Which of the following statements best define strategy?
B. It describes how an organization can create value for its customers while differentiating itself from its competitors.
Which of the following statements best define a product differentiation strategy?
B. It is an organization's ability to offer products or services its customers perceive to be superior and unique relative to the products or services of its competitors.
What is the term for an organization's ability to achieve lower costs relative to competitors through productivity and efficiency improvements, elimination of waste, and tight cost control?
D. Cost leadership
An organization that is using the cost leadership approach would ________.
C. focus on productivity through efficiency improvements
Magic Corporation manufactures water toys. It plans to grow by producing high-quality water toys that are delivered in a timely manner. There are a number of other manufacturers who produce similar water toys. Magic believes that continuously improving its manufacturing processes and re-engineering processes to downsize and eliminate excess capacity are critical to implementing its strategy. Which of the following best describes Magic's strategy?
A. cost leadership
Which of the following efforts would most likely yield the greatest re-engineering benefits?
C. focusing on entire processes and elimination of unnecessary activities and tasks
The fundamental rethinking and redesign of business processes to achieve improvements in critical measures ofperformance, such as cost, quality, service, speed, and customer satisfaction is ________.
A. reengineering
The first step to successful balanced scorecard implementation is clarifying the________.
A. organization's vision and strategy
Which of the following statements is true of the internal-business-process perspective of a balanced scorecard?
A. Internal-business-process improvement targets are often determined after benchmarking against an organization's main competitors standards.
Which of the following questions best relates to the balanced scorecard's internal business processes perspective?
C. How can our processes be executed in such a way as to increase value tocustomers?
A company's balanced scorecard measuresyield, order-delivery time, cycle time, and errors as part of which of the followingperspectives?
B. Internal-business-process
In a strategy map, a strategic objective where many ties spur out from it resulting in the achievement of many strategic objectives iscalled:
C. trigger point
Which of the following statements is a disadvantage of balanced scorecards?A.Balanced scorecards are of little use in influencing managerial behavior.
B.Balanced scorecards use a lot of nonfinancial measures.
C.Balanced scorecards ignore short-run objectives.
D.Balanced scorecards may become unwieldy and difficult to understand.
D.Balanced scorecards may become unwieldy and difficult to understand.
Which of the following statements is true of strategic analysis of operating income? A.Management accountants compare actual operating performance of one year and budgeted operating performance of another year.
B.Management accountants compare budgeted operating performance over two different periods.
C.Management accountants compare actual operating performance over two different periods.
D.Management accountants compare actual and budgeted operating performance over the same time periods.
C.Management accountants compare actual operating performance over two different periods.
Successful implementation of a product differentiation strategy will result in ________.
B. a large favorable growth andprice-recovery components
Which of the following statements is true of strategic analysis of operating income?A.Subdividing the change in operating income to evaluate the success of a strategy has no similarity to the variance analysis.
B.Management accountants compare actual and budgeted operating performance over the same time periods.
C.Change in operating income from one period to any future period can be subdivided into productdifferentiation, cost leadership, and growth components.
D.It focuses on differences in individual categories of costs(direct materials, direct manufacturing labor, andoverheads).
C.Change in operating income from one period to any future period can be subdivided into productdifferentiation, cost leadership, and growth components.
Sunk costs ________.
A. are ignored when evaluating alternatives
When making decisions ________.
A. appropriate weight must be given to both quantitative and qualitative factors
When evaluating a makeminus−orminus−buy decision, which of the following needs to beconsidered? A.alternative uses of the production capacity
B.pension costs to the current employees
C.material−handling costs that cannot be eliminated
D.the original cost of the production equipment
A.alternative uses of the production capacity
Colonial North Manufacturing, Inc. is considering eliminating one of its product lines. The fixed costs currently allocated to the product line will be allocated to other product lines upon discontinuance. What financial effects occur if the product line isdiscontinued?
D. net income will decrease by the amount of the contribution margin of the product line being discontinued
Crimson Services, Inc., employs 8 individuals. They are all paid $16.50 per hour. How would total costs of personnel be classified?
A. variable cost
Which of the following functions represents the least total cost assuming the number of units is equal in each case?
C. y = 90 + 5X
Place the following steps in order for estimating a cost function using quantitative analysis.
A = Plot the data
B = Collect data on the dependent variable and the cost driver.
C = Choose the dependent variable
D = Identify the independent variable, or cost driver
E = Estimate the cost function
A. C D B A E
When using the high-low method, the numerator of the equation that determines the slope is the ________.
D. difference between the costs associated with highest and lowest observations of the cost driver
The slope of the line of regression is the________.
D. rate at which the dependent variable varies
Which of the following statements is true ofactivity-based costing?
A. There is a clear cause-and-effect relationship between costs and the cost driver in the long run.
A step variable-cost function ________.
C. is often approximated with a continuous variable-cost function
The learning-curve models presented in the text examine ________.
C. how efficiency increases as more units are produced
Data collection problems arise when________.
B. fixed and variable costs are not separately identified and both are allocated to products on a per unit basis
Which of the following statements is of true engineered costs?
B. They have a detailed, physicallyobservable, and repetitive relationship with output.
Conversion costs are an example of________.
B. indirect engineered costs
At the Spring Valley Company, the cost of the personnel department has always been charged to production departments based upon number of employees. Recently, opinions gathered from the department managers indicate that the number of new hires might be a better predictor of personnel costs. Which cost estimation method is being used by Spring Valley Company?