Cost Management: A Strategic Emphasis

Edward J. Blocher is an emeritus professor of accounting at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His undergraduate degree (economics) is from Rice University, his MBA from Tulane University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. Professor Blocher has presented regularly on strategic cost management at the national meetings of both the American Accounting Association (AAA) and the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA). While he is involved in a number of accounting organizations, Professor Blocher has been most continually active in the IMA, where he has been a member of the IMAs Research Foundation. He is a certified management accountant (CMA), has taught review courses for the CMA exam, and has served on the IMAs national education committee. He has supervised or participated in the direction of several doctoral students, many of whom prepared dissertations in management accounting. Professor Blocher is also the author or co-author of several articles in management accounting and in other areas of accounting and has served as associate editor and reviewer for a number of accounting journals. He has a 2009 article in Issues in Accounting Education on the topic of teaching strategic cost management.Putting research and teaching into practice is important to Professor Blocher, who has worked closely with other firms and organizations in developing products, publications, and teaching materials. He was a member of the task force for the IMA that developed a new definition of management accounting in 2008. From 20102014, he served as a member of the joint curriculum task force of the Management Accounting Section (MAS) of the AAA and the IMA, which was charged with the responsibility of developing curriculum recommendations for accounting education. The task force has two recent publications in Issues in Accounting Education. Also, he has provided expert testimony and has consulted with a number of organizations regarding cost management matters.