山西省2020年ACCA国际会计师报考指南

正确答案：

正确答案：
(ii) The statement of product profitability shows that CTC is forecast to achieve a profit of $2·185 million in 2008 giving a
profit:sales ratio of 11·9%. However, the forecast profit in 2009 is only $22,000 which would give a profit:sales ratio
of just 0·19%! Total sales volume in 2008 is 390,000 units which represent 97·5% utilisation of total annual capacity.
In stark contrast, the total sales volume in 2009 is forecast to be 240,000 units which represents 60% utilisation of
total annual capacity and shows the expected rapid decline in sales volumes of Bruno and Kong products. The rapid
decline in the sales of these two products is only offset to a relatively small extent by increased sales volume from the
Leo product. It is vital that a new product or products with healthy contribution to sales ratios are introduced.
Management should also undertake cost/benefit analyses in order to assess the potential of extending the life of Bruno
and Kong products.

正确答案：
(c) Activity-based management (ABM) is a method of identifying and evaluating activities that a business performs using
activity-based costing to carry out a value chain analysis or a re-engineering initiative to improve strategic and operational
decisions in an organisation. Activity-based costing establishes relationships between overhead costs and activities so that
overhead costs can be more precisely allocated to products, services, or customer segments. Activity-based management
focuses on managing activities to reduce costs and improve customer value.
Kaplan and Cooper (1998) divide ABM into operational ABM and strategic ABM:
Operational ABM is about ‘doing things right’, using ABC information to improve efficiency. Those activities which add value
to the product can be identified and improved. Activities that don’t add value are the ones that need to be reduced to cut costs
without reducing product value.
Strategic ABM is about ‘doing the right things’, using ABC information to decide which products to develop and which
activities to use. This can also be used for customer profitability analysis, identifying which customers are the most profitable
and focusing on them more.
A risk with ABM is that some activities have an implicit value, not necessarily reflected in a financial value added to any
product. For instance a particularly pleasant workplace can help attract and retain the best staff, but may not be identified as
adding value in operational ABM. A customer that represents a loss based on committed activities, but that opens up leads
in a new market, may be identified as a low value customer by a strategic ABM process.
ABM can give middle managers an understanding of costs to other teams to help them make decisions that benefit the whole
organisation, not just their activities’ bottom line.

正确答案：
(c) Examiner’s Note:
The topic of managerial motivation and budgeting has been a subject of discussion for a number of years. There are links
here to the topics of performance measurement and responsibility accounting. Discussion should be focused on the area of
budgets and the budgeting process, as specified in the question.
Setting targets for financial performance
It has been reasonably established that managers respond better in motivation and performance terms to a clearly defined,
quantitative target than to the absence of such targets. However, budget targets must be accepted by the responsible
managers if they are to have any motivational effect. Acceptance of budget targets will depend on several factors, including
the personality of an individual manager and the quality of communication in the budgeting process.
The level of difficulty of the budget target will also influence the level of motivation and performance. Budget targets that are
seen as average or above average will increase motivation and performance up to the point where such targets are seen as
impossible to achieve. Beyond this point, personal desire to achieve a particular level of performance falls off sharply. Careful
thought must therefore go into establishing budget targets, since the best results in motivation and performance terms will
arise from the most difficult goals that individual managers are prepared to accept4.
While budget targets that are seen as too difficult will fail to motivate managers to improve their performance, the same is
true of budget targets that are seen as being too easy. When budget targets are easy, managers are likely to outperform. the
budget but will fail to reach the level of performance that might be expected in the absence of a budget.
One consequence of the need for demanding or difficult budget targets is the frequent reporting of adverse variances. It is
important that these are not used to lay blame in the budgetary control process, since they have a motivational (or planning)
origin rather than an operational origin. Managerial reward systems may need to reward almost achieving, rather than
achieving, budget targets if managers are to be encouraged by receiving financial incentives.
Participation in the budget-setting process
A ‘top-down’ approach to budget setting leads to budgets that are imposed on managers. Where managers within an
organisation are believed to behave in a way that is consistent with McGregor’s Theory X perspective, imposed budgets may
improve performance, since accepting the budget is consistent with reduced responsibility and avoiding work.
It is also possible that acceptance of imposed budgets by managers who are responsible for their implementation and
achievement is diminished because they feel they have not been able to influence budget targets. Such a view is consistent
with McGregor’s Theory Y perspective, which holds that managers naturally seek responsibility and do not need to be tightly
controlled. According to this view, managers respond well to participation in the budget-setting process, since being able to
influence the budget targets for which they will be responsible encourages their acceptance. A participative approach to
budget-setting is also referred to as a ‘bottom-up’ approach.
In practice, many organisations adopt a budget-setting process that contains elements of both approaches, with senior
management providing strategic leadership of the budget-setting process and other management tiers providing input in terms
of identifying what is practical and offering detailed knowledge of their area of the organisation.