問題：

(a)Brace Co is an electronics company specialising in the manufacture of home audio equipment. Historically, the company has used solely financial performance measures to assess the performance of the company as a whole. The company’s Managing Director has recently heard of the ‘balanced scorecard approach’ and is keen to learn more.

Required:

Describe the balanced scorecard approach to performance measurement. (10 marks)

(b) Brace Co is split into two divisions, A and B, each with their own cost and revenue streams. Each of the divisions is managed by a divisional manager who has the power to make all investment decisions within the division. The cost of capital for both divisions is 12%. Historically, investment decisions have been made by calculating the return on investment （ROI） of any opportunities and at present, the return on investment of each division is 16%.

A new manager who has recently been appointed in division A has argued that using residual income （RI） to make investment decisions would result in ‘better goal congruence’ throughout the company.

Each division is currently considering the following separate investments:

Project for Division A              Project for Division B

Capital required for investment             $82·8 million                          $40·6 million

Sales generated by investment            $44·6 million                          $21·8 million

Net profit margin                                 28%                                      33%

The company is seeking to maximise shareholder wealth.

Required:

Calculate both the return on investment and residual income of the new investment for each of the two divisions. Comment on these results, taking into consideration the manager’s views about residual income.

(10 marks)

(20 marks)

答案：

Brace Co

(a) Balanced scorecard

The balanced scorecard is a strategic management technique for communicating and evaluating the achievement of the strategy and mission of an organisation. It comprises an integrated framework of financial and non-financial performance measures that aim to clarify, communicate and manage strategy implementation. It translates an organisation’s strategy into objectives and performance measurements for the following four perspectives:

Financial perspective

The financial perspective considers how the organisation appears to shareholders. How can it create value for its shareholders? Kaplan and Norton, who developed the balanced scorecard, identified three core financial themes that will drive the business strategy: revenue growth and mix, cost reduction and asset utilisation.

Customer perspective

The customer perspective considers how the organisation appears to customers. The organisation should ask itself: ‘to achieve our vision, how should we appear to our customers?’.

The customer perspective should identify the customer and market segments in which the business units will compete. There is a strong link between the customer perspective and the revenue objectives in the financial perspective. If customer objectives are achieved, revenue objectives should be too.

Internal perspective

The internal perspective requires the organisation to ask itself the question – ‘what must we excel at to achieve our financial and customer objectives?’. It must identify the internal business processes that are critical to the implementation of the organisation’s strategy. Kaplan and Norton identify a generic process value chain consisting of three processes: the innovation process, the operations process and the post-sales process.

Learning and growth perspective

The learning and growth perspective requires the organisation to ask itself whether it can continue to improve and create value.

If an organisation is to continue having loyal, satisfied customers and make good use of its resources, it must keep learning and developing. It is critical that an organisation continues to invest in its infrastructure – i.e. people, systems and organisational procedures – in order to provide the capabilities that will help the other three perspectives to be accomplished.

(b) Divisional performance

ROI:

Division A

Net profit = $44·6m x 28% = $12·488m

ROI = $12·488m/$82·8m = 15·08%

Division B

Net profit = $21·8m x 33% = $7·194m

ROI = $7·194m/$40·6m = $17·72%

Residual income:

Division A

Divisional profit = $12·488m

Capital employed = $82·8m

Imputed interest charge = $82·8m x 12% = 9·936m

Residual income = $12·488m – $9·936m = $2·552m.

Division B

Divisional profit = $7·194m

Capital employed = $40·6m

Imputed interest charge = $40·6m x 12% = $4·872m

Residual income = $7·194 – $4·872 = $2·322m.

Comments

If a decision about whether to proceed with the investments is made based on ROI, it is possible that the manager of Division A will reject the proposal whereas the manager of Division B will accept the proposal. This is because each division currently has a ROI of 16% and since the Division A investment only has a ROI of 15·08%, it would bring the division’s overall ROI down to less than it’s current level. On the other hand, since the Division B investment is higher than its current 16%, the investment would bring the division’s overall ROI up.

When you consider what would actually be best for the company as a whole, you come to the conclusion that, since both investments have a healthy return, they should both be accepted. Hence, the fact that ROI had been used as a decision-making tool has led to a lack of goal congruence between Division A and the company as whole. This backs up what the new manager of Division A is saying. If they used residual income in order to aid the decision-making process, both proposals would be accepted by the divisions since both have a healthy RI. In this case, RI helps the divisions to make decisions that are in line with the best interests of the company. Once again, this backs up the new manager’s viewpoint.

It is important to note, however, that each of the methods has numerous advantages and disadvantages that have not been considered here.

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