Drawing from the collective experience of twenty-five years of research, writing, and teaching in the field, Epstein and Birchard present a new approach to managing corporate accountability, as a function of four essential and interlocking drivers: governance, performance measurement, control systems, and reporting. They identify where and how companies fail in meeting requirements of these four cornerstones, and then build a powerful framework for managers at all levels to improve decision making, clarify and communicate strategy, accelerate feedback and learning, and secure stakeholder loyalty. In this golden age of investment returns, we often think of corporate performance one way: Did it make enough money, or didn't it? But corporations themselves have stopped viewing performance by this one measure, according to Epstein, a long-time researcher, and Birchard, a financial journalist. Instead, companies view the bottom line a number of ways: customer loyalty, employee retention, and shareholder value. The pivot point for these performance measures is accountability, which the authors define as four variables: governance (how outside boards of directors affect the company's actions and strategies); measurement (gauges of a company's performance might include customer satisfaction and/or employee productivity, as well as profit and loss); management systems (how well a company links its long-term strategies with the day-to-day performance of its frontline employees); and reporting, which includes telling everyone who has a stake in the company (employees, customers, shareholders, prospective employees) important information about the company's performance--information that was once seen only by the company's top executives.

 

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