GB-519 Measurement and Decision Making Written Assignment

Assessment Description

TASK/ACTIVITY INSTRUCTIONS:
Part A: 4 tasks @ 10 marks each Task 1 (10 marks) (approximately 500 words)
Blake Romney became Chief Executive Officer of Peters Inc. two years ago. At the time, the company was reporting lagging profits, and Blake was brought in to “stir things up.” The company has three divisions, electronics, fibre optics, and plumbing supplies. Blake has no interest in plumbing supplies, and one of the first things he did was to put pressure on his accountants to reallocate some of the company’s fixed costs away from the other two divisions to the plumbing division. This had the effect of causing the plumbing division to report losses during the last two years; in the past it had always reported low, but acceptable, net income.
Blake felt that this reallocation would shine a favourable light on him in front of the board of directors because it meant that the electronics and fibre optics divisions would look like they were improving. Given that these are “businesses of the future,” he believed that the stock market would react favourably to these increases, while not penalizing the poor results of the plumbing division. Without this shift in the allocation of fixed costs, the profits of the electronics and fibre optics divisions would not have improved.

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