Reviews for The fractured community

The average rating for The fractured community based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-05-24 00:00:00 Joseph Zmuda Used in second year undergraduate Management Accounting module. As long as you overlook anything related to accounting and the redundant 45% bit of every paragraph, you should be able to find the case studies and exercises useful. Some sentences I didn't skim over that this book could have done without: "Strategies are the big plans, important plans." "A positive variance is favourable because it indicates that actual profit exceeded budgeted profit - if I may, your equations beg to differ - and a negative variance is unfavourable." - You don't say. "As the managers of the various responsibility centres have different responsibilities, different financial performance measures are used when evaluating and rewarding these managers." - There are more articulate English-as-a-second-language fifth graders. "A responsibility centre is an organisational unit that is headed by a manager who is responsible for its activities." - As opposed to the headless chicken variety. "In addition, the controllability principle is important." I rest my case. This book is poorly written, but there is some pertinent content in the area of organisational structures. Also, the authors made the respectable decision to fill the other 40% of this book with exercises and case studies. On the other hand the math is unexplained. I'm not talking about the how-to and which number goes where, I'm talking about the 'why'. Selling price variance: Actual unit sales volume times the difference of price between the actual price and the budgeted price. Why should I remember this? It doesn't say. The internet, though points out that it's useful in telling whether the actual price is higher or lower than the budgeted price - the actual numbers you put in - comparison, we learn it in first grade, why does it need multiplicating? It's not like the actual volume could be negative. I spent the better part of half an hour puzzling over three simple equations (pg. 388-389), the purpose of which is not only left unexplained, save for the cooking instructions, and all of which coming down to (Actual profit) - (Budgeted profit) +/- Constant x Variable i.e. a positive variance might have to do with something other than profits. Also, when they do plug in the numbers, some go positive, some go negative, so, same products, same volumes, same contributions in three sets of equations - selling price, mix & volume and mix variance equations - one negative, two positive. I'm stumped, did we win?

Review # 2 was written on 2011-01-10 00:00:00 David Veloz i think this is a good book to learn how we manage to control management system