Evaluation of HeadGear, Inc. Learning Team 8: Sebastiano Mangiafico, Fredy Quintero, Zain Shahid, and Patricia Wood University of Central Florida ACG6425 June 28, 2012 Evaluation of HeadGear, Inc. HeadGear, Inc is a small manufacturer of headphones for use in commercial and personal applications. In recent times, the demand for headphones has grown steadily; however, the company’s profits have grown at a slower rate. John Hurley, the chief executive officer (CEO), is concerned about the falling productivity and increasing costs. John is aware that if the profits continue to decline, the result can negatively affect the stock price of the company. A decline in stock prices will hinder the firm's ability to raise new investment …show more content…
Ethical Issues Even though a business has an economic need to make a profit to stay in business, companies also have a social and ethical responsibility to the stakeholders served. Ethical dilemmas can result from an employee choosing between making a decision in the best interest of an organization compared to making a decision based on a personal agenda. Enron is an example of a business that crossed ethical boundaries for stakeholder agendas by using innovative accounting to falsify the financial earnings of the company that eventually destroyed the company. One of the ethical issues demonstrated by the new COO was his adoption of the absorption-costing model. With the increase of manufacturing units from 120,000 units in 2002 to 175,000 units in 2003, the use of absorption costing allowed the per unit fixed manufacturing overhead cost to decrease in 2003 as compared to 2002. The following shows the comparison between using absorption and variable costing models when calculating the total cost of sales and the operating income. | | Because the absorption-costing model only deducts the fixed manufacturing overhead costs for units sold in the current period, the COO was able to show an increase in profits between 2002 and 2003. What the COO failed to report to the stakeholders on the 2003 income statement was the outstanding fixed manufacturing overhead costs for the remaining 35,000 units
The company should consider ethical aspects of the changes in original budget and actual sales/amount. The main reason behind it is the variances in materials, labor, and overhead. In addition to this, the firm should evaluate the actual variance in the materials, labor, and overhead and after that change in budgets in order to maintain business ethics and to reduce improper changes in budget that is unethical aspect of the business (Delaney & Whittington, 2012).
Organizations that behave ethically are more apt to earn the trust of their customers, employees, and stockholders. Then there are companies that hide the true value of the company from possible investors, customers, employees, and the public at large showing a lack of ethically behavior. This does not all the time included just one company, but a group effort to hide, steal, and mislead everyone for personnel gains. Everyone that deals with any organization expects the upmost ethically behavior on all levels.
In addition, associated with the misapplication of accounting methods, the financial industry has been plagued with one disaster after another involving numerous scandals from top leading American companies. Consequently, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed in 2002 compromising eleven sections that are generated to insure the responsibilities of the company’s managers and executives. This act identifies criminal penalties for particular unethical practices and currently has new policies that a corporation must follow in their financial reporting. The following examples describe some of biggest accounting methods as a result of the greed and the outrage of the ethical and financial misconduct by the senior management of public corporations.
Every business develops a set of ethical principles that they abide by. The business ethical principles intentions: it construct the business certainty in the community , maintain the employees liveried in what the business attempt to have as structural conducts and aid the employees consume principles to make ethical choices that guards the business. In a culture with a diverse assessment structure and augmented judgment visibly by companies with changeable ethics and interests, there appears to be further difficulties on business individuals to make tougher ethical assessments. In our day-to-day performances, we depend on on our ethical principles to monitor us in the correct path and do the correct things. The substance of any efficacious and perpetual business is they segment a mutual ethical matter concentrating on presenting and generating value along with allocating their business values with the citizens they network with on a day-to-day basis.
The problem to be investigated is the application of business ethics. In the business world, ethics are extremely important. Ethics are prime elements that help a business to grow and to become more productive. It is by applying proper business ethics that a business can operate in a moral or ethical business environment and managed to conduct all activities in a manner that maximizes profits while not compromising all other non-economic concerns(Schwab, 1996). Businesses have over the years failed to nurture business ethics in order to fulfill shareholders' interests and to have a culture that is oriented towards profit maximization and high performance(Jennings, 2012; Sims & Felton, 2006). This has led business to have gray areas in their activities. Gray areas are those situations or problems that do not fit exactly into any ethical analysis. These are the activities which may be represented to be immoral as a result of lying and false representations on the part of the business.
Businesses, investors, creditors rely on accounting ethics. The accounting profession requires honesty, consistency with industry standards, and compliance with laws and regulations. The ethics increase the responsibility and integrity of accounting professionals, and public trust. The ethical requirements influence the management behavior and decision-making. The financial scandal of Enron and Arthur Anderson demonstrates the failure of fundamental ethical framework, such as off-balance sheet transactions, misrepresentation of financial statements, inaccurate disclosure, manipulations with earnings, etc. The confronted accounting profession and concern for ethics in businesses forced regulators to revise the conceptual framework of accounting processes.
2. Ethical Issues in Business. It seems that every day in the news we are hearing of new company that has acted at least unethically and possibly illegally in the operation and financial reporting of their company's business dealings. There are many ethical issues in business. One major issue that we see is over and under reporting net income. Companies like to show that every quarter the net income of the business has an increase or profit. In order to show this they adopt unethical or illegal means in the operation and financial reporting. One such method is the indiscriminate use of stock options for employees that enable companies to take employment costs off balance sheet and inflate earnings. With the recent ethical issues we have
Using 2 different companies as example, analyse and evaluate the ethical decision making process within a business setting.
Today’s business world presents numerous ethical issues. In today’s world above board/moral ethics in organizations do not often materialize intuitively. Organization must strive to provide employees with a clear understanding of the overall company vision. This will aid employees in practicing the code of ethics, policies and procedures in the workplace. Companies must be unwavering in continuously delivering the uppermost ethics of provision in which customers, applicants and employees are entitled to under fair business practices. One major core value is to uphold responsible and fair business practices.
Ethical issues have greatly transformed in our lives since the great Enron, Xerox and other huge corporations proposed big profits showing earnings of billions of dollars and yet in reality facing bankruptcy. These corporations faced great trouble with the federals and state for manipulating financial statements. But not only corporations can be blamed on this, accounting firms were involved in this as much as the corporations were. With the business stand point, ethics comprises of principles and standards that guide behavior. Investors, traders, customers, and legal system determine whether a specific action is ethical or unethical. Ethical issue is a vast subject, but we will look at the niche
In an industry overwhelmed with fraud and corruption, Martin Marietta was ready to revamp their reputation to become an ethical company. This concept catapulted a decade of creating, developing, and tweaking an ethics program. Martin Marietta's goal was to maintain a work place with "descent people doing quality work" (page 1). But with this idea came a series of difficult challenges the company needed to overcome. Martin Marietta arose to the challenge and executed an elaborate ethics program. The programs successes were hard to measure at best. A SWOT analysis was designed to reflect upon all aspects of the ethics program. A case study was used to discuss Martin Marietta's
Moreover, this kind of conflict between Philip Anderson and Stuart & Co. is a proof that it is difficult to establish a cost control respecting ethical concerns. Indeed, to realize a cost control management, a firm has to fixed budget targets but these objectives have to be possible and controllable. Perhaps in this case, the objectives fixed for Philip are too difficult if the manager want to respect some virtues during the selling. For its success, an enterprise has to realize a good turnover but this turnover is good only if there are some customers that is why cost control is as important as ethical issues. With its thinking way, the branch of this firm does not keep the focus on its manager (Philip Anderson) and on its customers.
It seems like business morals and ethics are being whisked to the side in lieu of the ever growing demand of higher stock prices, rising budget goals and investor profits. Despite the increased regulation of corporations through legislation, such as, Sarbanes-Oxley, some corporations still find themselves struggling to maintain ethics and codes of conduct within the workplace. In reviewing the failings of the Enron Scandal, one can heed the mistakes that both individual and organization malaise, such as, conflicts of interest, lack of true transparency and the sever lack of moral courage from the government, executive board, senior management and others, contributed to the energy giant’s downfall.
Every organization also has a profession responsibility to conduct business honestly and ethically. Our readings reported, “Experts estimated that U.S. companies lose about $600 billion a year from unethical and criminal behavior” Kinicki and Kreitner (2009). The organization could avoid having ethical issues by meeting the
HeadGear, Inc is a small manufacturer of headphones for use in commercial and personal applications. The HeadGear headphones are known for their outstanding sound quality and light weight, which makes them highly desirable especially in the commercial market for telemarketing firms and similar communication applications, despite the relatively high price. Although demand has grown steadily, profits have grown much more slowly, and John Hurley, the CEO, suspects productivity is falling, and costs are rising out of hand. John is concerned that the decline in profit growth will affect the stock price of the company and inhibit the firm's efforts to raise new investment capital, which will