Ethical Decision Making: A Mini-Case
Assume you work as an accountant in the merchandising division of a large public company that makes and sells athletic clothing. To encourage the merchandising division to earn as much profit on each individual sale as possible, the division manager’s pay is based, in part, on the division’s gross profit percentage. To encourage control over the division’s operating expenses, the manager’s pay also is based on the division’s net income.
You are currently preparing the division’s financial statements. The division had a good year, with initial (gross) sales revenue of $100,000, cost of goods sold of $50,000, sales returns and allowances of $6,000, sales discounts of $4,000, and salaries and wages expenses of $30,000. (Assume the division does not report income taxes.) The division manager stresses that “it would be in your personal interest“ to classify sales returns and allowances and sales discounts as selling expenses rather than subtract them directly from sales revenue on the division’s income statement. He justifies this “friendly advice” by saying that he’s not asking you to fake the numbers—he just believes that those items are more accurately reported as expenses. Plus, he claims, being a division of a larger company, you don’t have to follow GAAP.
Required:
- 1. Prepare an income statement for the division using the format shown in this chapter for external reporting purposes. Using this income statement, calculate the division’s gross profit percentage.
- 2. Prepare an income statement for the division using the classifications advised by the manager. Using this income statement, calculate the division’s gross profit percentage.
- 3. What reason (other than reporting “more accurately”) might be motivating the manager’s advice to you?
- 4. Do you agree with the manager’s statement that “he’s not asking you to fake the numbers”?
- 5. Do you agree with the manager’s statement about not having to follow GAAP?
- 6. How should you respond to the division manager’s “friendly advice”?
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- Kanye Achebe just became the operations manager of Weston Transportation. Weston transports large crates for online companies and transports containers overseas. Kanye would like to evaluate each divisional manager on a basis similar to segmental reporting required by generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) financial statements contained in annual reports. These data include a presentation of net sales, operating profit and loss before and after taxes, total identifiable assets, and depreciation for segment reported. Kanye thinks that evaluating business division managers by the same criteria as the total company is appropriate. A. Explain why you think the chief financial officer (CFO) disagrees and tells Kanye that publicly reporting information might demotivate managers. B. For better evaluation of the managers, what type of information should Kanye propose that the CFO might accept?arrow_forwardCoulson and Company is a large retail business that has a firm-wide balanced scorecard. Recently, management has discussed the need for the balanced scorecard to be more relevant to each individual department of the company. Specifically, management wants to come up with unique scorecards for its Public Relations and Inventory Management departments. For both departments, management recognizes that properly and efficiently training employees is important. For these purposes, management gathers data on the median training hours per employee and new employee performance review ratings. For the Inventory Management Department, management is focused on reducing stockouts (running out of certain inventory items) and keeping accurate inventory counts. For these purposes, the company tracks the number of back orders and discrepancies between the physical and record counts of inventory, respectively. For the Public Relations Department, management is focused on improving the publics CSR image of the company and attracting new customers. Management measures these objectives using Forbes CSR Rating of Coulson and Company and the number of new customers, respectively. a. Identify the term for Coulson and Companys plan to create unique balanced scorecards for its individual departments. b. Draw the unique balanced scorecards of each department. Identify the departments common and unique measures, and include all the elements of the balanced scorecard that you can in your drawings, given the information provided.arrow_forwardTaylor Speedy has prepared the following list of statements about managerial accounting, financial accounting, and the functions of management. Identify each statement as true or false. Financial accounting centers on providing information to internal users. Staff positions are directly involved in the companys primary revenue-generating activities. Preparation of budgets is part of financial accounting. Managerial accounting applies only to merchandising and manufacturing companies. Both managerial accounting and financial accounting deal with many of the same economic events.arrow_forward
- Analyze Horsepower Hookup, Inc. Horsepower Hookup, Inc., is a large automobile company that specializes in the production of high-powered trucks. The company is determining cost allocations for purposes of performance evaluation. A portion of company bonuses depends on divisions achieving cost management goals. This necessitates highly accurate support department cost allocation. Management has also stated that it has the means to implement as complex a method as necessary. The general manager over the Mid-Size D wants to get a good idea of what factors are driving the costs of the support departments in order to make accurate cost allocations, so finding accurate support department cost drivers is important. Support department costs include Janitorial (163,100) and Security (285,400). The Janitorial costs vary depending on the number of vehicles produced, increasing with larger production volumes. Security costs are fixed based on the size of the lot, and do not change with respect to how many vehicles are in the lot or warehouse. Joint costs involved in producing the trucks before the split-off point where the various makes, models, and colors are produced are 946,000 for the period. All makes, models, and colors sell at relatively similar margins, but the sports models and metallic colors are normally more difficult to produce during the joint production process. a. Which support department cost allocation method (direct, sequential, or reciprocal services) should be used to allocate support department cost? b. What driver would be best for allocating Janitorial costs? c. What driver would be best for allocating Security costs? d. If Janitorial costs were to be allocated based on square footage, and Security costs based on asset value, what percentage of each support departments costs would be allocated to each production department using the sequential method (allocating Security costs first) given the following: e. Should Janitorial and Security costs be considered when evaluating the performance of cost management employees? f. What joint cost allocation method should be used for performance evaluation purposes?arrow_forwardAs manager of department B in MarIeys Manufacturing, based on the costs you identified in the previous exercise for further research, how does this impact the financial performance of your department, and what might be some questions you want to ask or solutions you might propose to Marleys management?arrow_forwardAssume you have been hired by Hilton Hotels and Resorts. As part of your new role in the accounting department, you have been tasked to set up a responsibility accounting structure for the company. As your first task, your supervisor has asked you to give an example of a cost center, profit center, and an investment center within the Hilton organization. Your supervisor is a little unsure of the difference between a profit center and investment center and would like you to explain the difference.arrow_forward
- Grate Care Company specializes in producing products for personal grooming. The company operates six divisions, including the Hair Products Division. Each division is treated as an investment center. Managers are evaluated and rewarded on the basis of ROI performance. Only those managers who produce the best ROIs are selected to receive bonuses and to fill higher-level managerial positions. Fred Olsen, manager of the Hair Products Division, has always been one of the top performers. For the past two years, Freds division has produced the largest ROI; last year, the division earned an operating income of 2.56 million and employed average operating assets valued at 16 million. Fred is pleased with his divisions performance and has been told that if the division does well this year, he will be in line for a headquarters position. For the coming year, Freds division has been promised new capital totaling 1.5 million. Any of the capital not invested by the division will be invested to earn the companys required rate of return (9 percent). After some careful investigation, the marketing and engineering staff recommended that the division invest in equipment that could be used to produce a crimping and waving iron, a product currently not produced by the division. The cost of the equipment was estimated at 1.2 million. The divisions marketing manager estimated operating earnings from the new line to be 156,000 per year. After receiving the proposal and reviewing the potential effects, Fred turned it down. He then wrote a memo to corporate headquarters, indicating that his division would not be able to employ the capital in any new projects within the next eight to 10 months. He did note, however, that he was confident that his marketing and engineering staff would have a project ready by the end of the year. At that time, he would like to have access to the capital. Required: 1. Explain why Fred Olsen turned down the proposal to add the capability of producing a crimping and waving iron. Provide computations to support your reasoning. 2. Compute the effect that the new product line would have on the profitability of the firm as a whole. Should the division have produced the crimping and waving iron? 3. Suppose that the firm used residual income as a measure of divisional performance. Do you think Freds decision might have been different? Why? 4. Explain why a firm like Grate Care might decide to use both residual income and return on investment as measures of performance. 5. Did Fred display ethical behavior when he turned down the investment? In discussing this issue, consider why he refused to allow the investment.arrow_forwardAssume you are the manager of a local Starbucks. What factors do you feel would be relevant to hiring workers (including pay), assuming Starbucks is a decentralized organization?arrow_forwardTwo departments within Cougar Gear Inc. are Production and Sales. Each department has a unique scorecard, as follows: The Production Department scorecard focuses on the learning and growth and internal processes perspectives. The Sales Department scorecard focuses on the learning and growth and customer perspectives. Both scorecards have the learning and growth performance metrics of median training hours per employee and average employee tenure. The Production scorecard has the unique metrics of production time per unit and number of production shutdowns. The Sales scorecard has the unique metrics of percentage of customers who shop again and online customer satisfaction rating. The performance targets for each metric are shown in the tan boxes just under the performance metrics. The actual achieved metrics are shown in the red boxes just below the tan boxes. When evaluating both departments, Cougar Gears management looks at the median training hours per employee and average employee tenure metrics and subsequently decides to give the Sales Department a large bonus while giving the Production Department a minimal bonus. a. Determine and define the type of cognitive bias Cougar Gears management has exhibited in this instance. b. Determine which department would have received the larger bonus had the companys management not been biased in the evaluation. c. Discuss one advantage and one disadvantage of using unique balanced scorecards for different departments or divisions of a company.arrow_forward
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