1.For upper level undergraduate and MBA Management Accounting courses.
　　An approach to management accounting from the perspective of a business manager.
　　Atkinson presents state-of-the-art thinking on all of the major topics in management accounting including activity-based management, the Balanced Scorecard, target costing, and management control system design. 2.Blending new theories and topics with the fundamentals. While Atkinson maintains its classic managerial accounting focus on planning and decision-making about product mix, customer mix, and capacity, it also includes new discussions relevant to some of the more modern topics in managerial accounting, including ethics, environmental issues, and life cycle costing and approaches. 3.Presenting the concepts in context:
　　(1)Case Studies. Atkinson includes several case studies, as well as Harvard Business School cases. The Harvard Business School case studies present time-driven Activity Based Costing linked to strategy and activity based budgeting. There is also an Institute of Management Accounting case on how Mercedes-Benz used target costing to develop its new SUV.
　　(2)Chapter-Opening Vignettes. Based on a real company that describes realistic business problems, these chapter-opening vignettes help students see how understanding the material in the chapter can help in the business world. 4.Key changes in the sixth edition:
　　(1)Chapters 1-8 include stronger integration of the role behind management accounting and its effect in providing relevant information to decision makers throughout an organization.
　　(2)Chapter 1 introduces the Play-Do-Check-Act cycle as an organizing framework for embedding multiple management accounting processes.
　　(3)Chapter 2 is a repositioned chapter on the Balanced Scorecard and strategy maps.
　　(4)The new Chapter 6: Measuring and Managing Customer Relationships features the strategic importance of understanding and transforming customer profitability through decisions on product features, product mix, order pricing, and customer relationships. The material in this chapter includes the pricing waterfall for measuring customer discounts, promotions and allowances, and an extended treatment of how to derive customer satisfaction and loyalty metrics for a business unit’s Balanced Scorecard.