你知道ACCA考试费可以退回银行卡吗？怎么退？

正确答案：
(iii) Flexibility may relate to the company being able to cope with flexibility of volume, delivery speed or job specification. In
this particular context, flexibility appears to have been problematic for HLP as evidenced by the fact that 320
consultations relating to commercial were subcontracted during the year. This could be due to the lack of the ability of
HLP advisors to be able to provide consultations to a potentially wide-range of commercial clients, i.e. the variability in
the ‘job specification’ requires greater flexibility than HLP can deliver. Furthermore, a total of 600 consultations relating
to litigation work were also subcontracted throughout the year. These subcontract consultations might be due to the
inability of HLP to deal with fluctuations in demand.

正确答案：

(c) (i) For the secrecy option
Important developments at SHC
This is an exciting time for the management and shareholders of Swan Hill Company. The research and development
staff at SHC have made a groundbreaking discovery (called the ‘sink method’) that will enable your company to produce
its major product at lower cost, in higher volumes and at a much higher quality than our competitors will be able to
using, as they do, the existing production technology. The sink process also produces at a lower rate of environmental
emissions which, as I’m sure shareholders will agree, is a very welcome development.
When considering the options following the discovery, your board decided that we should press ahead with the
investment needed to transform. the production facilities without offering the use of the technology to competitors under
a licensing arrangement. This means that once the new sink production comes on stream, SHC shareholders can, your
board believes, look forward to a significant strengthening of our competitive position.
The business case for this option is overwhelming. By pushing ahead with the investment needed to implement the sink
method, the possibility exists to gain a substantial competitive advantage over all of SHC’s competitors. It will place SHC
in a near monopolist position in the short term and in a dominant position long term. This will, in turn, give the company
pricing power in the industry and the likelihood of superior profits for many years to come. We would expect SHC to
experience substantial ‘overnight’ growth and the returns from this will reward shareholders’ loyalty and significantly
increase the value of the company. Existing shareholders can reasonably expect a significant increase in the value of
their holdings over the very short term and also over the longer term.
Ethical implications of the secrecy option
In addition to the overwhelming business case, however, there is a strong ethical case for the secrecy option. SHC
recognises that it is the moral purpose of SHC to make profits in order to reward those who have risked their own money
to support it over many years. Whilst some companies pursue costly programmes intended to serve multiple stakeholder
interests, SHC recognises that it is required to comply with the demands of its legal owners, its shareholders, and not
to dilute those demands with other concerns that will reduce shareholder returns. This is an important part of the agency
relationship: the SHC board will always serve the best economic interests of its shareholders: its legal owners. The SHC
board believes that any action taken that renders shareholder returns suboptimal is a threat to shareholder value and an
abuse of the agency position. Your board will always seek to maximise shareholder wealth; hence our decision to pursue
the secrecy option in this case. The secrecy option offers the possibility of optimal shareholder value and because
shareholders invest in SHC to maximise returns, that is the only ethical action for the board to pursue. Happily, this
option will also protect the employees’ welfare in SHC’s hometown of Swan Hill and demonstrate its commitment to the
locality. This, in turn, will help to manage two of the key value-adding resources in the company, its employees and its
reputation. This will help in local recruitment and staff retention in future years.
(ii) For the licensing option
Important developments at SHC
Your board was recently faced with a very difficult business and ethical decision. After the discovery by SHC scientists
of the groundbreaking sink production method, we had a choice of keeping the new production technology secret or
sharing the breakthrough under a licensing arrangement with our competitors. After a lengthy discussion, your board
decided that we should pursue the licensing option and I would like to explain our reasons for this on both business and
ethical grounds.
In terms of the business case for licensing, I would like shareholders to understand that although the secrecy option may
have offered SHC the possibility of an unassailable competitive advantage, in reality, it would have incurred a number
of risks. Because of the speed with which we would have needed to have acted, it would have necessitated a large
increase in our borrowing, bringing about a substantial change in our financial structure. This would, in turn, increase
liquidity pressures and make us more vulnerable to rising interest rates. A second risk with the secrecy option would
involve the security of the sink technology ‘secret’. If the sink process was leaked or discovered by competitors and
subsequently copied, our lack of a legally binding patent would mean we would have no legal way to stop them
proceeding with their own version of the sink process.
As well as avoiding the risks, however, the licensing option offers a number of specific business advantages. The royalties
from the licences granted to competitors are expected to be very large indeed. These will be used over the coming years
to extend our existing competitive advantage in the future. Finally, the ‘improvement sharing’ clause in the licensing
contract will ensure that the sink process will be improved and perfected with several manufacturers using the
technology at the same time. SHC’s sink production may, in consequence, improve at a faster rate than would have
been the case were we to have pursued the secrecy option.
Ethical implications of the licensing option
In addition to the business case, there is also a powerful ethical case for the decision we have taken. As a good,
responsible corporate citizen, Swan Hill Company acknowledges its many stakeholders and recognises the impacts that
a business decision has on others. Your board recognises that in addition to external stakeholders having influence over
our operations, our decisions can also affect others. In this case, we have carefully considered the likelihood that keeping
the new technology a secret from our competitors would radically reshape the industry. The superior environmental
performance of the sink process over existing methods will also mean that when fully adopted, the environmental
emissions of the entire industry will be reduced. SHC is very proud of this contribution to this reduction in overall
environmental impact.
There seems little doubt that the secrecy option would have had far-reaching and unfortunate effects upon our industry
and our competitors. The licensing option will allow competitors, and their employees and shareholders, to survive. It
is a compassionate act on our part and shows mercy to the other competitors in the industry. It recognises the number
of impacts that a business decision has and would be the fairest (and most just) option given the number of people
affected.

正确答案：
(a) Backflush accounting focuses upon output of an organisation and then works backwards when allocating costs between cost
of goods sold and inventories. It can be argued that backflush accounting simplifies costing since it ignores both labour
variances and work-in-progress. Whilst in a perfect just-in-time environment there would be no work-in-progress at all, there
will in practice be a small amount of work-in-progress in the system at any point in time. This amount, however, is likely to
be negligible in quantity and therefore not significant in terms of value. Thus, a backflush accounting system simplifies the
accounting records by avoiding the need to follow the movement of materials and work-in-progress through the manufacturing
process within the organisation.
The backflush accounting system is likely to involve the maintenance of a raw materials and work-in–progress account
together with a finished goods account. The use of standard costs and variances is likely to be incorporated into the
accounting entries. Transfers from raw materials and work-in-progress account to finished goods (or cost of sales) will probably
be made at standard cost. The difference between the actual inputs and the standard charges from the raw materials and
work-in-progress account will be recorded as a residual variance, which will be recorded in the profit and loss account. Thus,
it is essential that standard costs are a good surrogate for actual costs if large variances are to be avoided. Backflush
accounting is ideally suited to a just-in-time philosophy and is employed where the overall cycle time is relatively short and
inventory levels are low. Naturally, management will still be eager to ascertain the cause of any variances that arise from the
inefficient usage of materials, labour and overhead. However investigations are far more likely to be undertaken using nonfinancial
performance indicators as opposed to detailed cost variances.

正确答案：
(iv) Problems with delegation can be overcome by careful selection and training, an open communication system, the establishment of an appropriate control system and a system that rewards effective delegation.