In Control in an Age of Empowerment, Robert Simons explains how to give employees the freedom to innovate while protecting your firm from loose cannons. Using powerful examples, Simons shows how to apply four powerful management "levers" to balance autonomy with control: Traditional diagnostic control systems, Belief systems, Boundary systems, and Interactive control systems. Used in concert, these four levers give you the control you need--without sacrificing the creative thinking your company can't do without. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.

A Practical Guide to Using the Balanced Scorecard performance drivers Nils-Goran Olve, Jan Roy and Magnus Wetter Since the groundbreaking work of Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, the concept of the Balanced Scorecard has achieved increasing popularity in the business world. Previously, many organizations had built their business objectives around financial targets and goals that bore little relation to a long-term strategic vision. Typically, this leaves a gap between the development of a company's strategy and its implementation. The business scorecard, however, provides a more 'balanced view' by looking at not just-financial concerns, but also customers, internal business processes, and learning and growth. But it is not just a system of performance measurement - by focusing on future potential success it can be used as a dynamic management system that reinforces, implements and drives corporate strategy forward. In this book, the authors draw on their extensive experience with scorecard projects to provide a step-by-step method for introducing the Balanced Scorecard into an organization. This is done through the use of some of the most important practical examples in existence, with case studies from ABB, Coca Cola, Electrolux, British Telecom, Nat West, Skandia and Volvo. The desired strategic control system using scorecards that is presented focuses on creating and communicating a total comprehensive picture to all members of the organization from the top down, a long-term view of what the company's strategic objectives really are, how to make use of knowledge gained through experience and the required flexibility of such a system to cope with the fast-changing business environment. This book will provide senior and operational managers, consultants and business academics with a comprehensive view of emerging Balanced Scorecard practice supported by both business advice and a theoretical foundation. Reflections on the relations between the Balanced Scorecard and other areas, such as TQM, information systems and intellectual capital and knowledge management are also made. Business Strategy

Este manual contiene el Real Decreto 1317/2008, de 24 de julio, por el que se aprueba el Plan de contabilidad de las entidades aseguradoras y reaseguradoras y normas sobre la formulación de las cuentas anuales consolidadas de los grupos de entidades aseguradoras y reaseguradoras. Tiene por objeto la adecuación del marco contable de este tipo de entidades, al entorno normativo de las Normas Internaciones de Información Financiera aplicables en la Unión Europea, conforme a lo dispuesto en el Reglamento 1606/2002 del Parlamento Europeo y del Consejo, de 19 de julio de 2002, relativo a la aplicación de las Normas Internacionales de Contabilidad. Dicho texto se estructura en seis partes: marco conceptual de la contabilidad, normas de registro y valoración, cuentas anuales, cuadro de cuentas, definiciones y relaciones contables y normas sobre la formulación de las cuentas anuales consolidadas de los grupos de entidades aseguradoras y reaseguradoras.Se incluye un índice alfabético de subgrupos, cuentas y subcuentas, lo que hace que sea una obra manejable y recomendable para toda aquella persona interesada en la contabilidad de las entidades aseguradoras y reaseguradoras.