North Vietnam and the Pathet Lao, and was chief of station in Saigon. After his retirement, he remained a controversial figure. In the early eighties, he was falsely charged with complicity in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Ted Shackley's comments on CIA operations in Europe, Cuba, Chile, and Southeast Asia and on the life of a high-stakes spymaster will be the subject of intense scrutiny by all concerned with the fields of intelligence, foreign policy, and postwar U.S. history.

Customer Reviews:

A middle of the road biography.......2007-09-04

In this book Ted Shackley recounts his career as a CIA officer. He spends the bulk of his time writing about his experiences as an administrator in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. There is very little in this memoir that jumps off the page. There are some interesting tidbits about CIA sponsored indiginous para-military ops into China during the 1960's and info about communist China sending a military mission to aid the Pathet Lao command in Sam Neua Province, a location which would later play a camio role in post war MIA-POW issues. Shackley finishes up his watered down biography by minimizing his role in role in the overthrow of Marxist President Allende of Chile. In fact he writes about his involvement in the Allende coup with the circumspection of a man whom does not want his statements read into the transcript against himself at the Haig. Overall Shackley's biography contained too much CYA to be really good.

Ted Shackley - CIA BS Master.......2007-08-07

The first few chapters are good. Shackley, via Finley, does provide a nice outline for understanding the various traditional missions CIA is tasked with. Ted provides a much better view of Bill Harvey than I had ever read before.

The book falls short when Ted writes about the Vietnam War. First, Ted claims to have known nothing about CIA involvement in world heroin distribution. Mr. Shackley claims that it was those awful USAID guys who were the cowboys running drugs in concert with some rogue Laotian's. Anyone who has investigated this mess knows that Edgar "Pop" Buell was in charge of this "assistance" program along with his sidekick alleged CIA Sky operative George Cosgrove. They reported to CIA because they handled the military logistics for the entire Laotian area of operation.

A second area of the book, which I found ingenuous was Ted's alleged hatred for the Phong Hoa or "Pheonix Project." Clean Ted claims that he and all of the good CIA staff found Phoenix "repugnant." Shackley looses sight of the fact that Phoenix was the most successful CIA operation of that war. In contrast, Ted's own Sky operations failed miserably by settling for the establishment of listening posts along the Ho Chi Mihn Trail. If Ted had demanded that NVA convoys be interdicted by ground forces from the Mu Gia Pass to Tchepone, the South Vietnamese might have won that sorry war. If you think I am wrong, ask yourself did Shackley fail to become the director because he wasn't one of the skull and bones or was it because Colby outperformed him during the Vietnam era?

The CIA Laotian operations ended up getting generations of Hmong males killed. By the end of the war, CIA was employing boys so young that they could not operate in the field. CIA called them "Hill Sitters" because they were restricted to defensive positions at base camps. There were so few men that Thai mercenaries were utilized to defend these camps from being overrun. How is that for being repugnant?

Anyway, Only real historians need read this book because only someone with prior knowledge will be able to sift fact from congressional testimony. Read "The Blood Road" by John Prados and "The Politics of Heroin" by Alfred McCoy before you read this book.

Essential, Incomplete, Deceiving.......2006-10-09

I would normally have given this book only three stars for its incompleteness and deception (outlined below), but Ted Shackley was arguably a giant in the clandestine world, and whatever his crimes of omission or commission might have been, I consider this a "must read" for anyone who wishes to move beyond the entry level in the clandestine service. I note with respect that B. Hugh Tovar, himself an accomplished officer, writes the Foreword.

Shackley's career covered all the hotspots, from attempting regime change in Cuba to Berlin Cold War operations to Laos where he excelled while killing tens of thousands, to Viet-Nam where he helped cook the books and ramp up the "report count" (the CIA equivalent of the body count), to Chile to Iran Contra in his afterlife. I pay particular deference to the author's discovery that the combination of US air power for surveillance, mobility, and fire support, with indigenous irregulars, constituted a new form of warfare, one CIA executed well in Afghanistan.

This personal account is grotesquely incomplete. The author has essentially provided a "CIA Lite" account that is not as much fun as Mile Copeland's "Without Cloak or Dagger," not nearly as revelatory as "Blond Ghost" by David Corn, which clearly rankled the author and perhaps drove him to devise this account; and not nearly as detailed as any of the books on Viet-Nam including those by Snepp, De Forest, and of course Allen, whose "None So Blind" is the definitive work. There is no mention of Sam Adams or the author's acquiescence in false force reports demanded by General Westmoreland and the politically-motivated Ambassador. There is also no mention of his role as a recruiter and funder of Zbigniew Brzezinski when the latter was a student here in the USA and Shackley was a Polish-speaking case officer trolling for influentials. The book is yet to be written on the triangle between Shackley, Breziznski, and the mandarins of the extreme right like Dick Cheney, all of whom agreed that the capture of the Caspian Sea energy and the Eurasian region was a priority for the 21st Century.

This personal account is also extremely deceptive. The naive reader who is not widely read or is lacking in professional experience will not be familiar with the very deep literature on drug running and money laundering that was pioneered by CIA officers working out of Laos in the Viet-Nam era, and its subsequent evolution into the Nugen Hand and BCCI money laundering bank activities. Nor is there mention here of the Safari Club or other notorious alliances by select elements of the CIA with South Africa, Argentina, or Saudi Arabia. The account also ignores any reference to the alleged activities of Ted Shackley in running arms to the Contras and bringing drugs back into America via Southern Air Transport, going onwards to Europe to convert the drugs into money and the money into more arms for the Contras (against the will of Congress).

Within this book, the author is at pains to document that he forbade any drug activity to be associated with Air America or any of his operations in Laos, that he conducted spot checks, and on one occasion intercepted and then publicly burned a case of high-grade opium.

He concludes the book with some moderate recommendations for change, but most interestingly for me, as the international proponent for Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), he states on page 282 that the world has changed to such an extent (i.e. commercial access to Russia and China and other previously denied areas) that fully 80% of any secret wish list from 1991 can today be satisfied with overt means, including overt human legal travelers. We agree on this important point, which most of the U.S. Intelligence Community continues to deny.

I read this book with care, in part because as resident in Viet-Nam from 1963-1967, and as a clandestine case officer in Central America during very ugly times, I feel I have walked in this ghost's shadow.

I have three bottom lines:

1) By any standard, this was an extraordinary officer who performed at the very top of the profession as it was then defined. He earned the respect of his Laotian counterparts, and I have absolutely no doubt that those whom he was charged with impressing or serving, were impressed and served.

2) Much of what he did was covert action of questionable legality and value, such as the pin prick sabotage attacks against Cuba, but this was not his fault, it was the fault of an extraordinarily stupid political system in America (Bobby Kennedy exceeded Ollie North on the idiot standard in our world).

3) Finally, we have the question mark. I have no direct knowledge, but I venture to suggest that Ted Shackley, according to multiple accounts in the published literature, was at least indirectly if not directly associated with a number of criminal or extra-legal adventures. I do not believe he profited personally--I believe he felt that whatever he was doing was in the service of his government, but like so many others, I do wonder if he did not confuse loyalty to the system with integrity in preserving the Constitution.

Hence, I believe this book, and the author's life, were one third heroic, one third mundane, and one third highly questionable--not because he lacked honor, but because the system that he served lacked honor.

My(?) Life in the CIA.......2005-09-09

Shackley tells his tale of a career in the CIA. This is not a biography of everything he did and is not intended to be. There are no secrets revealed here. Instead, is an honest look at what life in the CIA was like for Shackley. In the foreword it is suggest that the word 'My' could have been left out of the title. This is a fair assessment of the book.

The book does not read like a novel, but neither it is a dry retelling of historical events. Instead, Shackley uses many different stories to explain different topics such as the use of Air America, Public Relations and Counterintelligence. Details are left to a minimum. Anecdotes such as having to leave behind his daughter's rocking horse because it was too big for the moving allowance or getting overly drunk at a ritual going away party in Laos show the human side of the job.

Why 4 Stars?:
Shackley and Finney tell some good stories and show a lot about what it is like to have a career in the CIA. The book is not meant to be a tell-all of CIA operations and it does not attempt to do so; it fits with the no-nonsense manner that Shackley was known for. Unfortunately, about 50 pages in the middle were just plain boring; my advice to readers is to just barrel through them becuase it gets better and there are a few good pieces of CIA life in there. At times, the book follows chronologically, but there is also quite a bit of jumping around. This weak timeline makes it hard to use as a reference. All in all, it does give an account of a CIA Officer's career and what it was like to be involved in those events.

Omissions, omissions, omissions.......2005-06-14

Shackley could have chosen to enlighten us about what he learned as head of CIA's Miami office in the months before and after the JFK assassination. He chose not to do so. There is no mention of many issues raised in other books that he could have discussed to make a major contribution to history. He never mentions Operation 40, or operations against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (which Oswald made famous by his association with it), or the efforts of anti-Castro operatives to blame Castro for JFK's murder (which he would have known a lot about), or his testimony to the House Assassinations Committee, or his knowledge of operatives, or alleged operatives, accused over the years of complicity in the events preceding JFK's murder. On the other hand, there is ample coverage, with many pictures, of the award ceremonies in his honor, if you are interested in that sort of thing. I wonder why this self-named "Spymaster" bothered to write this book.

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Inside the CIA During The Cold War
Indispensable CIA Golden Age Memoir 1950-1970
People Who Been There, Done That.

CIA SpyMaster
Clarence Ashley
Manufacturer: Pelican Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1589802349

Book Description

Drawing upon newly released CIA files, conversations with KGB defectors, and interviews with key operatives of the CIA and Secret Intelligence Service, "CIA SpyMaster" is the inside story of an Agency legend, George Kisevalter.

This authorized biography is the true tale of the man who engineered the CIA's most dramatic successes in the darkest days of the Cold War. The book takes readers behind the scenes of Kisevalter's extraordinary espionage, including the six-year running of agent Pyotr Popov, the first major source inside Soviet military intelligence. The account explores Kisevalter's instrumental role as case officer in the most successful operation in CIA history: the penetration of the Soviet military hierarchy by GRU colonel Oleg Penkovsky, "the spy who saved the world," during the Cuban missile crisis. And the book explores Kisevalter's fascinating role in the extraction and interrogation of controversial KGB defector Yuri Nosenko, who supervised the KGB file of purported JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

More than a biography, "CIA SpyMaster" is a behind-the-scenes look at spycraft in action, a rare view of what it takes to "live in the black" for years at a time under a fictitious identity, isolated from friends and family.

Customer Reviews:

Inside the CIA During The Cold War.......2007-08-11

Former CIA analyst Ashley here offers an account,vetted and approved by the CIA, of his conversations with Agency legend George Kisevalter, an informal, rumpled operator of Russian heritage who was the case officer for three of the CIA's biggest catches during the Cold War: Pyotr Popov,Oleg Penkovsky, and Yuri Nosenko. While Kisevalter was in his last illness, he shared his thoughts and impressions on the three cases with Ashley.

Of these, I found the Nosenko case to be the most interesting. Earlier this year, the CIA published the previously classified 'Family Jewels' documents -- an over 700-pp. study commissioned by DCI Schlesinger in 1973 of CIA violations of the CIA charter and both U.S. and international law. One of the Family Jewels documents (p. 522 in the study) blandly states that "the Soviet defector YURIY NOSENKO was confined at a CIA facility from April 1964 to September 1967 while efforts were being made to establish whether he was a bona fide defector. Although his present attitude toward the Agency is quite satisfactory, the possibility exists that the press could cause undesirable publicity if it were to uncover the story."

Indeed. Here, the reader will find the inside story of how the CIA subjected defector Nosenko to solitary confinement and essentially torture for several years, on the Agency's "farm" in Virginia, because it suspected him of being a KGB agent planted to dispel U.S. suspicions that the Russian agency was behind President Kennedy's assassination. The result of the CIA's full-throttle investigation of Nosenko -- he was found to be a bona fide defector after 256 interrogations and eventually released -- is less interesting than the intimidating methods that were used to reach this conclusion. He was confined to a windowless cell for two years and subjected to sleep deprivation and, he suspected, involuntary ingestion of drugs and other techniques. There can be little doubt upon reading this account that what can only be called torture has been part of the Agency's toolkit for many years, which makes one wonder if the recently revealed human rights violations at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and "extraordinary rendition" and other violations, have been aberrant or routine practices. (The KUBARK manual which outlines the scientific basis for coercive interrogation practices dates from around the time Nosenko defected). While Kisevalter was too much the Agency insider and loyalist to make waves over the Agency's treatment of Nosenko, the old operator's sadness and disgust about Nosenko's fate are evident in Ashley's account.

The Popov and Penkovsky cases are well-known, and while offering some color and intriguing anecdotes that illustrate Cold War espionage tradecraft at work, Ashley adds little to our knowledge of the results of these cases, other than to note that Penkovsky's revelations led to 10,000 pages of important data and Popov's led to over 1,000 pages. We are led to the conclusion that Popov and Penkovsky revealed much of importance without really being told what it was.

An intriguing but not overly informative inside look at the shadow war of spies, double agents, and defectors during the Cold War.

Indispensable CIA Golden Age Memoir 1950-1970.......2006-10-24

George Kisevalter, one of 50 men awarded the CIA's Trailblazer Award, was by all accounts including this one "one of the good guys", a loyal devoted case officer who managed to get along with everyone by steering clear of agency politics and some of the more wacky individuals and schemes this era brought forth. The author is also a former CIA agent and the book obviously has been vetted and sanctioned, but this second-person memoir, readable and rich with detail, helps fill in important gaps alluded to in such classics as David Martin's "Wilderness of Mirrors" and Tom Mangold's "Cold Warrior" about the rise and fall of famed DCI James Jesus Angleton. Kisevalter at least gives passing reference and acknowledgement to the damage done by Angleton in his relentness mole witchhunts and is modest about his own critical role in finally securing the release and redemption of KGB defector Yuri Nosenko, who was secretly incarcerated for about three years because previous defector Anatoly Golitsyn convinced Angleton that Nosenko was a Russian provocateur or plant. About all he has to say about William King Harvey was that he too like everyone else in their circle drank copiously, and there is also some material about King's famous Berlin tunnel the Russians all along knew was being built, due to their English mole George Blake. Most of the book centers on how Kisevalter, of Russian descent, earlier had "handled" two of the most significant Russian defectors, the KGB's Petr Popov and Oleg Penkovsky, who mainly through their own carelessness were caught and executed by the Russians (the author comments on rumors they both were cremated alive as a warning to their cohorts, although Kisevalter tends to discount this.) This is a most significant text in Cold War espionage history, not to be missed.

People Who Been There, Done That........2004-11-05

It's only when the books come out that you can begin to understand what's been happening in our Government. And this is an excellent example. Here a knowledgeable insider writes a biography of the ultimate insider. The author Clarence Ashley was an analyst for the CIA working on Soviet strategic missile capabilities and preparing national intelligence estimates.

George Kisevalter was a top case officer who ran two of the most important spy operations in the Soviet Union. He began working in intelligence activities during World War II and continued until his retirement in 1970, during this time he became as espionage genius. This book provides a behind-the-scenes look at spycraft in action, from dead drops and cutoffs to multilayered ciphers, the KGB's secret "spydust," and everything in between. It should become one of the classic books on the US-Soviet rivalry during the Cold War.

CIA Spymaster.(Book Review) : An article from: Military Review

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CIA Spymaster.(Book Review) : An article from: Military Review
Andrew R. Marvin
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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This digital document is an article from Military Review, published by Thomson Gale on July 1, 2005. The length of the article is 434 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: CIA Spymaster.(Book Review)
Author: Andrew R. Marvin
Publication: Military Review (Magazine/Journal)
Date: July 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 85 Issue: 4 Page: 104(1)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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This book serves as a bridge between biomechanics and the practice of sport. By providing a detailed analysis of movement, it helps readers understand the important factors for maximizing performance. Valuable coverage is provided on the general characteristics of bones, joints, and muscles, as well as guidelines for flexibility and strength training that provide a firm theoretical framework for effective training. From this basis, the book explores the anatomy function of different parts of the body and examines the types of movement important in sports activities.

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