Dorsey Scott MU Company manufactures and bottles a collection of health-oriented fruity beverages. Dorsey’s CFO. Rozella, recently signed a series of new contracts with several dozen large universities to serve as the sole external beverage supplier on these campuses. Although the company has never internally conducted or externally disclosed any sustainability activities. Dorsey’s CEO. Les, has a strong hunch that the company would be wise to look into the idea of sustainability, given its recent significant growth in the university market. Therefore, Les and Rozella assigned Dorsey’s team of five interns to spend their summer internships creating Dorsey s first corporate sustainability report.
Required:
- 1. CONCEPTUAL CONNECTION Briefly explain the most likely reason(s) that Les believes Dorsey would be wise to begin looking into sustainability at this time.
- 2. CONCEPTUAL CONNECTION List and describe three challenges that the internship team might face in creating Dorsey s first corporate sustainability report.
- 3. CONCEPTUAL CONNECTION List and describe three benefits that Dorsey or its key stakeholders might enjoy as a result of Dorsey creating and issuing its first corporate sustainability report.
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Chapter 13 Solutions
Managerial Accounting: The Cornerstone of Business Decision-Making
- Sunny Nights Inc. is completely powered by the city power grid, but management is considering switching fuel sources in an effort to improve the publics perception of the companys corporate social responsibility. Within the next five years, management wants the company to be completely solar powered and to market this change through company advertising. Upon consulting with Sunny Nights, you have determined that an appropriate course of action is to include this CSR activity as a strategic objective on the companys current balanced scorecard. a. Determine the appropriate performance perspective for the CSR strategic objective. b. Suggest one possible performance metric for the objective. c. Determine an appropriate yearly performance target for the performance metric.arrow_forwardMaxwell Company produces a variety of kitchen appliances, including cooking ranges and dishwashers. Over the past several years, competition has intensified. In order to maintainand perhaps increaseits market share, Maxwells management decided that the overall quality of its products had to be increased. Furthermore, costs needed to be reduced so that the selling prices of its products could be reduced. After some investigation, Maxwell concluded that many of its problems could be traced to the unreliability of the parts that were purchased from outside suppliers. Many of these components failed to work as intended, causing performance problems. Over the years, the company had increased its inspection activity of the final products. If a problem could be detected internally, then it was usually possible to rework the appliance so that the desired performance was achieved. Management also had increased its warranty coverage; warranty work had been increasing over the years. David Haight, president of Maxwell Company, called a meeting with his executive committee. Lee Linsenmeyer, chief engineer; Kit Applegate, controller; and Jeannie Mitchell, purchasing manager, were all in attendance. How to improve the companys competitive position was the meetings topic. The conversation of the meeting was recorded as seen on the following page: DAVID: We need to find a way to improve the quality of our products and at the same time reduce costs. Lee, you said that you have done some research in this area. Would you share your findings? LEE: As you know, a major source of our quality problems relates to the poor quality of the parts we acquire from the outside. We have a lot of different parts, and this adds to the complexity of the problem. What I thought would be helpful would be to redesign our products so that they can use as many interchangeable parts as possible. This will cut down the number of different parts, make it easier to inspect, and cheaper to repair when it comes to warranty work. My engineering staff has already come up with some new designs that will do this for us. JEANNIE: I like this idea. It will simplify the purchasing activity significantly. With fewer parts, I can envision some significant savings for my area. Lee has shown me the designs so I know exactly what parts would be needed. I also have a suggestion. We need to embark on a supplier evaluation program. We have too many suppliers. By reducing the number of different parts, we will need fewer suppliers. And we really dont need to use all the suppliers that produce the parts demanded by the new designs. We should pick suppliers that will work with us and provide the quality of parts that we need. I have done some preliminary research and have identified five suppliers that seem willing to work with us and assure us of the quality we need. Lee may need to send some of his engineers into their plants to make sure that they can do what they are claiming. DAVID: This sounds promising. Kit, can you look over the proposals and their estimates and give us some idea if this approach will save us any money? And if so, how much can we expect to save? KIT: Actually, I am ahead of the game here. Lee and Jeannie have both been in contact with me and have provided me with some estimates on how these actions would affect different activities. I have prepared a handout that includes an activity table revealing what I think are the key activities affected. I have also assembled some tentative information about activity costs. The table gives the current demand and the expected demand after the changes are implemented. With this information, we should be able to assess the expected cost savings. Additionally, the following activity cost data are provided: Purchasing parts: Variable activity cost: 30 per part number; 20 salaried clerks, each earning a 45,000 annual salary. Each clerk is capable of processing orders associated with 100 part numbers. Inspecting parts: Twenty-five inspectors, each earning a salary of 40,000 per year. Each inspector is capable of 2,000 hours of inspection. Reworking products: Variable activity cost: 25 per unit reworked (labor and parts). Warranty: Twenty repair agents, each paid a salary of 35,000 per year. Each repair agent is capable of repairing 500 units per year. Variable activity costs: 15 per product repaired. Required: 1. Compute the total savings possible as reflected by Kits handout. Assume that resource spending is reduced where possible. 2. Explain how redesign and supplier evaluation are linked to the savings computed in Requirement 1. Discuss the importance of recognizing and exploiting internal and external linkages. 3. Identify the organizational and operational activities involved in the strategy being considered by Maxwell Company. What is the relationship between organizational and operational activities?arrow_forwardAt the beginning of the last quarter of 20x1, Youngston, Inc., a consumer products firm, hired Maria Carrillo to take over one of its divisions. The division manufactured small home appliances and was struggling to survive in a very competitive market. Maria immediately requested a projected income statement for 20x1. In response, the controller provided the following statement: After some investigation, Maria soon realized that the products being produced had a serious problem with quality. She once again requested a special study by the controllers office to supply a report on the level of quality costs. By the middle of November, Maria received the following report from the controller: Maria was surprised at the level of quality costs. They represented 30 percent of sales, which was certainly excessive. She knew that the division had to produce high-quality products to survive. The number of defective units produced needed to be reduced dramatically. Thus, Maria decided to pursue a quality-driven turnaround strategy. Revenue growth and cost reduction could both be achieved if quality could be improved. By growing revenues and decreasing costs, profitability could be increased. After meeting with the managers of production, marketing, purchasing, and human resources, Maria made the following decisions, effective immediately (end of November 20x1): a. More will be invested in employee training. Workers will be trained to detect quality problems and empowered to make improvements. Workers will be allowed a bonus of 10 percent of any cost savings produced by their suggested improvements. b. Two design engineers will be hired immediately, with expectations of hiring one or two more within a year. These engineers will be in charge of redesigning processes and products with the objective of improving quality. They will also be given the responsibility of working with selected suppliers to help improve the quality of their products and processes. Design engineers were considered a strategic necessity. c. Implement a new process: evaluation and selection of suppliers. This new process has the objective of selecting a group of suppliers that are willing and capable of providing nondefective components. d. Effective immediately, the division will begin inspecting purchased components. According to production, many of the quality problems are caused by defective components purchased from outside suppliers. Incoming inspection is viewed as a transitional activity. Once the division has developed a group of suppliers capable of delivering nondefective components, this activity will be eliminated. e. Within three years, the goal is to produce products with a defect rate less than 0.10 percent. By reducing the defect rate to this level, marketing is confident that market share will increase by at least 50 percent (as a consequence of increased customer satisfaction). Products with better quality will help establish an improved product image and reputation, allowing the division to capture new customers and increase market share. f. Accounting will be given the charge to install a quality information reporting system. Daily reports on operational quality data (e.g., percentage of defective units), weekly updates of trend graphs (posted throughout the division), and quarterly cost reports are the types of information required. g. To help direct the improvements in quality activities, kaizen costing is to be implemented. For example, for the year 20x1, a kaizen standard of 6 percent of the selling price per unit was set for rework costs, a 25 percent reduction from the current actual cost. To ensure that the quality improvements were directed and translated into concrete financial outcomes, Maria also began to implement a Balanced Scorecard for the division. By the end of 20x2, progress was being made. Sales had increased to 26,000,000, and the kaizen improvements were meeting or beating expectations. For example, rework costs had dropped to 1,500,000. At the end of 20x3, two years after the turnaround quality strategy was implemented, Maria received the following quality cost report: Maria also received an income statement for 20x3: Maria was pleased with the outcomes. Revenues had grown, and costs had been reduced by at least as much as she had projected for the two-year period. Growth next year should be even greater as she was beginning to observe a favorable effect from the higher-quality products. Also, further quality cost reductions should materialize as incoming inspections were showing much higher-quality purchased components. Required: 1. Identify the strategic objectives, classified by the Balanced Scorecard perspective. Next, suggest measures for each objective. 2. Using the results from Requirement 1, describe Marias strategy using a series of if-then statements. Next, prepare a strategy map. 3. Explain how you would evaluate the success of the quality-driven turnaround strategy. What additional information would you like to have for this evaluation? 4. Explain why Maria felt that the Balanced Scorecard would increase the likelihood that the turnaround strategy would actually produce good financial outcomes. 5. Advise Maria on how to encourage her employees to align their actions and behavior with the turnaround strategy.arrow_forward
- Silven Industries, which manufactures and sells a highly successful line of summerlotions and insect repellents, has decided to diversify in order to stabilize salesthroughout the year. A natural area for the company to consider is the production ofwinter lotions and creams to prevent dry and chapped skin.After considerable research, a winter products line has been developed. However,Silven’s president has decided to introduce only one of the new products for this comingwinter. If the product is a success, further expansion in future years will be initiated.The product selected (called Chap-Off) is a lip balm that will be sold in a lipstick-typetube. The product will be sold to wholesalers in boxes of 24 tubes for $14 per box.Because of excess capacity, no additional fixed manufacturing overhead costs will beincurred to produce the product. However, a $130,000 charge for fixed manufacturingoverhead will be absorbed by the product under the company’s absorption costingsystem.Using the…arrow_forwardTesla, the world’s largest carmaker (as determined by market capitalization), understands that their primary target market responds well to brands that focus on social responsibility. Tesla’s senior management has been meeting to devise a global marketing campaign centered on social responsibility. To this end, Tesla decided to hire a consultancy to develop a 9-month plan ending December 31, 2022. Management has asked for a presentation for an initial list of items that would be considered valid elements of a social responsibility marketing plan that would accommodate each of the markets that Tesla competes in. Questions: What type of research would the consultancy conduct to understand each of the wide variety of cultures that the brand competes in? Armed with this researched information, how might the consultancy modify its social responsibility campaigns to accommodate some of the major markets?arrow_forwardEthics and the Manager Richmond. Inc., operates a chain of 44 department stores. Two years ago, the board of directors of Richmond approved a large-scale remodeling of its stores to attract a more upscale clientele. Before finalizing these plans, two stores were remodeled as a test. Linda Perlman, assistant controller, was asked to oversee the financial reporting for these test stores, and she and other management personnel were offered bonuses based on the sales growth and profitability of these stores. While completing the financial reports. Perlman discovered a sizable inventory of outdated goods that should have been discounted for sale or returned to the manufacturer. She discussed the situation with her management colleagues; the consensus was to ignore reporting this inventory as obsolete because reporting it would diminish the financial results and their bonuses. Required: 1. According to the IMA’s Statement of Ethical Professional Practice, would it be ethical for Perlman not…arrow_forward
- Richmond, Inc., operates a chain of 44 department stores. Two years ago, the board of directors of Richmond approved a large-scale remodeling of its stores to attract a more upscale clientele. Before finalizing these plans, two stores were remodeled as a test. Linda Perlman, assistant controller, was asked to oversee the financial reporting for these test stores, and she and other management personnel were offered bonuses based on the sales growth and profitability of these stores. While completing the financial reports, Perlman discovered a sizable inventory of outdated goods that should have been discounted for sale or returned to the manufacturer. She discussed the Situation with her management colleagues; the consensus was to ignore reporting this inventory as obsolete because reporting it would diminish the financial results and their bonuses. Required: According to the IMA’s Statement of Ethical Professional Practice, would it be ethical for Perlman not to report the inventory…arrow_forwardHaglund Department Store is located in the downtown area of a small city. While the store had been profitable for many years, it is facing increasing competition from large national chains that have set up storeson the outskirts of the city. Recently the downtown area has been undergoing revitalization, and the ownersof Haglund Department Store are somewhat optimistic that profitability can be restored.In an attempt to accelerate the return to profitability, management of Haglund Department Store is inthe process of designing a balanced scorecard for the company. Management believes the company shouldfocus on two key problems. First, customers are taking longer and longer to pay the bills they incur usingthe department store’s charge card, and the company has far more bad debts than are normal for the industry. If this problem were solved, the company would have more cash to make much needed renovations.Investigation has revealed that much of the problem with late payments and unpaid…arrow_forwardSince 2005, Modco has a full range of groceries and general merchandise sold through 8,000 retail units and several banners in 15 countries. According to the company’s CEO, Modcos annual report reflects the social and environmental dimensions of its activities and its constant and progressive work toward social responsibility issues. Modco’s 2017 annual report states how its emphasis on sustainability has helped the company to be the retail leader in the market. According to the report, Modco has investment in education, health, commitments to fight hunger, support for local farmers, and access to healthier and affordable food. Students will assume they are a part of research team examining the sustainability reporting and stakeholder relations.arrow_forward
- Carlton's Pizzas is a chain of pizza stores. Pizzas are made fresh in-store, and then delivered to customers by a fleet of drivers. The senior management team has identified the strategic priorities for the business as on-time delivery and product quality. i) If the company is successful in achieving challenging targets for these performance measures, will it also necessarily achieve high profitability? And For each of the strategic priorities, suggest three performance measures.arrow_forwardSilven Industries, which manufactures and sells a highly successful line of summer lotions and insect repellents, has decided to diversify in order to stabilize sales throughout the year. A natural area for the company to consider is the production of winter lotions and creams to prevent dry and chapped skin. After considerable research, a winter products line has been developed. However, Silven’s president has decided to introduce only one of the new products for this coming winter. If the product is a success, further expansion in future years will be initiated. The product selected (called Chap-Off) is a lip balm that will be sold in a lipstick-type tube. The product will be sold to wholesalers in boxes of 24 tubes for $8 per box. Because of excess capacity, no additional fixed manufacturing overhead costs will be incurred to produce the product. However, a $90,000 charge for fixed manufacturing overhead will be absorbed by the product under the company’s absorption costing system.…arrow_forwardSilven Industries, which manufactures and sells a highly successful line of summer lotions and insect repellents, has decided to diversify in order to stabilize sales throughout the year. A natural area for the company to consider is the production of winter lotions and creams to prevent dry and chapped skin. After considerable research, a winter products line has been developed. However, Silven’s president has decided to introduce only one of the new products for this coming winter. If the product is a success, further expansion in future years will be initiated. The product selected (called Chap-Off) is a lip balm that will be sold in a lipstick-type tube. The product will be sold to wholesalers in boxes of 24 tubes for $9 per box. Because of excess capacity, no additional fixed manufacturing overhead costs will be incurred to produce the product. However, a $105,000 charge for fixed manufacturing overhead will be absorbed by the product under the company’s absorption costing…arrow_forward
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