Strategic Management Accounting and applying it

Strategic Management Accounting and applying it With the rapid development of the global economy, traditional management accounting has been difficult to meet the business strategic management and requirements. Strategic Management Accounting(SMA) for the modern enterprise is of great significance. However, it is a new techniques and approaches. Although strategic management accounting has been developed over 20 years, the SMA is still debatable. In addition, a number of scholars have experienced to define what SMA is, however, the opinions of the scholars is still not yet able to be generalized. Yet, strategic management accounting is still at the exploratory stage. Management accounting plays a crucial role in the business world. It provides important advice in order to make decision for the firms in the western society. The costs of offering excellent products strategically need to be fully integrated into the enterprise cost system and being reported by these systems. Management accounting helps monitoring the performance of the management. Therefore, the customers can then be securely kept in the same market. This could also be helpful on understanding the market in a better way. Strategic management market aims to obtain the information of the rivals in the same market; this provides support to their business when making decision since the owner could adjust their budget plan according the reports of the strategic management market. Strategic management accounting is recently developed in management accounting. It involved in planning, control and requires financial information. In the strategic management planning and control systems, R.N.Anthony believes that there are two different oriented processes which are externally and internally. Externally oriented process is a financial accounting. Moreover, an internally oriented process is including strategic planning, management control and operational control. During the strategic planning process, it is the role of formulating strategy and it emphasis on planning. Planning defines aims, objectives and targets of organizations and also does formulation, evaluation and selection of policies, strategies, tactics and actions to achieve them. The orientation is planning outside the organization which is relating to the organizations environment. Secondly, after strategic planning, management control would be followed. The main function of this process is implementing strategy which can be a part of the planning. In the final stage, operational control is mainly responsible for controlling however also performing the tasks as well as planning. In this process it ensure that resources and obtained and used effectively and efficiently to achieve organizational goals and procedures adhered to or appropriate remedial action taken. It normally occurs within the organization. Strategy orientated accounting complements the traditional concerns of the West accounting. It focuses on the additional costs in order to maintain competitive advantages of enterprises of actual and potential rivals. It focuses on the cost impact enterprise products and marketing strategies and it can be seen as an essence for success in todays meeting the challenges of an increasingly global market. Generally speaking, such re-orientation is another license management accounting focused on the value of consumer generated relative to its competitors. It also helps monitoring the companys performance in the market variables using a series of strategic decisions over the horizon which would be long enough to achieve the strategic plan. These concepts form the core of the new concept of SMA. In addition, there are 12 strategic management accounting practices. They are competitive position monitoring, strategic pricing, competitor performance appraisal, competitor cost assessment, strat egic costing, value-chain costing, brand value monitoring brand value budgeting, attribute costing, quality costing, life-cycle costing and target costing. However, the main methods in SMA which are strategic costing, target costing and product life-cycle. Although there are a lot of practices, there is still of a lower usage and recognized by a couple of organizations. In 1981, Ken Simmonds has firstly proposed the strategic management accounting, he developed the SMA definition. After his speech, SMA has been concerned day by day. In the speech, he mentioned to collect management accounting information about a business and the competitors for the uses in developing and monitoring the business strategy. He argues that management accounting should be more outward looking and should help the emphasis to place upon relative levels and trends in real costs and prices, cash flow, market share and stewardship of the resources available to the business. It can be developed and controlled the enterprise strategic. Ken Simmonds suggested that profits are not from internal efficiencies but from the companys competitive position in its market. He raised several ideas for the application of SMA in the business. He stressed the importance of the learning curve with respect to achieve strategic advantage by forecasting cost reductions and thus selling price reductions of competitors. He also drew attention to the importance of early experience to the new product as a meaning to give a unique advantage over competitors. Major competitor should be able to reduce the sales price of the products which should further increase its production and enhance its market share; which eventually force some competitors to leave the industry. Secondly, Simmonds shows that the cost-volume-profit relationship of competitors could predict the price response and management accounting functions to help assessing the cost structure of each major competitor and relating this to their prices. In addition to handling costs and prices, Simmonds concentrated on volume and market share by monitoring the movement of the market share as the main products, companies can see if it is acquired or lost status and competitors will show different strength in the market share. Including detailed information on the market, management accounting report will help to enable more strategic management accounting-related. Simmonds suggested that the market share of the statements may be included in managed accounts. He believes that SMA will develop in management accounting in the future. One of the main advocates of Strategic Management Accounting is M.E. Porter(1985). His argument on strategic management is considered as the important information. Porter mentions a two pronged approach. First, he assessed various aspects of the industrys long-term profitability. He believes the five competitive forces will contribute to strategic balance. This is a threat to new entrants, substitute products or services enter the market, competition among existing institutions within the industry, bargaining power of suppliers and consumers. These five forces fully reflect the competitiveness of many enterprises in an increasingly competitive. However, Porter has also raised the question of the relative position of the enterprise in the industry. This issue is important because it affects the ability of enterprises to create profits above or below the industry average. Returns may be higher than average to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. This is achieved by three basic generic strategies which are cost leadership, differentiation and focus. Cost leadership means that companies intended to serve as the lowest cost of production in the industries. This is achieved by economies of scale; capital of the experience curve effect, tight cost control and cost minimization. Also, the company aims to provide a number of different levels of product and service value to customers. It can generate a premium price. This is the differentiation part. Focus is another part of the bargaining power which concerns about the cost and differentiation focus. Porter mentioned that the value chain is needed to determine the future of the practice of strategic management accounting. Value is the customer willing to pay which is a function of the image products. In the value chain, there are nine elements. Some of these cost drivers may be controllable. The nine elements of the value chain can also be separated as either support activities or main activities. For the support activities, they are firm infrastructure, human resources, technology development and procurement. And the main activities are inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales and services. For example, Internal value chain analysis is the objectives of promoting enterprises to eliminate useless operations and reduce waste. The factory analyses the operating level step by step. The main reason is to focus on the market and customer. The operations and the activities of the business-internal price chain analysis enable the cost management of enterprises to maintain the basic operating level, and explore each layer of worth operations, eliminating useless operations. The value of Competitors chain analysis can identify the merits and shortcomings in the company. The conclusion of the market and competitors analysis that compared to the competitors on the market, production quality and diversification may not have too much effect. If the strategic can improve the quality or diversification in product to enhance competitiveness, it would be hard to achieve. On the other hand, if firm blindly relying on low prices to gain market share, it will lead to greater losses. In the analysis, the impact of the cost drivers on each of the elements must be assessed by efforts. Also, there must be a satisfactory margin which produced by the cost of the nine elements. Once this is completed, manager must try to make analysis of their own competitors in the same way. Strategic advantage will be able to establish if the elements of the total cost is less than competitors. It is necessary to adopt a more positive attitude to assess if the profit margins higher than those of competition. If not, it is needed to develop strategies to achieve the low cost advantage by controlling the cost drivers. The cost savings would lead to a reduction on costs or improve productivity. Marketing, sales and service costs may be reduced more efficiently, if the reduction in external fault. An obvious example provides a good customer support services to the public. If a Volkswagen breaks down occurs, while the car is in a warranty period, the rescue vehicles comes out and fix it. If it cannot be fixed, and then provide replacement. This is would be good way handle but the cost would be expensive (C.DRURY, 2008). Shank based on Porter (1985) proposed three generic strategies in order to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Shank also mentions the needs for management accounting to support the enterprises competitive strategy and clarify two different types of competitive strategy the first one is cost leadership and product differentiation. The second one is demand different cost analysis perspective. For example, standard product cost is likely to be a very important tool for management control in the company that pursuing a cost leadership strategy in a mature commodity business. On the contrary, standard product cost is probably not important after the differentiation strategy of enterprises. With the market-driven, there is rapidly changing and fast-growing business. A companys pursuit of product differentiation strategy may require more information than on the cost of the leading about new product innovation, design cycles, research and development expenditures and marketing cost analysis. The difference between the cost leadership and product differentiation which depend on the primary strategic thrust of the firm. Recently, Professor Bromwich(1994) further discusses strategic management accounting and definition of strategic management accounting such as the provision analysis of financial information on the firms product markets, competitors costs, cost structures, the monitoring of the enterprises strategies and those of its competitors in these markets over a number of periods. Bromwich found that SMA is a development of management accounting. This new techniques needed to be further discussed by the accountants in the future. Moreover, Bromwich mentioned that the role of accounting is going to extend in two directions when adding the strategic perspective to traditional management accounting. First, in strategic cost analysis, costs need to integrated into it and thus align costs with strategy. Secondly, in a fairly general way, the cost structure in competitors businesses and to record the changes over time. To achieve this, Bromwich also highlights this distinction identifying two domina nt approaches to SMA. One seeks to cost the product attributes offered by a companys goods. It is to attract customers. The other approach is to cost the functions in the value chain which provide value to the customer. (Bromwich and Bhimani ,1994) In the cost leadership strategy development trends, as well as obsolete the traditional cost accounting. SMA focus is based on the benefits and it is doubtful for the standard costing performance measurement; suspected the use of flexible manufacturing costs, budget control, a worship of the budget; strict adherence to the traditional product cost pricing decisions; one to consider the cost of competitors; the absence of formal consideration of the marketing costs. Roslender (1995) determine the target cost as a domain within strategic management accounting. This is the reason why focus on the external part and this is a market-oriented approach for product pricing and cost management. In addition, it involves the proliferation of management accounting throughout the organization and active participation of staff in a broad range of management functions. Their goal is to achieve the target cost, including the identification, evaluation and use of cost functional analysis of the product attributes and research opportunities to reduce costs throughout the value chain. Moreover, a recent contribution to the role of SMA, emphasizing the management accounting in the development and support the overall competitive strategy of an organization is the Balanced Scorecard. The purpose of the Balanced Scorecard is to encourage behavior consistent with organizational strategy. It includes a comprehensive framework for performance measurement to clarify, com munication and management strategy. (Kaplan and Norton, 1992). He sees SMA as an approach that to account for strategic positioning by the trials to integrate the views from the previous marketing texts into management accounting. Robin Roslender and Susan J.Hart mentions that SMA is intimately associated with both management accounting and marketing management because SMA is on a strategic level who attends to change in the environment outside the enterprise but not limited to this one part of the enterprise, SMA explore the whole industry value chain in the business information and improve the enterprises economic environment. It emphasis that enterprise development and environmental change are consistent, in order to achieve the optimal effectiveness of industry, SMA requires marketing management to collect the information of competitors. The management accountants collect, compare, and analyze the information. The analysis of SMA is depending on the information from marketing management. It is controversial that if it is necessary for the management accountants to handle to the marketing information or the marketing management can obtain the information with their own tool. Innes (1998) believes that strategic management accounting for the provision of information to support strategic decision-making in enterprise. Strategic decision-making usually involves in a long-term period, there is a significant impact on the organization, even though they may have an internal element, and they also have external factors. This definition was introduced that provide information in order to support an organizations principal long-term decisions, such as the use of activity-based costing information, provide the relevant information product structure, the introduction and abandonment decisions are the domain of SMA. This view is support by Cooper and Kaplan (1988) who state that strategic accounting techniques are designed to support the entire organizations competitive strategy. Generally speaking, the power of using information technology is to develop more sophisticated product and service costs. Despite strategic management accounting has received, there is still no comprehensive conceptual framework of what strategic management accounting (Tomkins and Carr, 1996). For example, Coad(1996) states that SMA is an emerging field whose boundaries are loose and there is still no unified view of what it is or how it might develop. The existing literature in the field is both disparate and disjointed (Coad, 1996:332). There is an exception such the survey which conducted by Guilding et al. (2000). The survey sample included 312 large companies. Guilding et al. found that recognition of what is difficult to determine the composition of the strategic management of generally accepted accounting practice. According to the review of the literature, they identified 12 strategic management accounting practices including value-chain costing, strategic costing, target cost, life-cycle costing, attribute costing etc. These are being used to determine the practice, it is a must demonstrate one or more of the following characteristics: the environment and market position focus on competitors; and long-term, forward-looking direction. At the end of the experiment, Guilding et al concluded that 12 strategic management accounting practices are of relatively low usage, there are two factors that should not dismiss their potential. First of all, all the evaluation of SMA practices may be significantly higher than expected utilization of the advantages of scoring points. Secondly, there are still many companies have abandoned the usages of the SMA. These findings showed that there is a difference between the neediness and the actual reports conducted. It finds that there the practicing accountants do not familiar with the usage of the SMA. This gives supports to the findings of Tomkins and Carrs (1996) while they believed that the SMA is ill-defined. In addition, it is still lacking of the strategic management accounting consensus. (Lord, 1996) stated that a number of strands have been used to describe the strategic management accounting. It magnifies the internal focus of traditional management accounting and the external information to competitors. The linkage between the strategic position which decided by the companies and the anticipated emphasis on management accounting and lastly obtaining competitive advantage by interpreting methods to reduce costs or to boost the varieties of the companies goods by exploiting the relationship between the value chains and generalizing the cost drivers. In conclusion Strategic management accounting is recently developed in management accounting. It involved in planning, control and requires financial information. Nevertheless, SMA have not formed a unified knowledge. While some firms may have heard SMA. They may lack for a clear understanding in SMA. Although SMA has lots of different views from various authors. For example, Simmonds is the earliest to introduce the strategic management accounting. He mentions to collect information on business competitors. Than Bormwich has further information SMA is not only to collect information . It still need to Research and competitors on their own competitive advantage and value creation process and research a long-term decision-making cycle in the enterprise perspective, for the marketing of these products and services give enterprises the total revenue. In addition, Porter identified 3 generic strategies in SMA to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. .However ,Innes (1998) believe that strategic management accounting for the provision of information to support strategic decision-making and Cooper and Kaplan (1988) views that Strategic Accounting technology is designed to support the entire organizations competitive strategy to develop more sophisticated products and services costs . On the other hand,lord (1996) identified SMA not only analysis external competitor information but also extend the main point of traditional management accounting. They are all authors who hold different evidence to support their own mind in SMA, so SMA is totally confide, it is remains a mystery .,In my opinion, the main reason of SMA occurs because Economic is developing very fast and SMA is reclamation and atone for traditional management accounting in a new environment. However,SMA has many of obstacles in developing process such as enterprise keep continue to apply the SMA in the practical application and do adjustment and innovation , thereby it can promote the development of SMA application to make it update. So I believe that Although SMA lack of consistent theory at this moment , it will be a big management accounting develop in the future. Bibliographies: Bromwich, M. Accounting information for strategic excellence Bromwich, M.,1990 The case for strategic management accounting : the role of accounting information for strategy in competitive markets.Accounting Organization and Society, Vol 15, No  ½ , pp.27-46 Cadez, S.,2008 An exploratory investigation of an integrated contingency model of strategic management accounting ,Accounting, Organizations and Society,33,pp.836-863 Drury,C. 2008, Management Costing Accounting, 7th ed. , London: South-Western. Horngren,C. T. ,1999,Management and cost accounting London: Prentice Hall, 1999 Lucey,T.,1988 Management accounting 2nd ed. London: DP Publications Roslender,R. and Hart,S.,2003 In search of strategic management accounting : theoretical and field study perspectives .Management Accounting Research 14 , pp.255-279 Ryan, B.,1998, Strategic Accounting for Management 5th ed ,Australia: Thomson Learning Tillmann, K.,2008 Strategic management accounting and sense-making in a multinational company, Management Accounting Research ,19,pp.80-102 Wright, D.,1996 Management accounting London: Longman

The Percept of Pain Essay -- Biology Essays Research Papers

The Percept of Pain: Where does it come from? In class we have discussed the concept of pain, concluding that a conflict between what the brain anticipates occurring and what actually occurs has the potential to cause the perception of pain. Furthermore, it was suggested that genetics might have a role in the experience of pain, particularly when applied to the discussion of phantom limb pain. However, I found these inferences a bit unsatisfying and walked away with more questions than answers. Where does chronic pain come into the picture? Why is a stimulus that is painful for one person not for another? And the question that puzzled me the most: how, from a neurobiological perspective, can an individual experience pain in her arm if she was born without one? Pain, a component of the somatosensory system, is defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage" (1). The perception of pain serves as a defense system to maintain homeostasis, warning of injury that should be avoided and/or treated. Injured limbs actually inhibit voluntary movement to promote necessary healing processed (2). So essential is the painful response that those individuals born with congenital pain insensitivity do not react to pain, often resulting in severe, permanent tissue damage, and even premature death. A crucial concept in the definition of pain is that it is indeed a perception, therefore involving the brain's rumination and elaboration on corresponding input. This may be paralleled to another sensory perception, vision. Although the optic nerve head should cause a "hole" in an individual's... ...ally cynical about notions that are not physiologically observable, I am surprisingly excited by the idea of a neuromatrix and look forward to rethinking my pervious understandings of the nervous system's workings. It may be interesting to see how the I-function is involved with this process and why pain treatments such as biofeedback have been known to produce positive results. References This paper reflects the research and thoughts of a student at the time the paper was written for a course at Bryn Mawr College. Like other materials on Serendip, it is not intended to be "authoritative" but rather to help others further develop their own explorations. Web links were active as of the time the paper was posted but are not updated. Contribute Thoughts | Search Serendip for Other Papers | Serendip Home Page http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/cgi-bin/comments

Machiavelli’s Pyschological Game in “The Prince”

Machiavelli's â€Å"The Prince†: By Any Means Necessary Part 15 of Machiavelli's The Prince, entitled Of the Things for Which Men, and Especially Princes, Are Praised or Blamed, states that, in order for a man to maintain control of a government and better that territory, he must engage in certain actions that may be deemed immoral by the public he serves. Machiavelli argues a valid point, that the nature of man is twofold, encompassing good and evil, right and wrong. The effectiveness of his argument, however, relies on the fact that the person reading his essay is an objective observer of human nature. Not leaving this to chance, Machiavelli plays a psychological game with the reader in order to convince them of his argument. Machiavelli prefaces his thesis with commentary that attempts to place the reader in a subordinate state-of-mind. He confesses to the reader that he fears sounding presumptuous for writing about a subject covered many times before by others and differing from their opinion in the matter. This statement places the author at the mercy of the reader and prepares them to hear an idea that may not be popular. Having been asked forgiveness or the pride of the author, the reader drops barriers that he may have against arguments driven by ego and opens his mind to Machiavelli on a personal, sincere level. By placing himself at the feet of the reader, Machiavelli puts himself and his argument in a position of power. He wastes no time in using this power to gain more control over the reader. In the next sentence he states that his intention is to create an outline for behavior in public office † of use to those who understand†. This statement compels the reader to agree with the points that the trustworthy, orthright Machiavelli argues, or be relegated the ranks of those ignorant dullards that do not understand. Machiavelli then presents his thesis, that a ruler must use both good and evil in order to maintain his power over the state. The reader has almost no choice but to accept this idea before any proof has been given. With the reader in the palm of his hand, Machiavelli needs only to make a very general argument of his point to convince the reader of its validity. The author states that there are actions for which a prince is either praised or blamed. He lists many examples of good qualities and their opposing attitudes. Instead of labeling them good and evil, however, Machiavelli titles them imaginary and real. By calling the good traits and the leader who possesses them imaginary, he removes the bite that the mention of evil doing may have on the reader. Removing this emotional punch makes his thesis, that evil behavior is necessary to properly rule, obvious. Machiavelli applies the rules he sets out for successful management of a nation to his own writing. He is cautious not to offend the reader ith a statement that is too specific. He manipulates the mind of the reader in order to quell his emotions and make him more accepting of his opinion. He seems weak when he is most powerful and seems powerful when he has no legs to stand on. He is cautious and polite when his foe's defenses are up and attacks with all of his resources at his foe's weaknesses. Machiavelli writes a strongly convincing essay. The proof for his opinion lies not only in the words he speaks but in the flow and believability of the work itself through the utilization of the very techniques he exhorts.

Bps Rebranding After The Us Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill 2010

BP’s Rebranding After the US Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill 2010 A brand is an organisation, product or service which has created an emotional connection with their consumers in order for them to favour their brand over their competitors. It is incredibly important for brands to keep up their image and one little thing could change the global perception of a business. It takes a lot to maintain a brand image that has been built up over a long period of time and even more to regain it if that reputation is lost. Brands are created through various different aspects such as their visuals, tone of voice, advertising, actions and reputation. The combination of these will leave their consumers with long lasting emotions and perceptions of a particular brand and will effect whether they support a business or not and whether they would favour or avoid it. When a brand looses their image it can cost a lot of money and time to rebrand to prevent complete failure of the product or service. I will be writing this essay on the powerful rebranding of BP oil and gas supplies and how they overcame the crisis of the US oil spill. The oil spill happened on the 20th April 2010 and had a huge effect on the company’s image, reputation and success. The incident effected the brands image which meant consumers started favouring other gas and oil brands as BP no longer had the long lasting reliability that the public chose them for. The company was founded in 1908 after William D’Arcy gambled aShow MoreRelatedBp s Rebranding After The Us Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill 20101792 Words   |  8 PagesBP’s Rebranding After The US Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill 2010 A brand is an organisation, product or service which has created an emotional connection with their consumers in order for them to favour their brand over their competitors. It is incredibly important for brands to keep up their image and one little thing could change the global perception of a business. It takes a lot to maintain a brand image that has been built up over a long period of time and even more to regain it if that reputationRead MoreEssay on BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico3115 Words   |  13 Pages An oil spill of 4.9 million barrels, which happened in 2010, created not only turmoil for the environment, but caused the economy to take a great hit from the loss of an important raw material. Transocean were the owners of the oil rig drilling on behalf of BP, who were the ones at fault for the spill. This event caused a stir in both the government and non-governmental organizations, because of the extensive damage that it caused. Federal investigations were put under way to determine theRead MoreAre There Any Aspects of Bp’s Ethical Culture That Could Have Contributed to the Gulf Coast Oil Spill Disaster?8553 Words   |  35 PagesBP Gulf Coast Disaster and Recovery INTRODUCTION BP, formerly British Petroleum and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, has experienced a lot of ups and downs over its hundred-year history—from nearly bankrupting its founder William D’Arcy to becoming one of the world’s largest energy companies. BP has also experienced its fair share of controversies regarding business practices, environmental damage, and hazards to workers. It and all other large energy companies have come under fire for releasing hugeRead MoreCompany Valuation Report for Bp20320 Words   |  82 Pagesc. is an energy company with an upstream business of extracting crude oil and downstream business of providing processed energy to companies. It is listed in both the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) based in the United States of America and the London Stock Exchange (LSE). BP is based in London and they carry out oil prospecting extraction and retail its product in more than 70 countries. Out of the companies operating in the oil industry , the biggest two competitor of BP is ExxonMobil and ChevronRead MoreMedia vs Creative Strategy in Advertising2505 Words   |  11 Pagescreative strategy is BP’s rebranding campaign. In 2003, they adopted a new image and tagline â€Å"Beyond Petroleum† in an effort to rebrand itself as an environmentally responsible company. The strategic brand positioning, with a new visual and creative outlook, seemed like a considerable success with BP being considered one of the most recalled brands in the 2000s (Greyser, 2010). However, the image it created was nothing but negative. The campaign did not seem to correspond with BP’s record – they have