I needn't have woried about my back ... see yesterday's post ... but I found that my right knee has swollen up a bit having been iffy during the day whenever I climbed the stairs and such like exertions. I told you that all of that bark what flipping heavy! DW

Responded to a post on a teachers' Economics/Business Studies discussion list concerning the definition of capacity. I responded as follows: The best place to get to grips with an understanding of the meaning of what you are calling Capacity in the context of business studies is a cost and management accounting book ... such as mine! Maximum capacity is, eg, 168 hours a week for every resource if a business works 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Of course, not all businesses do work 168 hours a week so their maximum capacity relates to their ordinary working week. Then we need to refine the definition, along the lines of ideal capacity practical capacity normal capacity expected capacity. ideal capacity is the absolute maximum and it is rarely attainable in the long run practical capacity takes a more realistic view of capacity by, eg, allowing for planned maintenance, machine setups, meal breaks, training time, waiting for materials, materials handling delays ... however, this view of capacity takes a high rate of productivity view of life in that it should assume an optimum level of production/utilisation time and minimum down time normal capacity is a variation on the practical capacity and allows for a less stringent view of down time: this is the level of capcity that will be assumed by cost accountants as they are compiling standards, working through budgets and so on expected capacity is the level of capacity takes an even more relaxed view than normal capacity and might take account of, eg, local conditions, union agreements, special allowances for employees with disabilities ... the best example of that to come out of the news over the last week is at Sunderland AFC where Niall Quinn admitted that former manager Peter Reid had allowed him to take life easier than new manager Howard Wilkinson will ... because of Quinn's bad back!! If you want to put percentages on all of this, for illustration only, we might find as follows: ideal capacity ... 100% practical capacity ... 95% normal capacity ... 93% expected capacity ... 90% DW

On the personal front I'm nursing my back a little bit as I spent the afternoon lugging many kilogrammes of bark chippings from Garden Centre to car to garden and then all over my small garden. The chippings are the mulch for my Chrysanthemums, Roses, Peonies, Fruit Trees, Herbs and so on for the winter. Anyway, it took 750 litres of the chippings to cover the beds I needed to cover: they're heavy!! Let's hope I'm not bed ridden for a week or so and that the flowers, shrubs and trees all appreciate my hard work!! DW

Questions are coming in thick and fast at the moment. Peta from Australia has an exam based on Joe's Peanuts and wanted some advice on what to look for. Basically, this case, see this page http://www.duncanwil.co.uk/joe.html on my web site for the case and some questions is all about absorption versus marginal costing and how easy it is to get the two confused. I told Peta about a follow up case that appeared in the UK's Management Accounting magazine as it was then called and hope that this will help with the exam! Kiren, don't know where from, wanted to know when it's still appropriate to use standard costing. I gave references to Dearden's Management Accounting: Text and Cases, Drury's Management and Cost Accounting and Kaplan and Johnson Relevance Lost to help out. Luis wrote from Peru to ask about IAS 41 for his sugar cane farm ... this one's in progress. DW

I got a question over night from South Africa on how to apply IAS 20: Government Grants. A company's auditors want to reverse an entry from last year in which they initially credited a Government Grant to the Equity Account ... could they, should they, reverse that entry? My advice is that according to IAS 20 they have NO CHOICE but to reverse that entry. Government Grants, all Grants, MUST be shown as income and NEVER as capital. DW

I was asked a supplementary question by Nick about Management Styles and Structures so here is a further set of links. Go to my Web site and follow the trail to the Business Section to find a big word file with all of these goodies in it! The long document is a collection of some useful work on the Internet concerning management styles and structures. As can be seen I have taken virtually everything verbatim and I have duly acknowledged all sources for all examples. Start with http://www.qualityamerica.com/knowledgecente/articles/CQMStyle2.html Management Style Matters   by Derek Breton http://www.mdcentre.govt.nz/private/senior/planning/1_3.php3 Leadership Styles http://intranet.bexhillcollege.ac.uk/A-Level%20BS/CD/HRM/Leadership_Styles.htm http://homepage.ntlworld.com/a.culpin/andrews_cv/im/im_mstyle.htm#top Leadership and Management Styles http://www.longroad.ac.uk/accreditation_project/subject_business/bs_as/module_2/motivation/leadership.htm The Move From Management To Leadership http://dis.shef.ac.uk/teaching/introleadership2002.htm History: 20th century management theories http://www.comp.glam.ac.uk/teaching/ismanagement/manstyles1f.htm Leadership cf. management http://www.comp.glam.ac.uk/teaching/ismanagement/manstyles1f.htm The functional approach http://www.comp.glam.ac.uk/teaching/ismanagement/manstyles1f.htm Theory X and Theory Y http://www.comp.glam.ac.uk/teaching/ismanagement/manstyles1f.htm Populist approaches http://www.comp.glam.ac.uk/teaching/ismanagement/manstyles1f.htm Leadership Styles http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~gerard/MENG/ME96/Documents/Styles/styles.html Dowding’s Universal business Model Diagram http://www.howarddowding.com/modelhighres.htm Group Leadership: McCann http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/groups/mccann.html People in Organisations http://www.thetimes100.co.uk/revision/as_management.doc The ‘good enough’ manager http://www.actionlink.org.uk/home/GetFile.cfm?FileName=goodeno.doc For a four page summary of the basics of management styles why not download the pdf file at http://www.aloa.co.uk/New%20ALoA/samples%20of%20cd%20etc/Leadership%20styles.pdf? For real life examples of how organisations see themselves, carry out a search with Google of Yahoo or Ask Jeeves for Organisational Structure and find lots of real live examples of what organisations think of themselves!! DW

Bob Jensen, of http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen pointed out the following two links in one of his fantastic resources sometime last week. The first link suggests that the USA does away with undergraduate accounting programmes, replaces them with liberal arts pre accounting programmes and then flings all aspitant accountants onto a Doctor of Accounting programme. The second link responds to the first! http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2002/1002/features/f102802.htm http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2002/1002/features/f103402.htm Firstly, I see nothing wrong with building an accounting programme with the liberal arts type things that Nearon, link one, suggests and cringe at the thought of all accountants being “doctors”. Read them and make up your own mind. My view is that it’s all tosh, no offence intended!! DW

Margaret wrote to me over the weekend and asked about Corporate Governance. In the past I have tended to steer clear of this as it is something that is too thorny for my humble site and it's an ever fluid issue that is difficult to keep on top of. This time, however, I got to grips with it by doing a search and review of some of what's available on the Internet in this area. I have put together a Word file on this that will be in the Business Section of my site before too long but here are the main links I found that should prove useful for Margaret and others lookinto this issue: A corporate view of a company's own Corporate Governance affairs at http://www.prudential.co.uk/prudentialplc/aboutpru/coportategovernance/ Here’s a short essay on CG from Global Change, at: http://www.globalchange.com/corporategovernance.htm Ever heard of the National Criminal Intelligence Service? Here it is, with its own corporate governance section: http://www.ncis.co.uk/corporategovernance.asp. The Association of British Insurers has a page on corporate governance http://www.abi.org.uk/Display/default.asp?Menu_ID=705&Menu_All=1,704,705 that has several highlighted issues that lead on to links within their site. Go to http://www.manifest.co.uk/manifest_i/index.htm to start answering these questions. the link for this essay is http://www.manifest.co.uk/manifest_i/2002/0210Oct/021001editorial.htm The there’s the Information Assurance Advisory Council, again I’d never herad of them but here they are discussing corporate governance at http://www.iaac.org.uk/initiatives/governance.htm. Their introductory paragraph says: the document Engaging the Board: Corporate Governance and Information Risk is at http://www.iaac.org.uk/initiatives/CG%20Recommendations%20Paper.pdf, takes you to a 41 page PDF file that has headings of great interest to anyone beginning a study of corporate governance in the UK. Well worth the download time! The Guardian newspaper had an article on 5 July 2002 in which it reported on Corporate governance and auditing rules, saying The full article is at http://www.guardian.co.uk/theissues/article/0,6512,750233,00.html Local Government has also embraced corporate governance in the UK. Here is a page from Leicester City Council in which they set out their Local Code on Corporate Governance, at http://www.leicester.gov.uk/departments/page.asp?pgid=3355 Go to the Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS) at http://www.brass.cf.ac.uk/Links4.html There's a lot to think about there to get you going! DW

One of the reasons I run my web site the way I do is that I not only get to "meet" people that I wouldn't otherwise do; but I get to interact with some of my visitors, the vast majority of whom I have not, and will never, meet. 1 Here's a feedback note from Richard Young, someone I did meet once and talked to over the phone a couple of times: I wrote the standard deviation and normal distributions pages for my site at the behest of Richard. Richard then did an excellent job of translating some of my work into handbook for students of marketing that he asked me to proof read for him. Here's Richard's feedback: A BIG Thanks for your amendments. I have included an acknowledgement to you and a link in the preface. Acknowledgements. I am grateful to Duncan Williamson for supplying detailed background notes on normal distributions and standard deviation which have been adapted for these Q&A. See http://duncanwil.co.uk/nonfin.htm Regards Richard Young from the UK 2 I did a bit of work for Sajitha Dishanka over the last couple of weeks, too and here's Sajitha's message, just arrived: Thank you for your kind consideration on my recent requisition. And, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for every mail that you had sent. Thank you again. Sajitha Dishanka from Colombo in Sri Lanka 3 LWL paid what I think is a big compliment, too, with the following: Dear Duncan Williamson, Two and a half decades ago, my classmate tried to influenced me into reading the Diary of Anne Frank to improve my English. After class, he took me to the British Council but unfortunately he failed to propagate that idea across because he did not learn how to motivate me to do so. Today, I was introduced to something alike - I called it the Diary of Duncan Williamson. My mindset, I guess, is different this time round. My self motivation drove me into it. Well, I am happy to have got a friend through the internet. Regards, LWL A good start to Monday morning here in a crisp and sunny old England! DW

If you go to OSL and head for their Free Resources and then Notes, you'll see a wealth of materials that are aimed at management styles and a huge amount more. DW

I wrote to Chris Sivewright of the Oxford School of Learning and post haste he supplied me with the URLs I was looking for: www.osl-ltd.co.uk www.osl-ltd.co.uk/tutor www.oxford-conferences.com I'll find the direct link for the management styles etc page I mentioned yesterday and post if here when I find it. DW