There are three top reviews for Eliyahu Goldratt’s classic book, The Goal:

• The Theory of Constraints Institute review
• A 2001 review of The Goal by Chris Hourigan from the University of South Florida for the Management And Accounting Web (“MAAW”)
• My own Chapter-by-Chapter, Page-by-Page Review

The real star of the Hourigan – MAAW review are the 18 different earlier reviews of other Goldratt and similar throughput accounting work. Those reviews, also all part of the University of South Florida’s accounting department, go back as early as 1990, and are all part of the Management And Accounting Web.

My web site http://maaw.info represents an ongoing project to systematically categorize management and accounting literature from the past 100+ years. The site is freely accessible to anyone on the web and particularly useful to students, researchers, and practitioners interested in accounting.

Dr. Hourigan’s LinkedIn Description of MAAW

Dr. Hourigan has spent hours cataloging and organizing information around management and accounting. The site has many internal references, each going back to a source document on important topics for anyone new to Theory of Constraints and the accounting implications.

Finding these kinds of organized, self-built, treasure troves of expertise is always a pleasant surprise. It is a tribute to Dr. Hourigan’s persistence that he has built out such a deep catalog on such an important subject.

About MAAW

From Dr. Hourigan:

“MAAW is designed around 135 main topics (some fairly broad) that can be accessed from the home page, the main topics page, or the table of contents. At a minimum, each topic includes a main page and bibliography. Many topics also include several other pages of summary information, illustrations, links to other web sites, and a list of questions related to that topic. The site can be used to supplement any course of study in accounting, most accounting research projects, and perhaps most courses and research projects in business and economics as well. For example, broad topics such as Behavioral Issues, Deming, Economics, Ethics, Theories, Research Methodology, Strategy, and Quantitative methods are applicable to a wide audience.”

“There are thousands of entries on the Main Bibliography and topics pages and hundreds of article and book summaries. In addition, thousands of articles from The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Administrative Science Quarterly, The Academy of Management Journal, The Accounting Historians Journal, and Management Science are available via links to the JSTOR database. MAAW also includes bibliographies for many other Journals. These pages include a complete or extensive listing of each journal’s published articles. In addition, the Index of Accounting Systems for Business is a relatively new section that includes articles by type of activity as well as by type of business.”

Related Summaries (All from MAAW):

Corbett, T. 2000. Throughput accounting and activity-based costing: The driving factors behind each methodology. Journal of Cost Management (January/February): 37-45. (Summary).

Goldratt, E. M. 1990. What is this thing called Theory of Constraints. New York: North River Press. (Summary).

Goldratt, E. M. 1990. The Haystack Syndrome: Sifting Information Out of the Data Ocean. New York: North River Press. (Summary).

Goldratt, E. M. 1992. From Cost world to throughput world. Advances In Management Accounting (1): 35-53. (Summary).

Goldratt, E. M., E. Schragenheim and C. A. Ptak. 2000. Necessary But Not Sufficient. New York: North River Press. (Summary).

Hall, R., N. P. Galambos, and M. Karlsson. 1997. Constraint-based profitability analysis: Stepping beyond the Theory of Constraints. Journal of Cost Management (July/August): 6-10. (Summary).

Huff, P. 2001. Using drum-buffer-rope scheduling rather than just-in-time production. Management Accounting Quarterly (Winter): 36-40. (Summary).

Louderback, J. And J. W. Patterson. 1996. Theory of constraints versus traditional management accounting. Accounting Education 1(2): 189-196. (Summary).

Luther, R. and B. O’Donovan. 1998. Cost-volume-profit analysis and the theory of constraints. Journal of Cost Management (September/October): 16-21. (Summary).

Martin, J. R. Not dated. Comparing Dupont’s ROI with Goldratt’s ROI. Management And Accounting Web. ComparingDupontGoldrattROI

Martin, J. R. Not dated. Comparing Traditional Costing, ABC, JIT, and TOC.  Management And Accounting Web. TradABCJITTOC

Martin, J. R. Not dated. Drum-Buffer-Rope System. Management And Accounting Web. DrumBufferRope

Martin, J. R. Not dated. Global measurements of the theory of constraints. Management And Accounting Web. TOCMeasurements

Martin, J. R. Not dated. Goldratt’s dice game or match bowl experiment. Management And Accounting Web. MatchBowlExperiment

Martin, J. R. Not dated. TOC problems and introduction to linear programming.  Management And Accounting Web. TOCProblemsIntroToLP

Rezaee, Z. and R. C. Elmore. 1997. Synchronous manufacturing: Putting the goal to work. Journal of Cost Management (March/April): 6-15. (Summary).

Ruhl, J. M. 1996. An introduction to the theory of constraints. Journal of Cost Management (Summer): 43-48. (Summary).

Westra, D., M. L. Srikanth and M. Kane. 1996. Measuring operational performance in a throughput world. Management Accounting (April): 41-47. (Summary).