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

I then wrote to LWL as follows ... and I'd give this advice to anyone, too!! Dear LWL, Overnight someone wrote to me asking about management styles and cultures and you can see my responses in my online journal: go to www.duncanwil.co.uk/Weblog/blogindex.html to see what I told Nick. It's not a full page with discussion and examples but you might find them useful. I have just started Blogging and am using my journal to report things like this as I find it so convenient: the address will always be the same, I think, so visit it regularly. Hope you find it at least a bit useful. Best wishes Duncan DW

Nick wrote to me overnight asking: I need some help, I'm looking for some interesting sites on management styles and culture. Or any useful information would be great or sites. Thanks Nick I normally insist that whoever writes to me asking for help tells me a bit about who they are and what they want; but since this follows on from my chat with LWL of earlier this week, I let Nick through; and here are my suggestions. Dear Nick, Take a look at these and see if they help: http://www.management-culture.com/index-page2.htm ... sells itself as MBA level http://stress.about.com/library/weekly/aa021901a.htm?terms=new ... maybe a page to start you off by the look of it http://www.noworkviolence.com/articles/corporate_culture.htm ... culture but with a security emphasis, may be useful http://rnb.cuesta.com/c/@3FKlpz.alRMKY/Pages/culturefit.html ... culture with a link to http://rnb.cuesta.com/c/@3FKlpz.alRMKY/Pages/news_itn_love.html which is a potentially useful article; and look out for the links on the left of this page that might inspire you too http://www.lmi.org/Careers/culture.htm ... one company's own culture A three part series of articles on management style: 1 http://managementlearning.com/art/persmyao/index.html 2 http://managementlearning.com/art/persrjob/index.html 3 http://managementlearning.com/art/persrdes/index.html and from the same site here is an introduction to some of the key issues you are probably looking at http://managementlearning.com/topi/mngtstyl.html including Herzberg, Hawthorne Studies, Renis Likert and more You should also search for Japanese management styles, American management styles and so on and maybe do searches for comparisons of styles across the world http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/bm_model.html ... the Blake and Mouton Managerial Grid might be useful for you: gets you to identify the type of manager you are ... worth a look if you don't know it I can't find the link for the Oxford School of Learning but that has a couple of pages in this area aimed at A level (UK pre University students) that is the best summary of management thinking I have seen in a long time. Interested in the classics such as Herberg and Maslow? Do a serach such as herzberg, maslow and you'll find such pages as http://ericae.net/pare/getvn.asp?v=5&n=11 ... looks like a great starter to me, with some good comparisons to chew over Well, there you are. Finding those pages took me around 10 - 15 minutes and I hope you find them useful. I'm not sure of the level you want so if some of these are not useful, please disregard them or let me know how I can refine my search for you. Best wishes Duncan Williamson DW

I thought I'd end the day with an exchange I had with an accountant who would like me to add some more to my web site. Here's the exchange in full: some good ideas and I've promised to do what I can and will happily do what he asks if I can. 7 Nov 02 Dear Duncan Williamson, I have browsed through your site and took it as a refresher course for myself. However, I would like to suggest some categories to be added in to your site, namely, BUSINESS and MANAGEMENT. We, as qualified accountants are given side roles in business as well as management. For instance, I am involved in another portfolio - maintaining my company's quality management system (after having implementing it) in line with ISO 9001:2000 requirements. I was told by my Lloyd's Register assessor that more and more accountants are being appointed as Quality Mgt Reps. How about considering what I said? Maybe, in time to come your site will be able to "compete' with the AWeb in certain ways. As of todate, I can't find a site that provides Q & As on ISO matters just like AWeb provide. Perhaps, yours could be the first? I look forward to hearing from you further. Regards, LWL Thanks, LWL, and I have a lot sympathy for your quest. I'd love to do what you suggest but let me remind you that I have a full time job and my web site is my hobby. That means I have to ration my time according to my interests and requests from people such as yourself. I try to add business and management things as I can: clearly, more could be done. I like the idea of the AccountingTutorWeb idea that I think you posted on AccountingWeb ... I do some of this; but given the way I work, my site isn't focused on one aspect of accounting and education. I would be more than happy to work with you on, for example, publishing work on ISO 9001:2000 or anything else you are interested in. Please let me know if you'd like to work on this and we'll discuss it further. Alternatively, let me know your problem area and I'll tell you if I can work on that! Best wishes and thanks for your interest. Duncan Williamson Dear Duncan Williamson, I understand your position as having a full-time job with your website as your hobby. My suggestion is something for consideration and I am glad you are receptive towards it. Perhaps, doing a little bit at a time on those new areas, in time to come, I am sure you will build up an informative website. At the moment, I do not have much problems in my accounting portfolio job as sad to say I do not involve much in the technical aspects, though holding a professionally recognised UK qualification. I guess you gave me that encouragement to participate in your website, and I shall take advantage of this extra mile to pose some questions of some technical or complex situations. I guess at a lower level, the problem of today's accounting department lies in the difference caused by knowledge and organisational capabilities. This "knowledge gap", I guess is going to widen with today's competitive needs of companies planning to go global with the WTO and AFTA requirements. This could be caused by some overly contented staff and this is one backlog problems accountants might face in their subordinates' training programme trying to "unlearn" those bad habits of their subordinates. To me, the work of the QMR (quality mgt rep) is much more challenging of the two portfolios I hold. Dealing with recalcitrants is one terrible aspects I could imagine of and also with some "dead wood" staff. One of my encounters involved having to resolve the problem cause by this consultant who interpreted the ISO clauses wrongly, having convinced the top management team. Sad to say, why are such people so easily taken in by their lack of knowledge. We are not continuing the services of this consultant anyway. So much so about work, this type of stories could bore another. I thought having some kind of hobby like astronomy, etc could place your website to be even more interesting and attractive. Again, this needs time and effort. This is just another one aspect which I thought could spruce up the entire website of yours. When time permits, I shall try to inputs some of my questions with the hope that your wbesite will be more informational. Till then, hope to hear from you again. Regards, Loh WL Dear LWL, I think you are right about the general education of accountants. I used to work as a cost accountant and you might be astonished to hear that fellow cost accountants would happily sit in their offices all day and not even dream of walking around the factory to see how our products were all put together and how products and product costs were inter related. Similarly, we ought all to take as many opportunities as possible to work on our general business background. After all, as you have found, we don't all necessarily stay in the technical side of business for ever, we might have a department to manage one day ... Looking forward to more of this! Best wishes Duncan Williamson DW

A man from Zimbabwe wrote to me yesterday and asked if I could help him to get to grips with the valuation for accounting purposes of Crocodiles! The things people do. If you might be fascinated by this issue, why not trip over to www.duncanwil.co.uk/ias41crocs.html. Riveting stuff; and there's more to it than you might think! DW

Shame has hit me again. A huge thanks to Margaret Johnstone of Scotland for taking the time and trouble to spot and correct a couple of unforgivable errors on my new Free Cash Flow page. Thanks Margaret and keep visiting! DW

Here's something that I hope does not breach any copyright rules ... my sincere apologies if it does; but I have given full credit for the full source, together with full links to the original. Whatever happened to the "virtual close"? Annotations of an article from www.cfo.com: full link at end. The virtual close, that is a business filing its annual report and account at the end of the financial year in real time, is an issue that crops up from time to time. Janet Kersnar of CFO wrote an article in which she explored this issue. Here is my summary of that article. ... Cisco Systems ... show the way. Yet research by KPMG Consulting Inc ... Surveying 550 companies, KPMG found that the average close took 8 days in 1999; two years later it had decreased by just 1 day. the entire process: closing the books ... press release ... no progress at all has been made ... 34 days to achieve that in 1999, and the same number last year. ... the only way you can get faster is if you improve the quality of your processes." Best-in-class companies such as Cisco offer some object lessons. ... make sure their processes and procedures are consistent and reliable ... a single chart of accounts for their entire organization. ... standard, companywide data warehousing or similar technology, and have automated most — if not all — of their processes ... installed Web-based applications or interfaces to connect consolidation tools and local companies' general-ledger systems. ... fast-close projects at best-in-class companies are a work in progress ... Germany's Veba Oel ...[t]he $26 billion oil and petrol-retail company ... few processes ... standardized across the company, which comprised three businesses for marketing and distribution, refining, and upstream production, with about 100 subgroups filing reports to them. ... workshops with unit heads, accountants, controllers, and auditors to discuss how books were closed "product by product, process by process ... group-level intercompany reconciliation now takes less than a day a month compared with four days before the project began ... in February 2002, E.On sold Veba Oel to BP of the United Kingdom, where the demands for fast consolidation and reporting are even greater. ... at the German company Henkel, $13 billion maker of toiletries, home-care products, and industrial goods began using Web-based software for intercompany reconciliations. "Having Web-enabled software for intercompany reconciliations is a great way to let managers anywhere in the company see their receivables against the liabilities of their partners within Henkel," ... "... 280 reporting units ..." ... groupwide database and financial system that ... "will give us seamless, real-time virtual management." ... auditors signing off on the 2001 accounts by February 14 this year, Henkel made its financials available to shareholders 45 working days after year-end — 10 days faster than in 2001. The aim is to sign off on the books by January 31 of next year. ... Gerber Foods, a £450 million ($700 million) U.K. drinks supplier, is hoping [to] say the same ... waved good-bye to the trusty spreadsheets ... moved to Web-based consolidation and reporting software. "Spreadsheets are fine ... for ad hoc analysis ... But once a company reaches a certain scale ... too cumbersome to be the sole tool for closing the books." ... the KPMG survey found that while the average time to close the books has declined only 1 day, the median has dropped from 10 days to 7, and audit sign-off has dropped from 16 days to 10 (both average and median) ... Original autohor Janet Kersnar, CFO IT Date published October 23, 2002 Web link to full article http://www.cfo.com/article/1,5309,7884|||3,00.html DW

Bonfire Night in the UK tonight: celebrating the capture of Guy Fawkes, a Yorkshireman like yours truly, and therefore the foiling of the plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Fawkes was guarding the cellar in which the bomb that he and his fellow conspirators had planted when he was found by the palace guard ... following a tip off from someone. The following day, the King was due to open/visit parliament and was to have been the target of the bombing. Fawkes was found guilty and hanged, drawn and quartered as far as I know ... or was he burned to death on a bonfire? In any case, bonfire night is a major national celebration and effigies of Guy Fawkes will be burned on bonfires up and down the country. The fire will be accompanied by firworks displays and feasting on baked potatoes and black, sticky treacle toffee among other things. I woke up early today and got to grips with the web site: I like to post something each week and missed last week so I set aside a lot of time yesterday to write a paper on free cash flow. This morning, I finished a page of answers to some questions on accounting for stewardship that I promised to provide last week or so and that is being uploaded along with this blogging. You can go to my home page, www.duncanwil.co.uk, to see what I'm blethering about if you want! DW

On 1 November, my wife told me that a friend of hers had heard on the news that about 30 children in the UK who were "trick or treating" were killed by the people they were visiting. I was shocked and said I didn't believe it. Turns out the children who were killed were the poor Italian kids killed at school during an earthquake in south central Italy ... the friend is a non native English speaker and had connected a story on Radio 4 about Halloween in the UK with the story of the Italian earthquake, not having spotted the break between them. Eesh! DW

Maki Nishi just wrote to me from Japan asking a questions about International Accounting Standard 14: Segment Reporting: Hello. I visited your web page and found the page about IAS 14. It said that the solutions to the questions on that page were available to anyone who asked. It is the reason that I e-mail to you. I'd like to know what "matrix presentation" is. So would you tell me the answer of question #12, that is " IAS 14, paragraphs 27 and 29, discusses a matrix presentation of accounting information. What is meant by a matrix presentation here" ? Thank you Maki Nishi I sent him (or her, sorry that I don't know which!) a copy of paragraphs 27 and 29 from the IAS and asked if that's not the full answer I'd send more! DW