Welcome to the tenth edition of Management Accounting for Decision Makers. This book is
directed primarily at those following an introductory course in management accounting. Many
readers will be studying at a university or college, perhaps majoring in accounting or in another
area, such as business studies, IT, tourism or engineering. Other readers, however, may be
studying independently, perhaps with no qualification in mind.
The book is written in an ‘open learning’ style, which has been adopted because we believe that readers will find it more ‘user-friendly’ than the traditional approach. Whether they are using the book as part of a taught course, or for personal study, we feel that the open learning approach makes it easier for readers to learn.
In writing this book, we have been mindful of the fact that most readers will not have studied management accounting before. We have tried to make the topic accessible to readers in a number of ways. This includes avoiding unnecessary jargon. Where technical terminology is
unavoidable, we have given clear explanations. In Appendix A there In Appendix A there
is a glossary of technical terms, which readers can use to refresh their memory if they come
across a term whose meaning is in doubt. In the book, we also introduce topics gradually,
explaining everything as we go. We have included frequent questions and tasks of various
types to try to help readers to understand the subject fully, in much the same way as a good
lecturer would do in lectures and tutorials. These questions and tasks have been framed in a
way that is designed to encourage readers to help improve their critical thinking. Many of the
questions and tasks require readers to think beyond the material in the text and/or to link the
current topic with material covered earlier in the book. More detail on the nature and use of
these questions and tasks is given in the ‘How to use this book’ section immediately f