Claims the greatest challenge facing the accounting profession is understanding the huge difference between its balance sheet and market valuation. This gap represents the core value of the company ± its intellectual capital represented by brands, products, competitive advantage, patents, trade marks, customer relationships, R&D, human capital etc. The present financial accounting framework is criticised, especially in the USA and Europe, as inadequate and failing to communicate the most important assets and resources of today's business, known as intangible assets or intellectual capital. As a result, there is a huge value gap and distortions between a business entity value as reported in the financial statements with the value put by investors on the stock market or even in merger and acquisitions cases. In the new knowledge economy (k-economy), knowledge rather than physical assets drives innovations, revenue and profits growth, and nurtures new competitive advantages. Looks at the challenges encountered by accounting and where it is heading in the k-economy environment.

With the development of computerization and networking capabilities, there is a significantly enhanced opportunity for sharing information and knowledge world‐wide. For an organization to survive in these turbulent times, there is a great need for its continuous renewal through the introduction of new, innovative products and processes that are based on new knowledge. As a result, the management and measurement of intellectual capital have attracted a lot of attention in recent years both in the media and from academia. This paper assesses different methodologies of intellectual capital measurements, both from a macro valuation standpoint and from the operating perspective. Valuation metrics are suggested and it demonstrates how it is applied to a cross‐section of firms. The paper also shows that there is no conceptual framework commonly accepted and there is a considerable lack of consistency both inter‐country and intra‐country. This paper has taken three firms from distinct industries and has applied human, relational or structural capital metrics depending on which is the most relevant.

The issue of goodwill has been debated in many countries throughout the world. Despite numerous efforts and the existence of accounting standards and exposure drafts issued by various professional bodies internationally, there is yet to be a universally accepted accounting treatment for goodwill. The opinion on this subject differs and changes frequently. The dichotomy of having to preserve prescribed recognition criteria on the one hand and the need to report useful information on the other has led to the many controversial issues debated on the subject of goodwill. This study centres around the international accounting treatment of goodwill in the past, present and future. This study reviewed some of the issues that surrounded the accounting for goodwill where it was found that goodwill accounting had faced many problems. Besides problems, this project also looks into the prospect of the accounting for goodwill in the cyberspace era and emergence of the knowledge-based economy. This study confirms that controversy remains internationally with no solution in sight in the foreseeable future internationally.

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The pharmaceutical industry quite broadly encompasses a large and varied number of logistics and supply chain activities. The industry, as a whole, relies on some standard benchmarking indicators such as months of on-hand inventory and inventory turns; however, the existing metrics do not allow for idiosyncrasies of the industry or provide adequately detailed insight into the key factors that make a pharmaceutical supply chain excellence. Over 75% of the markup on pharmaceutical products takes place at the manufacturer. This causes inventory-carrying costs to increase dramatically once the distribution segments of the supply chain purchase the product. Wholesalers and large pharmacy chains suffer high carrying costs on the final product. Inside pharmaceutical supply chains, companies must also face issues of product expiration and limited shelf lives. Seasonal and short shelf life products such as flu vaccines leave companies without the opportunity to redistribute or reallocate product in order to meet demand.