Topic 1: Ethics and budgeting
Budgeting is generally regarded as an essential technique
for planning and controlling an
organisation’s activities. However, budgeting systems can
also create incentives for unethical
behaviour.
Using examples to illustrate your discussion, explain:
• How the use of budgets in planning and controlling an
organisation’s activities may create
incentives for unethical behaviour; and,
• What strategies organisations can adopt to minimise the
risk of their budgeting system
leading to unethical behaviours.
Topic 2: Accounting for overhead
Modern manufacturing processes are typically characterised
by large-scale automation, with
machines replacing people. Consequently, manufacturing
overhead has often become a much
more significant component of total manufacturing costs and
this presents a particular challenge for
cost and management accountants. Competitive pressures make
it essential that firms have
accurate and up-to-date cost data, but overhead is an
indirect cost and allocating it to individual
products and product lines will always involve subjectivity
and estimation.
Discuss the difficulties associated with allocating overhead
costs in the contemporary manufacturing
environment and identify strategies that firms can adopt to
help make their overhead allocations
more accurate and reliable.
Presentation
The assignment is to comply with the University’s General
Guide for the Presentation of Academic
Work. Students are required to use the APA style of
referencing. See comments below regarding
word length. Each group is to submit a single copy of their
assignment.
Assessment criteria
In assessing submitted assignments consideration will be
given to:
• Overall neatness, completeness and quality of
presentation. Graduate students are
expected to achieve a satisfactory standard with respect to
this criterion as a matter of course
and for this reason, no credit will be granted for achieving
it. However, assignments that fail to
achieve the minimum standard in connection with this criterion
will be penalised. The expected
standard concerning this criterion is as specified by the
University’s General Guide for the
Presentation of Academic Work.
• Timeliness of submission. Graduate students are expected
to be able to meet reasonable
deadlines for the submission of assessable work as a matter
of course. For this reason, no credit
will be given for submitting the assignment by the due date.
However, assignments that are
submitted late will be penalised at the rate of three marks
out of 30 per day that the assignment
is late.
• Demonstrated application of appropriate cost and
management accounting knowledge,
skills, values and attitudes. This criterion pertains to the
overall quality of the content of
responses to the assignment requirements. Specific factors
to be taken into account include:
accuracy, comprehensiveness, demonstrated understanding of
the topics, and the location and
effective use of relevant research materials.
Each essay is expected to be between 1,200 to 1,500 words
(1,500 words being the maximum
length). These guidelines exclude the cover sheet, abstract
and list of references.
