1. The focus of management accounting over time has changed. Which is the correct historical order for the following foci?
i. Cost
ii. Profitability
iii. Resource management
iv. Waste reduction
A. i, ii, iii and iv
B. ii, iii, i and iv
C. i, ii, iv and iii
D. i, iii, iv and ii
2. Which of the following are management accounting responses to the changing business environment?
A. Activity-based costing.
B. E-commerce.
C. Supplier cost analysis.
D. A and C.
3. Which of the following statements is correct?
A. The primary objective of a firm's management is to increase firm value.
B. The management accounting system needs to accumulate information from both internal and external sources.
C. Managers may be faced with a conflict between increasing customer value and increasing shareholder value.
D. All the given statements are correct.
4. Strategies are:
A. directions that a firm intend to take in the long term
B. describes the way the firm competes
C. the same as objectives and goals
D. independent of the firm's mission statement
5. Which of the following would not be likely as a consistent focus for a firm following a product differentiation strategy?
A. Quality
B. Delivery
C. Product innovation
D. Cost reduction
6. The 'vision' of an organisation:
A. refers to the desired future state of an organisation
B. refers to a statement that defines the purpose of the organisation
C. refers to specific statements of objective, upon which goals can be set
D. is only useful for non profit organizations
7. Animus Ltd is a mining company. Which of the following is an example of a decision relating to formulating Animus Ltd's corporate strategy?
A. Should Animus Ltd operate in the mining industry only, or to expand to heavy machinery manufacturing and distribution?
B. Should Animus Ltd compete based on price or product differentiation?
C. Should Animus Ltd hire a new financial controller?
D. Should Animus Ltd develop a new management accounting system?
8. People create budgetary slack because:
A. their performance will look better if they beat the budget.
B. it helps them cope with uncertainty.
C. they believe their budget requests will be cut.
D. All of the given answers
9. Which of the following items should be taken into account when setting budgets?
A. Positive behaviour of employees is more likely to result if the budgetary process is participative.
B. The budget goals should not be so tight that they are unachievable.
C. The goals of the individual sections' budget should be aligned with the firm's goals.
D. All of the given answers
10. Which of the following are contemporary approaches to managing costs?
A. Life cycle costing
B. Target costing
C. Both life cycle costing and target costing
D. Neither life cycle costing nor target costing
11. Which of the following activities are non-value-added activities?
i. Inspect work in process
ii. Process sales orders
iii. Repair drilling machine
iv. Move raw material to the work station
A. i, iii and iv
B. i, ii and iv
C. i, ii and iii
D. ii, iii and iv
12. When we consider the life cycle sequence of a product, the majority of costs for a typical product have been committed by the end of:
A. product planning
B. design and development
C. customer support
D. production
13. A systematic approach in analysing the product and process design, with the aim of eliminating any non-value-added elements, to achieve the target cost is known as:
A. component level target costs
B. value engineering
C. strategic cost reduction
D. cost reduction objective
Explain why the management accounting information from the traditional responsibility accounting system fails to provide a greater strategic focus?
Give one example of an appropriate performance measure for each of the responsibility and the process-orientated accounting systems.
Explain four key features of a good process-oriented management accounting system.