Welcome to Frank Selto's Homepage

Interests: Cost Accounting, Cost Management, Advanced Management Accounting

Biographical information

Picture 7.jpg Frank H. Selto is Professor of Accounting Emeritus at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado at Boulder, located in Boulder, Colorado USA. He also was a Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia for six years. He taught and conducts research in the area of cost management and control. His current interests focus on Strategic performance management systems. He has completed new textbooks titled: Cost Management 2012 with Marc Wouters (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) and Advanced Management Accounting 2013 with Tom Groot (VU, Amsterdam).

Professor Selto holds MBA and PhD degrees in accounting from the University of Washington, Seattle, WA USA and BS and MS degrees in mechanical engineering, from Gonzaga University and the University of Utah, respectively. He has worked in industry as a mechanical engineer and has consulted with numerous organizations in the areas of management controls, activity-based management and performance measurement. His current interests and efforts are applied to field research studies of firms that are designing and implementing strategic controls and balanced scorecard models of production and business processes.

Selected research papers are available in the section of this homepage labeled Research Activities.

Textbooks, syllabi for the courses that Professor Selto currently teaches are in the section labeled Course Materials. PowerPoint slides are available on request.

I love my teaching and research career, but here are several passions. And some others.

Comments

Thanks for visiting my homepage. I welcome suggestions for improving this page and questions about my classes and research.

For comments or questions on my research and classes, please send e-mail to Frank.Selto@Colorado.edu

This page, all subsidiary pages, and accessible files are Copyright © 2014 by Frank H. Selto, Boulder, Colorado, USA. All these materials may be reproduced in electronic or print form for personal or educational use. Commercial uses of this information are prohibited without my prior, written consent.

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Research Activities

I will periodically revise selected recent publications, working papers, and work in process. My current work is based in part on field observation, archival data, and analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data. Selected articles and papers are:

Behavioral-Economic Nudges and Performance Measurement Models with Mary Malina, 2014
“Management control of global outsourcing.” With T. Groot and R. Montealegre. 2014.
“Relations among measures, result control, and performance measurement models” With M. Malina and H. Norreklit. 2007. Contemporary Accounting Research. Fall: 935 – 982.
“Building Causal Performance Models from Expert Knowledge.” With M. Abernethy, M. Horne, A. Lillis, M. Malina. Management Accounting Research, 2005 16(2): 135-156. Winner of the 2005 David Solomons Prize.
“Choice and Change of Measures in Performance Measurement Models.” With M. Malina. 2004. Management Accounting Research, 15(4): 441-69.
“New Directions in Management Accounting Research: Insights from Practice.” With S. Widener. 2004. Advances in Management Accounting: 1-36.
"Communicating Strategy: An Empirical Study of the Effectiveness of the Balanced Scorecard" with M. Malina, 2001. Journal of Management Accounting Research v. 13: 47-90.

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Course Materials

These texts are written for the global, English speaking market. I use both texts in my U.S. classes with ease. My co-authors use the texts in Germany and The Netherlands. Tsinghua University Press is translating the Advanced text into Chinese. Both can be ordered directly from the publisher or from Amazon.co.uk at prices that are less than half the price of U.S. published textbooks, after shipping. Both texts are accompanied by extensive, Excel-based problems and cases (and solutions).

Cost Management: Strategies for Business Decisions, Marc Wouters and Frank Selto, with Ron Hilton and Mike Maher. McGraw-Hill Higher Education, London, 2012.

Advanced Management Accounting, Tom Groot and Frank Selto. Pearson Education, London, 2013.

Here are my two most recent courses taught. I think these will never be online classes because I choose to assess students’ Excel-based cases – a time consuming but valuable approach. No multiple choice exams for me.

MBAX 6761: Management Accounting for Planning and Control (MBA)

ACCT 5330: Advanced Cost Management

Some early video lectures that demonstrate building models for Monte Carlo simulation: Budgets part 1; Budgets part 2 .

Note that one can more easily build Monte Carlo simulation models by purchasing an Excel add-in. I have found RiskSim by TreePlan.com to be a very efficient solution for students and faculty. Look for the educational pricing page.

Here are some interactive exercises that I developed for my cost management classes. Apologies to advanced programmers: These exercises are a bit primitive, but I like them.

Cost Management Exercises

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