Week 6 Asia Pacific Ltd started operating on 1 July 2017 with 12 employees. Three years later all of those employees were still with the company. On 1 July 2019 the company hired 15 more people but by 30 June 2020 only 10 of those employed at the beginning of that year were still employed by Asia Pacific Ltd. All employees are entitled to 13 weeks’ long-service leave after a conditional period of 10 years of employment with Asia Pacific Ltd. At 30 June 2020 Asia Pacific Ltd estimates the following: The aggregate annual salaries of all employees hired on 1 July 2017 is now $1,200,000. The aggregate annual salaries of all current employees hired on 1 July 2019 is now $800,000. The probability that employees hired on 1 July 2017 will continue to be employed for the duration of the conditional period is 40 per cent. The probability that employees hired on 1 July 2019 will continue to be employed for the duration of the conditional period is 20 per cent. Salaries are expected to increase indefinitely at 1 per cent per annum. The interest rates on high-quality corporate bonds are as follows: Corporate bonds maturing in seven years 6% Corporate bonds maturing in eight years 8% Corporate bonds maturing in nine years 8% Corporate bonds maturing in ten years 10% At 30 June 2019 the provision for long-service leave was $12,000. Required: a) Calculate the total accumulated long-service leave benefit as at 30 June 2020. b) What amount should be reported for the long-service leave provision as at 30 June 2020 in accordance with AASB 119? c) Prepare the journal entry for the provision for long-service leave for 30 June 2020 in accordance with AASB 119. d) Which employee benefits are required to be discounted in accordance with AASB 119? (1 mark, maximum 100 words)
In: Accounting
Principles of Accounting
Unit 3 Discussion
Tell us about the business and why they have chosen a job order system. What are the advantages of a job order system to the company? How does management use the data generated? What source documents are used to charge costs to specific jobs? How is labor accounted for? How is the predetermined overhead rate decided upon? Does the company use a computerized or manual system?
In: Accounting
In: Accounting
“Minister of labour, Thulas Nxesi, has gazetted South Africa’s new minimum wage which will take effect from 1 March 2020. The gazette states that the new national minimum wage is R20.76 – an increase of 3.8%”. Adapted from:
https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/374920/6-planned-laws-that-government-hasjust-announced-for-south-africa/ Accessed: 21/02/2020
Provide a discussion on the welfare effect of the above, that illustrates the case for when the above results in unemployment in the market for domestic workers as well as a case for when the above has no effect on the market for domestic workers. Use a diagram to support your discussion.
In: Economics
Southern Corporation began operations in January 2019 and purchased a machine for $120,000 at that time. Southern uses straight-line depreciation over a four-year period for financial reporting purposes. For tax purposes, the deduction is 50% of cost in 2019, 30% in 2020, and 20% in 2021. Pretax accounting income for 2021 – which is the THIRD year of using this machine – is $140,000, which includes interest revenues of $20,000 from municipal bonds. In December 31, 2020 the enacted tax rate had been changed from 30% to 20% starting in2021. There are no other differences between accounting and taxable income.
Prepare the JE for 2021
In: Accounting
In: Statistics and Probability
Described below are certain transactions of the Bell Company for 2020. Bell uses a perpetual inventory system.
A. June 10, the company purchased the rights to natural resources on land owned by Jay Company for $60,000. Bell’s geology team believes they can successfully remove 600,000 pounds of ore from the mine.
F. October 31, the company borrowed $230,000 by issuing an interesting bearing 9%, ninety day,
note to the First State Bank to finance the mining operations.
G. On December 15, received utility bills totaling $5,245.00 related to mine operations that are due January15.
H. From November 1 until year end Bell removed 7,000 pounds of ore from the mine. They have a contract to sell and deliver 6000 pounds of the ore in January to an ore purifying firm for $145 per pound.
INSTRUCTIONS
(i) Prepare the journal entries necessary to record the transactions above using appropriate dates.
(ii) Prepare the adjusting entries necessary at December 31, in order to properly record adjusting journal entries.
Where necessary round to the nearest whole dollar.
In: Accounting
The human resources department needs to forecast the number of sexual harassement investigations for the entire company. The data for several months is supplied below. Be careful since the data is listed beginning with the most recent. The forecasting method to be used here is the 4 month weighted moving average adjusting for seasonality where the weights, starting with the most recent time period, are 0.4, 0.3, 0.2, 0.1. Again, you must find the seasonality factors for the data. Please round your forecast to the nearest whole number.
| Apr 2020: 11 | Mar 2020: 10 | Feb 2020: 18 | Jan 2020: 13 | Dec 2019: 11 | Nov 2019: 17 |
| Oct 2019: 14 | Sep 2019: 15 | Aug 2019: 17 | Jul 2019: 16 | Jun 2019: 15 | May 2019: 16 |
| Apr 2019: 15 | Mar 2019: 16 | Feb 2019: 14 | Jan 2019: 11 | Dec 2018: 18 | Nov 2018: 14 |
| Oct 2018: 12 | Sep 2018: 15 | Aug 2018: 13 | Jul 2018: 17 | Jun 2018: 11 | May 2018: 17 |
| Apr 2018: 18 | Mar 2018: 13 |
In: Statistics and Probability
Exercise 9-24
Larkspur Company began operations on January 1, 2019, adopting
the conventional retail inventory system. None of the company’s
merchandise was marked down in 2019 and, because there was no
beginning inventory, its ending inventory for 2019 of $37,700 would
have been the same under either the conventional retail system or
the LIFO retail system.
On December 31, 2020, the store management considers adopting the
LIFO retail system and desires to know how the December 31, 2020,
inventory would appear under both systems. All pertinent data
regarding purchases, sales, markups, and markdowns are shown below.
There has been no change in the price level.
|
Cost |
Retail |
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Inventory, Jan. 1, 2020 |
$37,700 | $60,500 | ||||
|
Markdowns (net) |
13,000 | |||||
|
Markups (net) |
22,000 | |||||
|
Purchases (net) |
133,500 | 177,500 | ||||
|
Sales (net) |
168,600 | |||||
Determine the cost of the 2020 ending inventory under both (a) the
conventional retail method and (b) the LIFO retail method.
(Round ratios for computational purposes to 2 decimal
place, e.g. 78.72% and final answers to 0 decimal places, e.g.
28,987.)
|
Ending inventory LIFO retail method |
$enter a dollar amount rounded to 0 decimal places |
|---|
In: Accounting
Case Study:
Nike's Core Competency: The Risky Business of Creating Heroes
DURING THE LAST DECADE, Nike's annual revenues doubled and by 2018 attained some $35 billion. With its globally recognized brand, Nike is the undisputed leader in the athletic shoe and apparel industry. Number two adidas has some $22 billion in sales, while recent entrant Under Armour reports revenues of $5 billion. Nike is tremendously successful, holding close to a 60 percent market share in running shoes and nearly a 90 percent market share in basketball shoes and apparel. Yet one of its greatest strengths can also be seen as one of its greatest vulnerabilities. Before we introduce that strength, it helps to know how Nike started.
Nike Co-founders:
Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight
The Beaverton, Oregon, company has come a long way from its humble beginnings. It was founded by University of Oregon track and field coach Bill Bowerman and middle-distance runner Phil Knight in 1964 and was first called Blue Ribbon Sports. In 1971, the company changed its name to Nike (Greek mythology's goddess of victory) with the now iconic "swoosh" designed by a Portland State University student.
BOWERMAN'S ROLE. Coach Bowerman was a true innovator because he constantly sought ways to give his athletes a competitive edge. He experimented with many factors affecting running performance, from different track surfaces to rehydration drinks. Bowerman's biggest focus, however, was on providing a better running shoe for his athletes. While sitting at the breakfast table one Sunday morning and absentmindedly looking at his waffle iron, Bowerman had an epiphany. He poured hot, liquid urethane into the waffle iron—ruining it in the process but coming up with the now famous waffle-type sole that not only provided better traction but was also lighter than traditional running shoes.
ENTER KNIGHT. After completing his undergraduate degree at the University of Oregon and serving in the U.S. Army, Phil Knight entered the MBA program at Stanford. One entrepreneurship class required him to come up with a business idea. He wrote a term paper on how to disrupt the leading athletic shoemaker, adidas. The research question he came up with was, "Can
Japanese sports shoes do to German sports shoes what Japanese cameras have done to German cameras?"
At that time, adidas athletic shoes were the gold standard. They were also expensive and hard to find in the United States. After several failed attempts to interest Japanese sneaker makers, Knight struck a distribution agreement with Tiger Shoes. After his first shipment arrived in the United States, Phil Knight sent some of the running shoes to his former coach, Bill Bowerman, hoping to make a sale. To his surprise,
Bowerman replied that he was interested in becoming a business partner and contributing his innovative ideas on how to improve running shoes, including the waffle design. With an investment of $500 each and a handshake, the venture commenced.
Creating Heroes
Nike had already reached a level of success by the late 1970s. Based on a highly successful string of innovations including Nike Air, by 1979 the company had captured more than a 50 percent market share for running shoes in the United States. A year later, Nike went public. Even so, the company had yet to establish one of its most effective marketing tactics.
In 1984, Nike signed Michael Jordan—still early in his career, before he was hailed by many as the greatest basketball player of all time—with an unprecedented multimillion-dollar endorsement deal. Rather than spreading its marketing budget more widely as was common in the sports industry at that time, Nike made the unorthodox move to spend basically its entire budget for a specific sport on a single star athlete. Nike sought to sponsor future superstars that embodied an unlikely success story. Michael Jordan did not make the varsity team as a junior in high school, and yet he became the greatest basketball player ever. Nike's Air Jordan basketball shoes are all-time classics that remain popular to this day.
In the 1990s and 2000s, Nike continued to sponsor track and field stars such as Marion Jones as well as Kobe Bryant in basketball. With the help of major celebrity endorsements, Nike was also able to move on to different sports and their superstars, including golf with Tiger Woods, cycling with Lance Armstrong, soccer with Wayne Rooney, and football with Michael Vick. If some of those names trigger memories of scandals as well as athletic achievements, you see the problems that Nike risks with its endorsement program. Before going into the negatives, let's examine the powerful message behind such endorsements.
Nike is less about running shoes or sports apparel than about unlocking human potential. This is captured in Nike's mission to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world (and if you have a body, you are an athlete). 2 Nike uses its heroes to tell a story whose moral is that through sheer will, tenacity, and hard work, anyone can unlock the hero within and achieve amazing things. Nike will help everyone become a hero. Just Do It! This type of mythical brand image has allowed Nike to not only enter but also often
Oscar Pistorius (left) and Lance Armstrong (right), some of Nike's past celebrity endorsements.
dominate one sport after another, from running to ice hockey. It spends more than $1 billion a year sponsoring athletes. Nike picks athletes that succeeded against the odds—cancer survivor Lance Armstrong, double amputee "blade runner" Oscar Pistorius, and other athletes hailing from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Nike astutely focuses on its core competency in athlete sponsorship and design, while it outsources noncore activities such as manufacturing and much of retailing. To create heroes, Nike has to engage in a number of activities: Find athletes that succeed against the odds; identify them before they are wellknown superstars; sign the athletes; create products that are closely linked with the athlete; promote the athletes or teams and Nike products through TV ads and social media to create the desired image; and so on. Each activity contributes to the relative value of the product and service offering in the eyes of potential customers and the firm's relative cost position vis-å-vis its rivals. Over time, Nike developed a deep expertise in creating heroes. More importantly, having consistently better expectations of the future value of resources allows Nike not only to shape the desired image of the athlete, but also to capture some of the value these athletes create.
When Heroes Fall
Although this core competency made Nike highly successful, it has not been without considerable risks. Repeatedly, Nike's "heroes" have become unmasked as cheaters, frauds, and criminals, some of whom have committed serious felonies, such as (culpable) homicide. Long-time CEO and Chairman Phil Knight long ago declared that scandals surrounding its superstar endorsement athletes are "part of the game."3 So Nike appears to be comfortable in tolerating those risks, at least in some cases.
Sometimes Nike continued to sponsor its athletes involved in various scandals; other times it terminated its lucrative endorsement contracts. Nike continued to sponsor NBA star Kobe Bryant who was cleared of alleged rape charges. After Tiger Woods was engulfed in an infidelity scandal, Nike continued to sponsor the golf superstar. In 2007, Nike ended its endorsement contract with NFL quarterback Michael Vick after a public outcry and his subsequent felony conviction of running a dog-fighting ring and engaging in animal cruelty. In 2011, after serving a prison sentence and restarting his career at the Philadelphia Eagles, Nike signed a new endorsement deal with Vick. In 2012, Nike terminated its long-term relationship with disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong. Just before Armstrong's public admission to doping in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Knight answered, "Never say never," when asked if Nike would sponsor Armstrong again in the future. In 2013, Nike removed its ads with Oscar Pistorius and the unfortunate tagline "I am the bullet in the chamber," after the South African track and field athlete was charged with homicide.
In 2014, Nike got entangled in the FIFA (the world governing body of soccer) bribery scandal. It began 20 years earlier when Nike decided to gain a stronger presence in soccer after the 1994 World Cup was held in the United States. In 1996, Nike signed a long-term sponsorship agreement with the Brazilian national team worth hundreds of millions of dollars. This was a huge win for Nike because soccer has been the basis of adidas' success, much like running and basketball has been for Nike. Moreover, Brazil won the tournament five times (more than any other nation) and is the only team to have played in every tournament, which is only held every four years.
Nike is now alleged to have paid some $30 million to a middleman, who used that money for bribing
soccer officials and politicians in Brazil. This middleman—Jose Hawilla—has admitted a number of crimes including fraud, money laundering, and extortion related to the FIFA soccer investigation by U.S. prosecutors.
Time and time again Nike's heroes have fallen from grace, and the company itself has fallen under suspicion of wrongdoing. Clearly, Nike's approach in building its core competency of creating heroes is not without risks. Too many of these public relations disasters combined with too severe shortcomings of some of Nike's most celebrated heroes could damage the company's reputation and lead to a loss of competitive advantage. As Nike veers from one public relations disaster to the next, disappointment with the brand and its promise may eventually set in, causing customers to go elsewhere.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. The MiniCase indicates that Nike's core competency is to create heroes. What does this mean? How did Nike build its core competency? Does it, for example, identify and leverage the potential identified in a VRIO analysis (are its competencies valuable, rare, inimitable, and organized to capture value) in a resource-based view of the firm?
2. What would it take for Nike's approach to turn from a strength into a weakness? Did this tipping point already occur? Why or why not?
3. What recommendations would you have for Nike? Can you identify a way to reframe the competency of creating heroes? Or a new way to think of heroes, teams, or sports that would continue to build the brand?
4. If you are a competitor of Nike (such as adidas, Under Armour, New Balance, or Li-Ning), how could you exploit Nike's apparent vulnerability?
Provide a set of concrete recommendations.
(Must be atleast 2 pages long)
In: Operations Management