The following is a book review of "Economic Value Management: Applications and Techniques" by Eleanor Bloxham. The book was initially published in 2003 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
This book provides a conceptual framework and a high-level introduction to the practice of Economic Value Management, which is a set of methods and metrics that are used to evaluate and predict business performance and strives to provide overview free of the biases introduced by typical accounting-based measures. This book is written for members of the board of directors (especially those who serve on audit committees) and for executive managers who want to build a performance measurement and reporting system that fosters trust between management, the board, shareholders, and the capital markets.
Overall the book is very clearly written, has good flow and examples, and can be read in short order (two short or one long flight). "Economic Value Management" begins by providing a foundation and rationale for a new way of evaluating and predicting business performance. The rationale includes typical tricks and traps of traditional accounting-based measures and the need to move to a system that provides more clarity to all the constituents and stakeholders. The case studies in Part Two (Applications and Techniques) show how the methods and metrics can be put into play and used to make better executive-level decisions. The only criticism that I have for the book is that all of the examples used in the book are somewhat suspect as they are unreferenced and use alias names for the businesses, so it is unclear whether the stories were pulled from thin air or if they are veritable stories.
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