A Disastrous Development project

In 2004, Marin country in California decided to replace its ageing financial management, payroll, and Human Resources systems with a modern SAP enterprise resources planning system. The country solicited proposals from various companies to act as software consultants on the implementation. Thirteen companies, including oracle, PeopleSoft, and SAP, submitted proposals. In April 2005 the country selected Deloitte consulting based on the firms representations concerning its in- depth knowledge of SAP systems and the extensive experience of its consultants.

From 2005 to 2009, Marin Country paid increasing consulting fees to Deloitte as its staff grappled with serious fiscal problems. Essentially, the staff could not program the SAP system to perform even routine financial functions such as payroll and accounts receivable. A grand jury probe concluded that the system had cost taxpayers $28.6 million as of April 2009.

At that time, Marin Country voted to stop the ongoing SAP project acknowledging that it had wasted some $30 million on software and related implementation services from Deloitte.

The Marin Country information systems and technology group conclude that fixing the Deloitte-instlled SAP system would cost nearly 25 percent more over a 10 year period than implementing a new system.

In 2010, Marin country filed a complaint alleging that Deloitte's representations were fraudulent. The complaint accused Deloitte of using the country SAP project as a training ground to provide young consultant with public sector SAP experience, at the country's expense. It further charged that Deloitte intentionally failed to disclose its lack of SAP and public sector skills; withheld information about critical project risks: falsely represented to the country that SAP system was ready to "go live" as originally planned: conducted inadequate testing; and concealed the fact that ist had failed to perform necessary testing , thereby ensuring that system defects would remain hidden prior to the go-live date.Finally, the country maintained that, although it had paid substantial consulting fees to Deloitte, the system continued to have crippling problems.

Deloitte filed a counterclaim over the country failure to pay more than $550000 in fees and interest. The company maintained that it had fulfilled all of its obligations under the contract, as evidenced by the fact that all of Deloitte's work was approved by the country officials who were responsible for overseeing the project.

In December 2010, Marin Country sued Deloitte and two SAP subsidiaries, alleging that Deloitte had "engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity designed to designed to defraud the country of more than $20 million, The country lawsuit also names as defendant Ernest Culver, a former country employee who served as director on the SAP project. The country alleged that Culver interviewed for jobs at Deloitte and SAP, where he now works in SAP's public services division, It further claimed that during the SAP project, Culver "was approving Deloitte's deficient work on the project, approving payment, and causing Marin Country to enter into new contracts with Deloitte and SAP public services, Inc.

In late December 2011, a judge ruled that Marin Country failed to allege sufficient facts to bring a racketeering claim against SAP under the terms of the federal Racketeer Influenced and corrupt organisations Act ( RICO). However, he also ruled that Marin Country could fly an amended complaint. The judge further found that Marin Country hd alleged sufficient facts to bring a "plausible" bribery claim against SAP with aspect to Culver. Finally, the judge denied SAP's motion to dismiss claims against against its SAP America division.

In mid January 2012, Marin Country filed an amended complaint in federal court related to its actions against SAP, Deloitte Consulting, and Ernest Culver. The president of. the Main Country Board of supervisors stated that the board is committed to ensuring accountability for its taxpayers.

1- debate the lawsuit from the point of view of Deloitte and SAP.

2- Debate the lawsuit from the point of view of Marin Country.

In 2004, real estate broker Richard Davis called an A&E television executive about partnering on a? new reality show called Flip This House. Davis said he would undertake the financial risks of purchas- ing and later reselling the real estate and he and the network would split the net profits. Davis received confirmation from the network director over the phone and later with three other executives. The network never paid Davis and claimed no agree- ment was made. The district court found on behalf of Davis, and the network appealed. The appellate court stipulated that two facts must be true to find on behalf of Davis: first, that Davis reasonably believed that an agreement was made during the phone conversations and, second, that such a belief would be made by an objectively reasonable per- son. How do you think the court decided? [Davis v. A&E Television, 422 Fed. Appx. 199, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 7382.]

Buckler Company manufactures desks with vinyl tops. In 2004, a 1,000 desk production run cost for the vinyl used per Model S desk is $27.00 based on 12 square feet of vinyl at a cost of $2.25 per square foot. A production run of 1,000 desks in 2003 resulted in the usage of 12,600 square feet of vinyl at a cost of $2.00 per square foot, a total cost of $25,200.

Resulting from the above production run what is the material volume variance ______, the materials efficiency variance_____, and the materials price variance ______?

100 words for each Question please

1. What accounting standard in 2004 caused stock options to decline as the primary source of non-cash compensation? Why?

2. Does compensation expense from stock options meet the definition of an expense as discussed in SFAC 6? Why?

3. Do you think compensation expense from stock options should be recognized as an expense? Choose one position, and support it.

(Gilson, et al., 2015) posited that establishing trust, which is one of the major factors of project success in virtual teams, is much more difficult to achieve. Concurrently, Katzenbach & Smith, (2004) suggests that placing team members physically together for roughly a week on project start-up will aid in building trust and cohesiveness. So are we arguing that the antidote to project failure due to impermanence of virtual teams is to build trust?

The Great Lakes Maritime Institute is a private not-for-profit institution preparing cadets for careers in commercial shipping and includes instruction in piloting, navigation, maritime law, and other fields.

1. The Institute began the year with the following account balances:

2. The Institute received an unrestricted operating grant of $75,000 from the Maritime Shipping Association, a trade association for commercial shipping firms. Additionally, the Institute received unrestricted gifts of $10,000.

3. The deferred revenue appearing on the beginning of the year trial balance represents the portion of summer school tuition received in the previous academic year that relates to classes held in the current year.

4. Students were billed for tuition and fees of $500,000 and room and board of $190,000. A total of $350,000 was received on student accounts throughout the year.

5. The Institute received $110,000 of Pell Grants during the academic year. These amounts were immediately applied to student accounts for amounts due for tuition and fees.

6. Students are awarded academic scholarships of $150,000, which are applied to their accounts. Additionally, several other students are hired by the Institute to work in the Institute’s dining hall (auxiliary enterprise). As part of their compensation for working, tuition in the amount of $25,000 is waived.

7. The $250,000 restricted cash balance at the beginning of the year was donated for a new training ship. During the year an additional $250,000 donation was received.

8. The Institute signed a long-term note payable for $200,000. These funds, together with the restricted cash, were used to buy the training ship. The training ship’s expenses are classified as instruction.

9. During the year, $100,000 of cash and pledges for an additional $200,000 were received as a result of fund-raising campaigns to enhance the Institute’s endowment. By the terms of the agreement, such contributions are to remain permanently in the endowment. The $100,000 was immediately used to purchase additional investments.

10. By terms of the endowment agreement, interest and dividends received on the investments are restricted for need-based scholarships. Gains or losses from changes in the fair value of the investments, however, are not distributed but remain in the endowment. During the year, $27,000 of interest and dividends were received on endowment investments. At year-end, the fair value of the investments had increased by $4,000.

11. Expenses totaling $685,000 for salaries, supplies, utilities, and other items to be paid in cash are approved for payment through accounts payable. A total of $460,000 of outstanding accounts payable were paid by year-end. Although both GASB and FASB permit classification by natural category, the functional categories appearing below are recommended by NACUBO (amounts are assumed).

Instruction Expense .......................... $300,000

Research Expense .............................. 100,000

Auxiliary Enterprise Expense ................ 160,000

Institutional Support Expense ................ 125,000

12. Included in the expenses recorded in the previous transactions are $125,000 incurred under federal and state government reimbursement type grants. Bills were sent to the granting agencies, and $106,500 was received by the end of the year.

Adjusting entries:

13. The note payable was dated April 1, 2017. Interest is paid annually on March 31. The Institute accrued 3 months of interest at 6 percent.

14. Each year, a portion of the amount received as summer school tuition is deferred to the next academic year. The amount to be deferred is determined to be $7,500.

15. Depreciation expense of $165,000 is recorded on buildings and equipment. The expense is allocated to functional areas on the basis of actual equipment in use and square footage for buildings (amounts assumed).

Instruction Expense ........................... $75,000

Research Expense ........................... 30,000

Auxiliary Enterprise Expense .............. 35,000

Institutional Support Expense ............. 25,000

Question - Prepare journal entries recording the events above for the year ending DECEMBER 31, 2017

Vanguard Method as opposed to the traditional managerial thinking typically found in
many organisations ( Jaaron and Backhouse, 2012).
The Vanguard Method embraces the principle that employees need to think, analyse,
judge, and make decisions on the work on hands. Therefore, team members training is
not the focus in the preparation process for this kind of job, it is actually educating them
on “why” a failure happen and then finding ways to eliminate it from the system. To
accommodate for the requirements of the Vanguard Method, managers’ role shifts from
command-and-control to supporters. This keeps managers very close to their employees
to interact with their work when necessary. Bhat et al. (2012) provide a constructive view
about the interactive leadership style and organisational learning. According to them, the
capacity of an organisation to learn how to learn, to change old ways of doing things, and
to produce original knowledge is positively related to interactive leadership styles. Due to
this type of relationship and due to the whole service processes being owned by team
members, the structure of the organisation changes. The organisation becomes
organically structured ( Jaaron and Backhouse, 2014).
The Vanguard Method in practice
The above philosophy usually follows three main practical steps of “check-plan-do” for
implementation. These steps are summarised in Table II.
Check. This stage aims at understanding the system and why it behaves in such a
way that failure demand is achieved. A specially formed team, called the check team,
from the workplace collates information about what customers expect and want from
the organisation and what matters to them most, they need to be able to use views of
different people involved in the problematic system to build the “real situation”
(Checkland, 1995). Once the team understands the type of demand received and how
capable the system is to respond to it, it can start to map the flow of processes in the
system. For this purpose, a visual representation of each operation carried out in the
workplace is developed as a flow chart. Identification of waste (actions not adding any
value from the customer’s point of view) present in the service operations flow is then

carried out (Seddon, 2008). All processes classified as waste are marked in red on the
process flow chart. While processes that add value from a customer’s point of view are
marked in green.
Plan. This stage starts with redesigning the processes flow charts taking into
account what has been learned by considering the customer “wants” and then mapping
out the new service system design. Typically, this stage is focussed on minimising
non-value adding activities from a customer point of view. The final step in the “plan”
process is to build performance measures and the future system success criterion. This
is usually how good employees are in creating a value demand and the percentage of
value demand out of the total demand received ( Jaaron and Backhouse, 2012).
Do. At this stage the new design is used in an experimental environment with the
check team using the new model after it has been discussed with the people doing
the work. The new processes are induced gradually with careful observation of both
employees’ reaction to it and customers feedback. The processes are tested,
re-designed, and re-tested again to make sure that customers get the best possible
service before going fully live. This is much slower process than the check phase as the
slogan at this stage is to “do it right rather than do it quick” ( Jackson et al., 2008).
The Vanguard Method cycle starts with the “check” stage in order to show business
managers the failings of their current system, and to provide them with a solid evidence
for the need to change the way they think and manage things ( Jackson et al., 2008).
To ensure continuous improvement of the new system, the check-plan-do cycle is a
continuous cycle (Seddon, 2008; Jackson et al., 2008). It is, therefore, a learning system
by itself: the process of acquiring knowledge and taking action to improve the situation
is continuous ( Jackson et al., 2008). In addition to continuously altering business
processes to improve the service offered, the Vanguard Method cycle involves the
identification of new demands coming in to the service department. This is followed by
designing new processes to ensure dealing with new demands as value demands
(Seddon, 2008).
4. Research methodology
A case study approach is adopted in this research inquiry in order to build an
understanding of the nature of the research phenomena (Voss et al., 2002). Case studies
have the advantage of being able to answer questions like “what”, “how”, and “why”
(Yin, 2009). This accommodates the type of question presented at the beginning of this
paper. Two case studies were chosen with the help of “extreme case sampling”
technique (Patton, 2002; Creswell, 2004) that displayed evidence of full employment of
the Vanguard Method in their logistics service operations. An earlier research work
conducted with the help of the Vanguard Method consultant of these two case studies
helped researchers in confirming that the Vanguard Method is fully employed in their
logistics operations, and also ensured easy access to both case studies.
According to Aastrup and Halldórsson (2008), the use of case studies in logistics
management research is an enabler for the causal depth required for understanding the
real domain of logistics operations and its performance. Case study research design
typically has the unique strength in providing a full range of evidence through the use
of multi-sources of data, which can achieve data triangulation (Voss et al., 2002). For
this purpose, the mixed methods design (Tashakkori and Teddlie, 1998) is used as the
technique for conducting the research process. Three different sources of data
collection methods are used in the two case studies; these are semi-structured

What is the particularity of vanguard method? (1point)

Why we need this method in logistics? (1 point)

Modigliani and Miller (M&M) hypothesized that both dividend policy and capital structure policy are irrelevant in determining the value of a firm. Outline the arguments they used to reach their positions, including the assumptions underlying those arguments. With reference to relevant academic literature, discuss at least one reason why the M&M hypotheses might not hold in practice for BOTH dividend and capital structure policy.

Imagine you were conducting research on the relationship between academic performance (e.g., better grades) and different levels of loudness of music (interval scale) while studying.

How would you design the study using a correlational design?

How would you design the study using a quasi-experimental design?

How would you design the study using an experimental design?