Can Management Accounting Help Aid Associations Make Tough Choices in Haiti?

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-28
Author(s):  
Kip R. Krumwiede ◽  
Gyung H. (Daniel) Paik ◽  
W. Darrell Walden

ABSTRACT Based on an actual situation, this case explores the use of management accounting analysis in a difficult make-or-buy decision in the real world of humanitarian aid. An aid organization produces a specially designed, highly nutritious peanut butter medicine to save the lives of Haiti's malnourished children. The challenge is deciding whether to source the peanuts from Haitian farmers and pay more or from foreign suppliers and pay less. Students perform both quantitative and qualitative cost-benefit, break-even, operating leverage, and product costing analysis. Performance measurement, incentive issues, short-term versus long-term thinking, micro- and macroeconomics, and ethical issues are also considered. The case is best suited for cost accounting and managerial (particularly M.B.A. managerial) accounting courses.

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Jerry D. Shitt ◽  
Sue Yeager Whitt ◽  
David H. Culpepper

The results of a survey of recent managerial and cost accounting textbooks suggest that professional service firms have been largely ignored in cost and managerial accounting courses. With the purpose of identifying possible areas for research, this paper presents several managerial accounting concepts that are typically approached form a manufacturing orientation which could as easily be presented from a service viewpoint.


2020 ◽  
Vol 83 ◽  
pp. 01048
Author(s):  
Juraj Mišún ◽  
Ivana Mišúnová Hudáková

Every single theory is based on some fundamental terms, which can also be used by other, unrelated theories. However, in our case, two related theories use the same basic term. “Controlling” terms are used in management (one of the main management functions) and management accounting (a management subsystem that helps managers to make qualified decisions). This semi-continental problem begun to emerge in the last years, since English has become the main language of scientists, even the coexistence of two controlling terms has lasted for almost half a century. The German controlling term needed an appropriate translation back into English. While the German-speaking authors quietly found other terms for translating, many authors from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) mistakenly assume that English and German “controllings” are equivalents, causing an increase of confusing literature. To solve this problem, we need a clear separation of the two theories and a qualitative prognosis of possible development. In this paper, we used a relatively simple but reliable method for the prognosis, which includes five different scenarios of development. Ultimately, management or managerial accounting is the most widely used translation. Therefore, we assume that in the long term, this term will gain the major position.


2001 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
David E. Platt ◽  
Kristy L. Towry

This case is designed to help students gain a more thorough understanding of activity-based costing (ABC) than is usually obtained in introductory managerial accounting courses. If you have taken such a course, you have probably seen, in general, simple examples of activity-based costing. However, ABC can be more complex than these examples indicate for three reasons: (1) the mechanics of ABC are far more complex than these simple examples indicate; (2) many of the design choices required in an ABC system, which are critical to the cost-benefit decision, are omitted from the simple examples; and (3) without adequate detail, it is hard to see how economic consequences arise from the choice of costing systems. The Pecos Products ABC Design Project (the “project”) addresses these issues by providing a hypothetical company with a detailed business scenario and asking you to help with the cost-system-design decision. To accomplish this, you will have to think about traditional cost system and ABC design issues, delve deeply into the cost system mechanics, and evaluate the benefits (economic consequences) of an ABC system in light of the cost and effort required to create it.


2002 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan J. Richardson

This paper examines the relationship between financial and managerial accounting as reflected in articles, editorials and letters to the editor published in Cost and Management, the Canadian trade magazine for management accountants, between 1926 and 1986. It has been claimed that during this period management accounting techniques lost their relevance to manufacturers, in part, due to the dominance of financial accounting over managerial accounting. This is also the period in which management accounting struggled to become recognized as a profession distinct from financial accounting. The analysis thus focuses on the jurisdictional dispute between financial and managerial accounting and the mechanisms by which managerial accounting was subordinated to financial accounting. The paper identifies the technical, organizational and professional mechanisms used to subordinate managerial accounting. The paper also demonstrates that management accountants were aware of the consequences of their relationship to financial accounting for the relevance of their techniques. Contemporary events suggest that the intersection of financial and managerial accounting remains disputed territory.


Author(s):  
Brad Partridge ◽  
Wayne Hall

Concussion management policies have become a major priority worldwide for sports that involve frequent collisions between participants because repeated head trauma has been associated with long-term cognitive impairments, mental health problems, and some forms of neurological degeneration. A number of concussion management policies have been developed by professional bodies and subsequently adopted by various sporting leagues. These have offered little guidance on how to navigate ethical issues in identifying and managing concussion. This chapter discusses ethical issues that arise in the diagnosis of concussion, debates about the longer-term consequences of repeated concussion injuries, and the design and implementation of policies that aim to prevent and manage concussion injuries in sporting matches.


2009 ◽  
Vol 101 (04) ◽  
pp. 674-681 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimo Franchini ◽  
Annarita Tagliaferri ◽  
Antonio Coppola

SummaryA four-decade clinical experience and recent evidence from randomised controlled studies definitively recognised primary prophylaxis, i.e. the regular infusion of factor concentrates started after the first haemarthrosis and/or before the age of two years, as the first-choice treatment in children with severe haemophilia. The available data clearly show that preventing bleeding since an early age enables to avoid or reduce the clinical impact of muscle-skeletal impairment from haemophilic arthropathy and the related consequences in psycho-social development and quality of life of these patients. In this respect, the aim of secondary prophylaxis, defined as regular long-term treatment started after the age of two years or after two or more joint bleeds, is to avoid (or delay) the progression of arthropathy. The clinical benefits of secondary prophylaxis have been less extensively studied, especially in adolescents and adults; also in the latter better outcomes and quality of life for earlier treatment have been reported. This review summarises evidence from literature and current clinical strategies for prophylactic treatment in patients with severe haemophilia, also focusing on challenges and open issues (optimal regimen and implementation, duration of treatment, long-term adherence and outcomes, cost-benefit ratios) in this setting.


Author(s):  
Sorina Geanina Stanescu ◽  
Ion Cucui ◽  
Constantin Aurelian Ionescu ◽  
Liliana Paschia ◽  
Mihaela Denisa Coman ◽  
...  

The main research objective is to develop a conceptual accounting model to reflect the environmental impact generated by the economic activity of Romania’s entities. In order to identify the current stage of the use of environmental accounting by the Romanian economic entities, the questionnaire used was based on a random sample of 377 entities whose economic activity has a significant impact on the environment. The results suggest the need to develop a model for integrating environmental impact into accounting. The model is based on the description of the technological process and determination of the environmental impact on each activity, stage, or procedure of the technological process, which enterprise will integrate its monetary value in the cost of production and will reflect it in the management accounting system, using specific environmental accounting instruments. The model involves five stages, and by combining internal and external information provided by environmental management accounting is a relevant source for substantiating decisions to promote environmental responsibility in Romanian companies.


Philosophies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 6
Author(s):  
Nadisha-Marie Aliman ◽  
Leon Kester ◽  
Roman Yampolskiy

In the last years, artificial intelligence (AI) safety gained international recognition in the light of heterogeneous safety-critical and ethical issues that risk overshadowing the broad beneficial impacts of AI. In this context, the implementation of AI observatory endeavors represents one key research direction. This paper motivates the need for an inherently transdisciplinary AI observatory approach integrating diverse retrospective and counterfactual views. We delineate aims and limitations while providing hands-on-advice utilizing concrete practical examples. Distinguishing between unintentionally and intentionally triggered AI risks with diverse socio-psycho-technological impacts, we exemplify a retrospective descriptive analysis followed by a retrospective counterfactual risk analysis. Building on these AI observatory tools, we present near-term transdisciplinary guidelines for AI safety. As further contribution, we discuss differentiated and tailored long-term directions through the lens of two disparate modern AI safety paradigms. For simplicity, we refer to these two different paradigms with the terms artificial stupidity (AS) and eternal creativity (EC) respectively. While both AS and EC acknowledge the need for a hybrid cognitive-affective approach to AI safety and overlap with regard to many short-term considerations, they differ fundamentally in the nature of multiple envisaged long-term solution patterns. By compiling relevant underlying contradistinctions, we aim to provide future-oriented incentives for constructive dialectics in practical and theoretical AI safety research.


2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 554-556
Author(s):  
Jason Lesandrini ◽  
Carol O’Connell

Ethical issues in long-term care settings, although having received attention in the literature, have not in our opinion received the appropriate level they require. Thus, we applaud the Cambridge Quarterly for publishing this case. We can attest to the significance of ethical issues arising in long-term care facilities, as Mr. Hope’s case is all too familiar to those practicing in these settings. What is unique about this case is that an actual ethics consult was made in a long-term care setting. We have seen very little in the published literature on the use of ethics structures in long-term care populations. Our experience is that these healthcare settings are ripe for ethical concerns and that providers, patients, families, and staff need/desire ethics resources to actively and preventively address ethical concerns. The popular press has begun to recognize the ethical issues involved in long-term care settings and the need for ethics structures. Recently, in California a nurse refused to initiate CPR for an elderly patient in a senior residence. In that case, the nurse was quoted as saying that the facility had a policy that nurses were not to start CPR for elderly patients.1 Although this case is not exactly the same as that of Mr. Hope, it highlights the need for developing robust ethics program infrastructures in long-term care settings that work toward addressing ethical issues through policy, education, and active consultation.


Author(s):  
Samir Kumar Barua ◽  
Mahendra R. Gujarathi

This case provides an experiential learning opportunity to (a) appreciate the role of professional judgment in accounting policy choices, (b) evaluate the effect of accounting decisions on other business functions, and (c) understand the challenges in transitioning to a new accounting standard. Prestige’s previous auditors were fine with its use of output-based measure (milestones completed) to compute the percentage-of-completion (POC) for its long-term construction contracts. However, the newly appointed auditors recommended Prestige to switch over to input-based measure (costs incurred) to compute POC. Students need to choose the appropriate financial reporting policy considering accounting and non-accounting issues. The case addresses an important context, long-term construction contracts. Although the case setting is in India, it can be used in any country given its GAAP-agnostic nature. The case is best suited for intermediate accounting courses in which the topic of revenue recognition is addressed.


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