4 A properly conducted appraisal interview is fundamental in ensuring the success of an organisation’s performanceappraisal system.Required:(a) Describe three approaches to conducting the appraisal interview. (5 marks)

正确答案：
Part (d):
Oliver should arrange a formal grievance interview with the appropriate partner. Both Oliver and the partner need to be aware that
the grievance interview follows three steps in a particular and logical order. The meeting between Oliver and the partner responsible
for human resources must be in a formal atmosphere.
The first stage is exploration. The manager or supervisor – in this case the partner responsible for human resources – must gather
as much information as possible. No solution must be offered at this stage. The need is to establish what is actually the problem;
the background to the problem (in this case the icy relationship between Oliver and David Morgan) and the facts and causes of
the problem – in this case the resentment felt by David Morgan over Oliver’s appointment.
The second stage is the consideration stage. This is undertaken by the appropriate manager or partner here, who must firstly check
the facts, analyse the causes of the complaint and evaluate possible solutions. The meeting may be adjourned if at this stage the
partner requires more time to fulfil this step.
The final stage is the reply. This will be carried out by the partner after he or she has reached and reviewed a conclusion. It is
important that the outcome is recorded in writing; the meeting and therefore the interview and procedure is only successful when
an agreement is reached.
If no agreement is reached then the procedure should be taken to a higher level of management.

正确答案：
5 Overview
Understanding what motivates people is necessary at all levels of management. It is important that professional accountants
understand the relevance of individual motivation. Unless individuals are well managed and motivated they are unlikely to cooperate
to achieve the organisation’s objectives.
Part (a):
(a) Hygiene (or maintenance) factors lead to job dissatisfaction because of the need to avoid unpleasantness. They are so called
because they can in turn be avoided by the use of ‘hygienic’ methods, that is, they can be prevented. Attention to these
hygiene factors prevents dissatisfaction but does not on its own provide motivation.
Hygiene factors (or ‘dissatisfiers’) are concerned with those factors associated with, but not directly a part of, the job itself.
Herzberg suggested that these are mainly salary and the perceived differences with others’ salaries, job security, working
conditions, the level and quality of supervision, organisational policy and administration and the nature of interpersonal
relationships. Resolution of hygiene factors, however, is short term, longer term resolution requires motivator factors.

正确答案：
2 All organisations of whatever size have to work in a co-ordinated way to ensure that the objectives laid down are achieved.However, for effective co-ordination to take place, the structure must be correct and understood. Very often, managers know the structure but cannot explain its significance or appropriateness.
(a) The structure of an organisation is often depicted as a chart. The structure explains the communication pattern, the linking mechanism between departments, tasks and individuals, the co-ordinating mechanism that ensures the entire organization is working toward the same objective, and who is in control of the organisation’s activities and at what level in the organisation.

正确答案：
(ii) Panel interviews are often used for senior appointments and consist of two or more interviewers.

The advantages of such interviews are that they allow opinion and views to be shared amongst the panel. They provide a more complete and coherent approach, hence problems of bias inherent in face to face interviews can be reduced.

They may also be appropriate where an individual with specialist or technical skills has to support the interviewer in relation to assessing the technical competencies of the interviewee.The disadvantages are that panel interviews can be difficult to control, interviewers may deviate or ask irrelevant questions and they can be easily dominated by a strong personality who is able unduly to influence others. In addition,
such interviews can often result in disagreement amongst the panel members.

正确答案：
3 All organisations rely upon their staff for success. However, recruitment of staff can be time consuming; a drain on resources and the necessary expertise may not exist within the organisation.
(a) Internal promotion describes the situation where an organisation has an explicit policy to promote from within and where there is a clear and transparent career structure. This is typical of many professional bodies, large organisations and public services.
The advantages of internal promotion are that it acts as a source of motivation, provides good general morale amongst employees and illustrates the organisation’s commitment to encouraging advancement. Recruitment is expensive and internal promotion is relatively inexpensive in terms of time, money and induction costs and since staff seeking promotion are known to the employer, training costs are minimised. Finally, the culture of the organisation is better understood by the individual.

正确答案：
6 There are many forms of communication within an organisation, both formal and informal. Formally communicated information often flows in one of three main directions: downwards, upwards and lateral. However, all organisations also have informal communication channels and management must understand their importance.
(a) Formal communicated information flows in three main directions.
(i) Downwards. This form. of communication is often the one most easily recognised and understood. The purpose of downward communication is to give specific directives, to provide information about procedures and practices and to provide information about work practices. It also serves to tell employees about their performance and provides information on organisational and departmental objectives.

参考答案：B

答案：A

解析：

正确答案：
Part (b)
A simple standard form. to be completed by the referee is acceptable to provide all the required details. A standard form. should
ask about the existing job title, the main duties and responsibilities of the current job, period of employment, present pay or salary
and the attendance record.

正确答案：
(c) There are many reasons that could be discussed in support of the view that net present value (NPV) is superior to other
investment appraisal methods.
NPV considers cash flows
This is the reason why NPV is preferred to return on capital employed (ROCE), since ROCE compares average annual
accounting profit with initial or average capital invested. Financial management always prefers cash flows to accounting profit,
since profit is seen as being open to manipulation. Furthermore, only cash flows are capable of adding to the wealth of
shareholders in the form. of increased dividends. Both internal rate of return (IRR) and Payback also consider cash flows.
NPV considers the whole of an investment project
In this respect NPV is superior to Payback, which measures the time it takes for an investment project to repay the initial
capital invested. Payback therefore considers cash flows within the payback period and ignores cash flows outside of the
payback period. If Payback is used as an investment appraisal method, projects yielding high returns outside of the payback
period will be wrongly rejected. In practice, however, it is unlikely that Payback will be used alone as an investment appraisal
method.
NPV considers the time value of money
NPV and IRR are both discounted cash flow (DCF) models which consider the time value of money, whereas ROCE and
Payback do not. Although Discounted Payback can be used to appraise investment projects, this method still suffers from the
criticism that it ignores cash flows outside of the payback period. Considering the time value of money is essential, since
otherwise cash flows occurring at different times cannot be distinguished from each other in terms of value from the
perspective of the present time.
NPV is an absolute measure of return
NPV is seen as being superior to investment appraisal methods that offer a relative measure of return, such as IRR and ROCE,
and which therefore fail to reflect the amount of the initial investment or the absolute increase in corporate value. Defenders
of IRR and ROCE respond that these methods offer a measure of return that is understandable by managers and which can
be intuitively compared with economic variables such as interest rates and inflation rates.
NPV links directly to the objective of maximising shareholders’ wealth
The NPV of an investment project represents the change in total market value that will occur if the investment project is
accepted. The increase in wealth of each shareholder can therefore be measured by the increase in the value of their
shareholding as a percentage of the overall issued share capital of the company. Other investment appraisal methods do not
have this direct link with the primary financial management objective of the company.
NPV always offers the correct investment advice
With respect to mutually exclusive projects, NPV always indicates which project should be selected in order to achieve the
maximum increase on corporate value. This is not true of IRR, which offers incorrect advice at discount rates which are less
than the internal rate of return of the incremental cash flows. This problem can be overcome by using the incremental yield
approach.
NPV can accommodate changes in the discount rate
While NPV can easily accommodate changes in the discount rate, IRR simply ignores them, since the calculated internal rate
of return is independent of the cost of capital in all time periods.
NPV has a sensible re-investment assumption
NPV assumes that intermediate cash flows are re-invested at the company’s cost of capital, which is a reasonable assumption
as the company’s cost of capital represents the average opportunity cost of the company’s providers of finance, i.e. it
represents a rate of return which exists in the real world. By contrast, IRR assumes that intermediate cash flows are reinvested
at the internal rate of return, which is not an investment rate available in practice,
NPV can accommodate non-conventional cash flows
Non-conventional cash flows exist when negative cash flows arise during the life of the project. For each change in sign there
is potentially one additional internal rate of return. With non-conventional cash flows, therefore, IRR can suffer from the
technical problem of giving multiple internal rates of return.

正确答案：
3 The interview is extensively used for the selection of new employees and in many cases is the only method of selection. However,interviews have been criticised for failing to identify appropriate candidates suitable for the organisation. It is essential therefore that professional accountants recognise both the problems and opportunities that the formal selection interview presents.
(a) The purpose of the selection interview is to find the best possible person for the position who will fit into the organisation. Those conducting the interview must also ensure that the candidate clearly understands the job on offer, career prospects and that all candidates feel that fair treatment has been provided through the selection process.In addition, the interview also gives the opportunity to convey a good impression of the organisation, whether the candidate has been successful or not.

正确答案：
(c) For Bailey’s the advantages of counselling as a means of understanding and addressing the problems are that it provides a confidential service to the employee to discuss problems away from and not involving management or supervision. There is no obvious human resources policy at Bailey’s and counselling provides an opportunity to develop an appropriate policy from understanding individual problems.
This in turn will demonstrate organisational commitment to the employees that has been lacking in the past at Bailey’s and begin the process of better performance and increase in commitment.
At another level, counselling can provide a link to other external agencies to assist with personal problems that may be deemed too specific for resolution within Bailey’s.

正确答案：
(b) The appraisal system should be well constructed and fair to both the individual and the organisation. However, there are a number of barriers, often because employees see the appraisal as one or more of the following:
Confrontation due to lack of agreement on performance, badly explained or subjective feedback, performance based on recent events or disagreement on longer term activities.
Judgement, the appraisal is seen as a one sided process based entirely on the manager’s perspective.
Chat is the worst of all worlds. The appraisal interview is seen as an informal, loosely constructed and badly managed conversation without purpose.
Unfinished business is when the appraisal is not seen as part of a continuing process of performance management.
An annual event when the appraisal is seen as largely irrelevant and simply an event to set annual targets that quickly become out of date.
A system of bureaucracy based on forms devised solely to satisfy the organisation’s human resources department so that its main purpose, that of identifying individual and organisation performance and improvement, is forgotten.

正确答案：
(b) One approach that the directors of Moffat Ltd could adopt would be to ignore the qualitative benefits that may arise on the
basis that there is too much subjectivity involved in their assessment. The problem that this causes is that the investment will
probably look unattractive since all costs will be included in the evaluation whereas significant benefits and savings will have
been ignored. Hence such an approach is lacking in substance and is not recommended.
An alternative approach would involve attempting to attribute values to each of the identified benefits that are qualitative in
nature. Such an approach will necessitate the use of management estimates in order to derive the cash flows to be
incorporated in a cost benefit analysis. The problems inherent in this approach include gaining consensus among interested
parties regarding the footing of the assumptions from which estimated cash flows have been derived. Furthermore, if the
proposed investment does take place then it may well be impossible to prove that the claimed benefits of the new system
have actually been realised.
Perhaps the preferred approach is to acknowledge the existence of qualitative benefits and attempt to assess them in a
reasonable manner acceptable to all parties including the company’s bank. The financial evaluation would then not only
incorporate ‘hard’ facts relating to costs and benefits that are quantitative in nature, but also would include details of
qualitative benefits which management consider exist but have not attempted to assess in financial terms. Such benefits might
include, for example, the average time saved by location managers in analysing information during each operating period.
Alternatively the management of Moffat Ltd could attempt to express qualitative benefits in specific terms linked to a hierarchy
of organisational requirements. For example, qualitative benefits could be categorised as being:
(1) Essential to the business
(2) Very useful attributes
(3) Desirable, but not essential
(4) Possible, if funding is available
(5) Doubtful and difficult to justify.

正确答案：
(a)Thekeystagesinthecapitalinvestmentdecision-makingprocessareidentifyinginvestmentopportunities,screeninginvestmentproposals,analysingandevaluatinginvestmentproposals,approvinginvestmentproposals,andimplementing,monitoringandreviewinginvestments.IdentifyinginvestmentopportunitiesInvestmentopportunitiesorproposalscouldarisefromanalysisofstrategicchoices,analysisofthebusinessenvironment,researchanddevelopment,orlegalrequirements.Thekeyrequirementisthatinvestmentproposalsshouldsupporttheachievementoforganisationalobjectives.ScreeninginvestmentproposalsIntherealworld,capitalmarketsareimperfect,soitisusualforcompaniestoberestrictedintheamountoffinanceavailableforcapitalinvestment.Companiesthereforeneedtochoosebetweencompetinginvestmentproposalsandselectthosewiththebeststrategicfitandthemostappropriateuseofeconomicresources.AnalysingandevaluatinginvestmentproposalsCandidateinvestmentproposalsneedtobeanalysedindepthandevaluatedtodeterminewhichofferthemostattractiveopportunitiestoachieveorganisationalobjectives,forexampletoincreaseshareholderwealth.Thisisthestagewhereinvestmentappraisalplaysakeyrole,indicatingforexamplewhichinvestmentproposalshavethehighestnetpresentvalue.ApprovinginvestmentproposalsThemostsuitableinvestmentproposalsarepassedtotherelevantlevelofauthorityforconsiderationandapproval.Verylargeproposalsmayrequireapprovalbytheboardofdirectors,whilesmallerproposalsmaybeapprovedatdivisionallevel,andsoon.Onceapprovalhasbeengiven,implementationcanbegin.Implementing,monitoringandreviewinginvestmentsThetimerequiredtoimplementtheinvestmentproposalorprojectwilldependonitssizeandcomplexity,andislikelytobeseveralmonths.Followingimplementation,theinvestmentprojectmustbemonitoredtoensurethattheexpectedresultsarebeingachievedandtheperformanceisasexpected.Thewholeoftheinvestmentdecision-makingprocessshouldalsobereviewedinordertofacilitateorganisationallearningandtoimprovefutureinvestmentdecisions.

答案：B

解析：