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Educational and Professional Goals
Educational and Professional Goals
Either directly or indirectly, criminal justice in a way or the other touches every part of the people’s lives. In every day, cops are seen in various places helping the public in a number of issues regarding security and their wellbeing. Criminal justice being my major course will have significant impacts on both the current and future educational and professional goals. Criminal justice discipline greatly involves interaction with the public with an aim of enforcing law at various levels whether federal, state or local based. In this discussion, the educational and professional objectives are discussed in an in-depth extent in consideration of both the current and future objectives.
Educational goals being the attributes, competences and the skills that should be gained by the students upon the completion of a certain program. In pursuing the criminal justice course, the great expectations were acquiring the appropriate skills, knowledge and attitudes. The three of the core objectives in studying criminal justice can be categorized into both current and future goals. At first, let us look at the goals under the current perspectives. The knowledge and skills gained through the class work are very significant when it comes to undertaking the continuous assessment tests as well as other standardized examinations put in place in the education curriculum by the learning institution. With the knowledge and skills, it becomes easy pass both the theoretical and practical assessments ensuring better continuation in the education ladder. The future educational goals in learning criminal justice as the major program are gaining the right attitudes as well as acquiring the skill and knowledge relevant when it comes to law enforcement at the society level.
The professional goals in studying criminal justice involves the interaction at the society when it comes to putting the knowledge and skills acquired into practice during the career performance. The current professional goals include preparing and shaping myself to the real world as well as helping and advising people in the community to undertake justice actions in any relevant cases. The future professional objective is all about career profession with regards to the impacts towards society development. Throughout the interaction with the civilians, it is expected that the skills and knowledge gained will be properly applied effectively when it comes solving various criminal issues in the community. In five years to come, there are great expectations of being a detective at the state level which has been my desirable career. With this I will be able to put in practice skills and knowledge acquired as well as giving back to the community.
19th Century Crime and Punishment in England
Name
Lecturer
Course
Date
19th Century Crime and Punishment in England
In London, the dispensation of justice has been of a great concern. Historically, there has been a lot of complains on the treatment of petty offenders from the low social classes in this country. While it is a common knowledge that felony is a small offense which does not cause a detrimental huge impact on a country’s economy, the way in which felony convicts have been punished has been so unfair. However, in most cases, such sentences have been made under the influence of the rich class.
During the 19th century, the London Police Court was manipulated by the rich to oppress the poor felon convicts. Despite being unjustified, this was done in order to protect the interests of the rich community. For instance, employers who were faced with cases of industrial action in their premises would greatly rely on the help of magistrates to restore sanity in their businesses. Similarly, the judicial process was used in favor of employers to help them to get rid of the workers involved in petty thefts (Universities of Hertfordshire, 1983).This was prominently used in the Shipping companies in which the magistrates were relied upon to help the employers punish dock thieves. Instead of punishing workers by interdiction or sacking it was felt imposing harsh punishments would absolutely eradicate such offenses.
The enforcement of the Criminal Justice Act worsened the situation because it allowed magistrates to impose harsher fines on petty offenders who would be unluckily convicted. In this case, it would be a win on the prosecutor team and the surest way of dealing with such offenses which were very difficult to detect. At the same time, the punishments prevented the offenders from repeating same acts and graduating into more dangerous offenses like murder. By eradicating all the fruits and vegetable thieves, traders would get an easier time of carrying out their activities without any obstacle. This would also challenge the thieves to work harder to provide for themselves.
Work Cited
Universities of Hertfordshire (1983) Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 8th September 1831, page
138. London: HRI Online Publications.
Financial Accounting
Financial AccountingTable of Contents
TOC o “1-3” h z u Part A PAGEREF _Toc364865401 h 2Performance Measure PAGEREF _Toc364865402 h 2Introduction PAGEREF _Toc364865403 h 2Organisational Role in Performance measure PAGEREF _Toc364865404 h 2Short Term Financial Performance Measure for Management PAGEREF _Toc364865405 h 3Types of Responsibility Centre PAGEREF _Toc364865406 h 3Measuring Performance through Profitability PAGEREF _Toc364865407 h 3Return on Investment (ROI) PAGEREF _Toc364865408 h 3Economic Value Added PAGEREF _Toc364865409 h 5ROI (Return on Investment) and EVA (Economic Value Added) as Performance Measure PAGEREF _Toc364865410 h 6Part B PAGEREF _Toc364865411 h 7Transfer Pricing PAGEREF _Toc364865412 h 7Objective of Transfer Pricing PAGEREF _Toc364865413 h 7Transfer prices in Accounting Term PAGEREF _Toc364865414 h 8Mechanic of transfer pricing PAGEREF _Toc364865415 h 8Alternative method of Transfer Prices PAGEREF _Toc364865416 h 8Market Based Transfer Prices PAGEREF _Toc364865417 h 9Full Cost Transfer Prices PAGEREF _Toc364865418 h 10Cost-Plus a Mark-up Transfer Prices PAGEREF _Toc364865419 h 11Negotiated Transfer Prices PAGEREF _Toc364865420 h 12Conclusion PAGEREF _Toc364865421 h 13References PAGEREF _Toc364865422 h 14
Part APerformance MeasureIntroductionPerformance measures are barometer that scrutinizes the effectiveness in performing an activity and our capability in suing the available resources. Traditionally, managers focused on short run financial performance measure and generally neglect the long run performance measure and critical non-financial activities, the main reason that manager focuses on the short run financial measure is that they are generally judged on a short term basis. Non-financial performance and long run data are very difficult to collect and many times the data are unavailable. Recent scandal related to accounting created an immense pressure to the manager to achieve short term performance target (Bacidore, 1997). Many managers are now focusing on the longer horizon to analyse the performance. An organisation performance measure and evaluation play a significant role to synchronize management, worker and owner goal.
Organisational Role in Performance measure
1) Manager is generally responsible to make design and implement strategies that lead to the proper utilization of the organizational resources which help to achieve the organisational goal. The manager talent and time are utilised in planning, controlling, monitoring and decision making process (Chen and Dodd, 1997).
2) Internal performance measure product service generally competes in the following areas such as product feature, quality and price. Good performance in any of these areas helps to gain a competitive advantage. The performance of each employee also plays an important role in the success of the organisation. Performance measure helps to make a judgement about the performance of individual which help in the promotion and retention procedure.
3) External performance measure help to give the actual picture of the organisation ability in satisfying customer better than their competitors. One of the most common performance measure used by the organisation is profit, which can be calculated by the net income or operating income.
Short Term Financial Performance Measure for ManagementA traditionally focus of performance measurement at the managerial level is on financial part and focuses on monetary measure such as return on investment, residual income and economic value added. Responsibility accounting involves differentiating the financial information into different areas of organisational activity that from the controllable sets and then assigning them the task according to their skill to individual manager (Lehn and Makhija, 1996). These parts of organization activity are known as responsibility centre or Strategic business unit.
Types of Responsibility CentreCost Centre (CC): Manager only focuses on the costs.
Revenue Centre (RC): Manager only focuses on the sales.
Profit Centre (PC): Manager focuses on both revenue and costs.
Investment Centre (IC): Manager focuses on revenues, costs and investments.
Measuring Performance through ProfitabilityAn organisation ideally should be focussing on the relative measure rather than absolute measure. From a research it has been proved that there are numerous measures are present to determine the performance of the organisation. Such measure includes Return on investment, Economic value added and free cash flow. The performance measure decided should ensure that the goal of the business is achieved. The main use of the performance measure is to increase the wealth of the shareholder and to manage the performance of the employees and each and every individual of the organisation (Bacidore, 1997).
Return on Investment (ROI)
Return on investment is a relative measure of the performance which can utilised for the comparison with the other type of investments. Although the ROI is considered to be the most simple method but sometime its uncertain. Profit can be described in many ways and allow the figure to be manipulated.
ROI = Gain from Investment- Cost of Investment/Cost of Investment * 100
For Example
Project A Project B
Profit( Revenue –Investment) £ 100m £200m
Investment £ 400m £2000m
ROI 25% 10%
Here the question arises which project investment will yield maximum profit. The answer we arrived with the help of ROI is project B earns higher profit but project A is much more profitable when compared with the ROI of project B. Every investor focuses on the return before investing in any project, ROI is one kind of cost benefit analysis which measure the cost of the project in comparison with financial term (Morgan, 1997).
Advantages of ROI:
ROI mainly focuses on the profit
Instant availability of the data
It’s a simple method to implement as the manager selects the project which have higher ROI’s
Easily understood in the various industries and other functional organisation.
A method that help the manager to identify and monitor the project dependencies and their impact on ROI (Nuelle, 1996).
Disadvantages of ROI:
Project are rejected which have slow payoff.
The ROI calculation does not take time values of money or the uncertainty/risk related with the current project or investment.
ROI calculation may sometime overvalue investment since the ROI favour short term saving and fail to notice long term cost such as support, maintenance and software upgrade.
As ROI can be calculated in various ways creates a problem of consistency.
When ROI is used as a managerial performance measure, it can guide to decision that are minimal for single divisional but sub optimal for the company. ROI focuses on short term profitability looking at last year or last quarter for performance evaluation (Ottoson and Weissenrieder, 1996).
Economic Value AddedOne of the most used measures that have been generated to directly synchronize the interest of shareholder with the manager of the organization. Theoretically alike to residual income, EVA is an amount of profit produced higher than the cost of the capital. However, EVA account on the target rate of return to the market value of the capital invested in the project instead of the book value of asset used in residual income (Reimann, 1988).
EVA = NOPAT – Capital Cost (WACC x Capital Employed)
Just earning a profit from a particular project is not enough for a organisation, it should earn a profit which should be exceeding the cost of capital.
Where,
WACC = Weighted Average Cost of Capital
NOPAT = Net Operating Profit before Interest and After Tax
Capital Employed – Net Block + Trading Investment + Net Current asset
Economic value added is after tax profit subtracted by cost of the capital. If EVA is positive, the company is making profit and in return the wealth of the shareholder increasing but when EVA is negative then the capital base of the company is reducing which will lead to the breakdown of the organisation (Stewart, 1991).
Advantages of EVA:
EVA is relatively easy to calculate and simple to implement.
It can be used as management tool to enhance the performance.
It gives the intrinsic value in the same ways as a DCF (Discounted Cash Flow).
It helps the analyst rigorous in making the future financial profile.
The adjustment made avoid the alteration of the outcome by the accounting policies in place and therefore yield to goal achieving decision (Stewart, 1993).
Disadvantages of EVA:
It does not provide comparison between projects as EVA is an absolute measure.
There are numerous theory made when calculating the WACC, numerous adjustment are made to make profit and capital employed figures.
EVA does not facilitate the forecast of future cash flows and does not predict the present values rather EVA depend upon the present level of earning.
EVA prove to be more beneficial to shareholder and hence little importance to the rest of the stakeholders.
One of the most disadvantages EVA it can easily abuse or manipulated by the unscrupulous user (Tang, 1993).
Limitation OF EVA and ROI
Income of the project can be abused on short term basis.
Invest on asset is difficult to measure properly.
ROI (Return on Investment) and EVA (Economic Value Added) as Performance MeasureThe ultimate objective of an organisation is the maximization of wealth for the shareholder. Therefore evaluating performance based on a ROI alone may not be sufficient for a manager to be short term in their focus and decision making. A specific problem is always associated with the traditional measure of performance such as ROI is that they are highly related with the share price of the organisation. Performance measures are generally implied to test the progress of organisational goal and objective. Performance should be measured and feedback should be provided on a daily basis to the appropriate individual. The primary determinant of the stakeholder is typically provided by short run financial performance measure (Ouchi, 1979).
The type of responsibility centre being examined affects the performance measure used since the manager focuses on the short term in their focus and decision making. It was found that ROI and other techniques alone are not sufficient to measure the performance. Generally EVA is related to NPV whereas ROI is related IRR. But when ROI is used along with EVA can encourage the manager to focus on the short term and help them to make decision making. Asset to be included must be specified for EVA and ROI. To measure the performance of manager only controllable asset should be incorporated in the investment base whereas to measure the economic performance normally all assets and probably proper positioning of organisational asset should be considered.
Both EVA and ROI when used as performance measure help to make a strategic decision which is the key for the investment centre which help the organisation in short term as well as in the long term. As it emphasize where the shareholder wealth is increasing or decreasing, it is also helpful for the business segment to expand or contract. Cost and revenue are well thought-out in examining the manager performance and decision making the short term (Tang, 1993).
Part BTransfer Pricing
An important feature of the decentralised organisation is responsibility centre. The performance of these centres is measure on the basis of this responsibility centre. The transfer price is refers as the price charged by one division of the organisation to other division of the same organisation for a product and services provided within the organisation. The important purpose of the transfer pricing is take a decision favourable in the decentralized organization (Williamson, 1985).
Objective of Transfer PricingBasically there are two main reasons to drive the transfer pricing system.
Properly administered transfer prices helps a firm to align the sales, pricing, production and decision making in the different department of the firm. Transfer prices educate the manager about the value of the good and services through various proper training.
The transfer price helps the firm to generate a separate profit figure which helps the manager to evaluate the performance of individual department simultaneously.
Transfer price help to promote the goal congruence (Liapis, 2010).
Transfer helps the manager to take an optimal decision whether to buy internally or externally and thus help to evaluate segment performance.
Transfer prices help to reduce the taxes, duties and tariff that are levied on multinationals
Preserve autonomy
Transfer prices in Accounting TermTransfer prices are used to examine the amount of good and service are exchanged between the different divisions within the organisation, mainly between the profit centres of the decentralised organisation. In the transfer price there is no cash exchanged between the divisions, transfer price is used only for the accounting purposes. The transfer price becomes revenue for the supplying manager whereas it becomes expense for the receiving manager. If Intra Company transfers take place, following are the item that should be eliminated to avoid any error in the financial statement are Intra- company profit in inventories, Intra company sale and cost of goods sold and intra company payable and receivables.
Mechanic of transfer pricingTransfer prices are generally taken as an expense for the buying centre and revenue for the supplying centre.
No monetary means need to change hands between the two departments of the company; it is used for internal record keeping for future use for the company (Reimann, 1988).
Alternative method of Transfer PricesGenerally Transfer price are establish by four method
Market Based Transfer Prices: The market based price is generally practised where the market is perfectly competitive and stable market for the transferred.
Full Cost Transfer Prices: Full cost is practised because of its convenience and simplicity and gives the actual picture of the outside market prices.
Cost-Plus a Mark-up Transfer Prices: Cost plus a mark-up is generally practised to overcome the difficulty created between the buying and supplying division (Chari, 2009).
Negotiated Transfer Prices: Top management does not implement any rules regarding the transfer prices, department manager are advised to negotiate mutually agreeable prices.
Each of the transfer pricing method has merits and demerits.
Market Based Transfer PricesMarket based transfer prices are generally practised when the market condition is perfectly competitive and stable for the product and services that are bought and sold between the department of an organization then the transfer prices should be the market prices (Silverman, 2010).
Advantages
Market base transfer price forces selling department to be competitive in nature with the prevailing market condition.
The implementation of market base transfer prices in a perfectly stable market condition helps to achieve the goal oriented decision.
The top management are able to focus on the other financial aspect of the company due to market base transfer prices.
It helps to encourage and motivate the managers because implementation of market base transfer prices creates a sense of independence.
Market base does not punish the buying department by charging a price superior than it would have to pay on the market (Boquist, 1997).
Disadvantages
One of the major demerits of the market base transfer prices is that the prices of certain commodities may fluctuate and vary widely.
Market base transfer price may sometime pay no attention to negotiation attempt from the buying department and sell directly to the consumer which in return forces the buying division to buy from outside (Weissenrieder, 1996).
Market base depend upon the market condition i.e. competitive market or stable market.
Many time market prices are not known.
Market based transfer price may reduce chances of generating profit through collaboration
Full Cost Transfer PricesFull cost transfer prices are generally implemented when the market condition is not known, where it become very difficult to set the market price. Top management prefer a transfer prices based on the cost of producing the intermediate goods. It is generally useful when the market prices are not known or inappropriate (Thakor, 1997).
Advantages
Full cost pricing method is the most common and simple approaches of the transfer pricing method particularly when there is a situation of unstable market condition.
Full cost provides the manager an estimate of long run marginal cost which are helpful in decision making process.
Full cost pricing method is the only method which provides accurate information related to the opportunity cost. As opportunity cost is required to determine the internal transfer between the supplying and buying department (Morgan, 1997).
Disadvantages
Full cost transfer prices is generally follow rule which in return fail to preserve the subunit autonomy.
Buying decision forced to take sub optimal decision as buying division regard transfer prices wholly as variable cost.
Evaluation of sub unit level are not determined as it fail to evaluate their performance due to many time transfer price fail to exceed full cost.
There is no proper distinction between fixed and variable cost are established.
Since full cost transfer pricing are passed on it fails incentives to control asset and expenditures.
Cost-Plus a Mark-up Transfer PricesCost plus a mark-up transfer pricing refers to setting the prices at the production cost and with a certain profit margin. The mark up indicates the profit margin. Cost plus pricing is a increase in the price that is added to the actual cost of providing the good and services. Cost plus method work best when the buying and selling department does not know about the actual cost of production but agree on the profit over and above the cost of the product (Chen and Dodd, 1997).
Advantages
It is very simple and easy to apply as it purely based on the cost data.
Mark up can be customized according to the requirement based on the industry standard or individual expert opinion.
Cost plus method does not take into account of prices of the markets whether it is going up and down.
Cost plus mark-up pricing method make sure that you will not going to sell at a loss, it generally provide a platform for the lowest prices acceptable.
It reduces risk and uncertainties associated with the setting the prices within the organisation.
Disadvantages
Business that cannot able to set the cost accurately may set transfer prices at a level which fail to cover the actual cost production (Reimann, 1988).
Cost plus pricing takes only cost and profit side of buying and selling and it ignore the demand part.
The figures that are generated are based on the assumption of production and sale numbers.
One of the major drawbacks of the mark up pricing method it fails to give the actual picture of the competition.
Cost allocation is arbitrary.
Negotiated Transfer PricesNegotiated transfer prices take place from the outcome of a bargain procedure between the buying and selling department. Rarely, subunit of a company is free to negotiate the transfer price within them and then make a decision whether to buy and sell internally or externally. Negotiated transfer prices are implemented when the market prices are volatile (Lehn and Makhija, 1996).
Advantages
Negotiated transfer prices provide better information of the cost and benefit of the product and services
In a situation of market imperfection for the intermediate product and when the top level managers have equal bargaining power, negotiated transfer prices are useful.
Manager become aware of the cost of product and services which help to generate the profit for the organisation.
Negotiated transfer prices generally preserve autonomy of the department, which is reliable with decentralisation.
Disadvantages
One of the major drawback of the negotiated transfer prices is that it is time consuming
The driving factor for negotiation is influenced by the bargaining qualities of the department manager.
Sometime supplying department has bargaining disadvantage as imperfect market exists.
Negotiated transfer prices may sometime leads to sub optimal decision problem (Stewart, 1991).
ConclusionTransfer price may sometime become pertinent in the circumstance of other rigid issues, it often complicated by imperfect or non-existent of intermediate market (Gox, 2000). Through an analysis it can be concluded that variable cost can be used as transfer prices but it would not often appropriate to deal with other issues related with managerial skill. Therefore different kinds of transfer prices are allocated to each of the division.
References
Bacidore, J. M., Boquist, J. A., Milbourn, T.T., and Thakor, A.V. (1997). The Search for the Best Financial Performance Measure. Financial Analysts Journal, 11-20.
Chari, L. 2009. ‘Measuring value enhancement through Economic Value Added: Evidence from literature’, IUP Journal of Applied Finance,15(9): 46–62
Chen, S., and Dodd, J. L. (1997). Economic Value Added (EVATM): An empirical examination of a new corporate performance measure. Journal of Managerial Issues, 9(3), 318 – 333. Economist (1997). Valuing companies: A star to sail by. The Economist, 57 – 59.
Gox, R. (2000) Strategic transfer pricing, absorption costing, and observability, Management Accounting Research, 11, 327-348
Lehn, K., and Makhija, A. K. (1996). EVA and MVA: As Performance Measures and Signals for Strategic Change. Strategy and Leadership, 34 – 38.
Liapis, K.J. 2010. ‘The residual value models: A framework for business administration’. European Research Studies,XIII(1)
Morgan, D.L. 1997. Focus Groups as Qualitative Research (2nd edition). London: Sage Publications.
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Ottoson, E., and Weissenrieder, F. (1996). Cash Value Added – a new method for measuring financial performance. Gothenburg Studies in Financial Economics, No. 1. [Online] Available:http://www.anelda.com/ (Retrieved from April 10, 1999)
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Reimann, B. C. (1988). Managing for the Stockholder: An Overview of Value-Based Planning. Planning Review, 16(1),10 – 22.
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