"Cost Management : A Strategic Emphasis" , by Blocher/Stout/Juras/Cokins is dedicated to answering the question : Why Cost Management? Blocher et al. provide the cost management tools and techniques needed to support an organization's competitiveness, improve its performance, and help the organization accomplish its strategy. The text is written to help students understand the broader role of cost accounting in helping an organization succeed and not just the measurement of costs.

    While the text does include coverage of traditional costing topics (e.g., job order costing, process costing, service department cost allocations, and accounting for joint and by products), its primary strength is the linkage of these topics, as well as more contemporary topics, to an organization's strategy. This message is reinforced by a dynamic author team, all four of whom have close ties to current cost management practice.

Part 1 Introduction to Strategy, Cost Management, and Cost Systems
- Cost Management and Strategy
- Implementing Strategy : The Value Chain, the Balanced Scorecard, and the Strategy Map
- Basic Cost Management Concepts
, etc.

Part 2 Planning and Decision Making
- Cost Estimation
- Short-Term Profit Planning : Cost-Volume-Profit (CVP) Analysis
- Strategy and the Master Budget
, etc.

Part 3 Operational-Level Control
- Operational Performance Measurement : Sales, Direct-Cost Variances, and the Role of Nonfinancial Performance Measures
- Operational Performance Measurement : Indirect-Cost Variances and Resource-Capacity Management
- Operational Performance Measurement : Further Analysis of Productivity and Sales
- The Management and Control of Quality

Part 4 Management-Level Control
- Strategic Performance Measurement : Cost Centers, Profit Centers, and the Balanced Scorecard
- Strategic Performance Measurement : Investment Centers
- Management Compensation, Business Analysis, and Business Valuation