ACCA F4 flashcards – set 3

Whether something is right or wrong depends on the consequences, or outcome, of the act.

• Extrinsic: rewards that arise outside the employee and include pay, praise by a manager and promotion.
• Intrinsic: rewards that arise from psychological enjoyment and the satisfaction of challenge and a feeling of having done well.

• Job enlargement
• Job rotation
• Job enlargement: usually most effective as it introduces significant new tasks and challenges

Herzberg

• Training: very specific and dealing with current employees needs for their current job.
• Development: less specific and more aimed at equipping employees for future jobs.

A method of describing the values, skills and abilities that are required to perform given roles. They also provide clear focus to for recruitment and to support the development of staff in order to deliver the best possible performance.

To define a framework for a given role there will be a general description of the competency followed by a list of attitudes, behaviours, skills and abilities that would indicate competence in the relevant area.

• Confrontation
• Judgement
• Chat
• Bureaucracy
• Event
• Unfinished business

Initially, the appraisal form is blank and the manager and employee go through it together discussing what the mark should be.

Human resource planning should be based on the strategic plan of the organisation and there has to be a human resources budget based on future estimated needs

• Market growth rate
• Relative market share

The concept of life cycle costing recognises that, if a profit is going to be made, revenue has to cover all costs, not just the production costs.

• Initial costs – before production
• Operating costs – during production
• Disposal costs – after production

• Introduction
• Growth
• Maturity
• Decline
• (Senility)

• Heterogeneity
• Perishability
• Intangibility
• Simultaneity
• No transfer of ownership

• Desk research
• Field research
• Test markets

• Intelligence
• Individualisation
• Interactivity
• Integration
• Independence of location
• Industry (structural change)

This describes how demand changes as prices change. A high elasticity of demand means that the product is very price sensitive.

• Perfect competition
• Oligopoly
• Perfect competition
• Monopolistic competition

• Costs
• Consumers
• Competitors
• Controls

A very high initial price is set for a new product as there will be some consumers willing to pay that. The price is then gradually lowered to attract less wealthy or less desperate consumers.

• Product
• Price
• Promotion
• Place
• People
• Process
• Physical evidence

• Undifferentiated
• Differentiated
• Concentrated

Breaking down the market into different sections or segments to decide what type of products or services buyers in each might want.

Lists potential macro-environmental influences:

• Political
• Economic
• Social
• Technological
• Environment/ecology
• Legal

Reverse logistics refers to all operations related to the reuse of products and materials.

Its purpose is to recapture value or to achieve proper disposal. Remanufacturing and refurbishing activities also may be included in the definition of reverse logistics.

DMAIC stands for: define, measure, analyse, improve and control. It is part of the 6sigma approach to improving quality.

The process of improving quality through a continuous series of small changes

• Internal failure costs
• External failure costs

• Prevention costs
• Appraisal costs

Quality management: overseeing all the activities needed to achieve and maintain the required quality. It includes establishing the required quality level, setting quality control procedures and also considering quality improvement.

Quality assurance: the management steps that allow an organisation to dependably achieve a stated level of quality.

Quality control: processes (such as sampling and testing) that used to check on quality.

In additive manufacturing or 3D printing material is extruded to form complex shapes which harden to produce sophisticated components that can be difficult or expensive to make in any other way.

• Machine flexibility
• Route flexibility

Computer numerical control

MRPI = material resource planning

MRPII = manufacturing resource planning

• Transactional
• Contractual
• Value added
• Collaborative
• Partnership

Lean synchronisation means that products and services are always delivered to exactly match what customers want, in exact quantities and at the required time and place for delivery. Lean synchronisation should achieve these objectives at the lowest possible cost and it should result in items flowing rapidly and smoothly through manufacturing processes and supply networks.

Critical/bottleneck

• Profit impact
• Supply difficulty

Push: make goods for inventory usually according to historical demand.

Pull: make goods to order. Sales orders pull production through the manufacturing process.

• Firm infrastructure
• Technology development
• Human resource management
• Procurement

• Inbound logistics
• Operations
• Outbound logistics
• Marketing and sales
• Service

Using data to increase an organisation’s profitability, efficiency and sustainability.

Extraction: extracting data from a variety of sources where it might well have been held in many different formats.

Transformation: converting the diverse data into standard formats.

Loading: storing the converted data into a new database for future use.

• Velocity
• Variety
• Volume
• Veracity (added later)

Extranet = an intranet which can also access external data and other intranets.

Intranet = internal internet which access and presents data through a browser such as Chrome or Internet Explorer

False: cloud-based systems store data and programs remotely

3G and 4G

Wide area networks (WANs): operate over national and international distances, linking users in different cities and countries. They rely on public networks to transmit information from one local area network to another.

Local area networks (LANs): operate over a restricted area such as an office, hospital or university campus. There is usually a special machine called a file server where shared information is held and there might be a print server which allows a printer to be shared between many users.

Top management

• Accurate
• Complete
• Cost-beneficial
• User-targeted
• Relevant
• Authoritative
• Easy-to-use

Data is raw fact. Information = data with meaning eg through summary, statistical analysis, presentation or the highlighting of significant items.

• Explicit
• Tacit

• Mechanisation
• Mass production
• Computers and automation
• Digital assets such as big data and artificial intelligence.

A conflict of interest.

Prevention, detection and correction.

Internal audit

The treasury department

The tasks in these levels are either now substantially automated or soon will be so they require fewer people.

• Leading the finance team
• Partnering for value to influence and shape how the organisation creates and preserves value
• Specialists generating further insights in their areas of specialism
• Assembling and extracting data and providing limited insight

• The segregated triangle
• The hexagonal structure

• Technical skills
• Business skills
• People skills
• Leadership skills

• Data processing
• Data collection
• Stakeholder interactions
• Applying expertise
• Managing others

A digital mindset is simply one where accountants are continually aware of and alert to how digital technology will affect both them and the organisations they work for.

A mindset is an established set of attitudes and assumptions that is held by someone.