Ramji Balakrishnan is the Carlson-KPMG Professor of Accounting and the Director of the RSM McGladrey Institute for Accounting Research and Education at the University of Iowa. Dr. Balakrishnan has a B.Sc. in Statistics from the University of Madras in 1977, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad in 1979, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1986. He is a Certified Management Accountant and is a recipient of the Robert Beyer Bronze Medal. He joined the University of Iowa in 1986 and has been there since except for a year at Georgia State University. A top-rated teacher and researcher, Dr. Balakrishnan has published his research in premier journals such as The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Contemporary Accounting Research, Management Science, Journal of Management Accounting Research and Accounting Horizons. Along with Dr. Sivaramakrishnan, he won the 2003 Best Paper award for notable contribution to the management accounting literature. Dr. Balakrishnan serves on several Editorial Boards and has served as Associate Editor. He has taught managerial accounting at the undergraduate, graduate and doctoral levels, and has published several teaching cases. He was the President of the Management Accounting Section of the AAA for 2005-2006.

Konduru “Shiva” Sivaramakrishnan is currently a Professor and C.T. Bauer Endowed Chair in Accounting at the C.T. Bauer College of Business, University of Houston. He received his BTech in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology 1977, Madras, an MBA from Xavier Institute, Jamshedpur, India, in 1982, and a Ph.D. in Accounting and Information Systems from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University in 1989. Prior to his current position, he was a tenured Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon University, and Professor and Philip Ljungdahl Chair in Accounting at Texas A&M University. Dr. Sivaramakrishnan has significant research and teaching accomplishments. His research has appeared in premier journals such as The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Contemporary Accounting Research, Management Science, Journal of Management Accounting Research, Accounting Horizons, Journal of Accounting and Economics, and Review of Financial Studies. Along with Dr. Ramji Balakrishnan, he won the 2003 Best Paper award for notable contribution to the management accounting literature. Shiva serves on several editorial boards, and is currently an Associate Editor of the Journal of Management Accounting Research. He has won numerous awards for teaching excellence at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

Geoffrey B. Sprinkle is an Associate Professor, Whirlpool Faculty Fellow, and Chair of the Honors Program at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. Dr. Sprinkle has both B.S. and M.S. degrees in Accounting from Arizona State University, and his Ph.D. from The University of Iowa. Geoff is a Certified Public Accountant, earning the Gold Medal in the state of Arizona on the May, 1989 CPA exam and the Elijah Watts Sells award nationally. He primarily teaches managerial accounting to undergraduates and is the recipient of numerous school-wide and university-level teaching awards. Dr. Sprinkle’s writings focus on motivation and coordination problems within organizations, including performance-evaluation and reward systems. His work has been published in journals such as The Accounting Review, The American Economic Review, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Journal of Accounting Research, Behavioral Research in Accounting, Issues in Accounting Education, and The Journal of Management Accounting Research. He also currently serves on the Editorial Boards of The Accounting Review, The British Accounting Review, Accounting, Organizations and Society, and The Journal of Management Accounting Research.

Most managerial accounting texts emphasize the mechanics of managerial accounting. While important, mechanics are not enough. To solve business problems, students need to understand how managerial accounting can improve decision-making, and when and where a particular tool or technique is appropriate.

Balakrishnan’s Managerial Accounting 1st edition presents accounting information in the context of business decision making. It combines the traditional topics of managerial accounting with a strategic framework that shows students how to construct decision models and measure information. By linking business decisions with accounting information students will be motivated to learn and make more informed decisions. Balakrishnan will appeal to courses where there is a true focus on decision making and accounting is placed within a business context.