问答题4.Pulpo is a local pulp and paper factory. As a subsidiary of a major international company, Pulpo has not produced a social and environmental report for itself, but instead provided data which was fed into the parent company’s group report. There was some discussion about Pulpo having an environmental report on its own website but no resources were provided for its development, so nothing ever materialised. Mary Wong was the manager at Pulpo whose responsibility was to monitor and report on environmental emissions.It was her responsibility to monitor emissions and to feed data into the company’s internal control systems on resource consumption (energy and water) and waste. It was a job she enjoyed because it enabled her to express her personal concern for the environment in her work. When she took over her role two years ago, she was told that the company had very ambitious voluntary emission targets and that they would eventually be reduced to make the company even more environmentally responsible over time. Mary found this exciting and it was on this basis that she agreed to accept the appointment. Because of the sensitive nature of some of the data she managed, her employment terms and conditions included a confidentiality clause in which she agreed never to publicly disclose the environmental targets or the company’s performance against them. When investment in new manufacturing capital was delayed because of a deteriorating profit performance, Mary was informed that the emissions target would be temporarily increased because the ageing equipment would not be able to maintain the low level of emissions. Dismayed by this change, she complained to the company chief executive but was told that she had to accept the higher emissions until the company could afford its factory investment, which could be several years in the future. She decided that the most effective way to deal with this change was to publicise it to the local newspaper and to the nearby residents’ association, both of whom had been longstanding critics of the factory’s impacts on the environment.The public reacted angrily to the disclosure as it was already considered a ‘dirty’ factory which often emitted fumes and effluent, which polluted the local river. When the board of the company discovered her actions, she was dismissed for breach of her terms and conditions in publically disclosing the confidential information. Required:

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问答题(b) Explain why establishing a business case, managing benefi ts and undertaking benefi ts realisation are essential requirements despite the claimed ‘self-evident’ justifi cation of adopting e-assessment at the IAA. (10 marks)

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问答题(b) Using appropriate organisation confi guration stereotypes identifi ed by Henry Mintzberg, explain how an understanding of organisation confi guration could have helped predict the failure of Ann Li’s proposed formalisation of structure, controls and processes at Frigate Ltd. (10 marks)

问答题1.Lysus surgical supplies was founded 20 years ago by entrepreneur Simon Mara who has been the company’s chief executive since the outset. Incorporated as a private company, Lysus began by importing small surgical devices such as syringes and bandages, and selling them to hospitals, clinics and medical facilities. But the company began to grow rapidly when Mr Mara realised the potential of a growing market in knee and hip joint replacements as the population in many countries was rapidly ageing due to the wider availability of more effective, low cost medicines.Fifteen years ago, he began to manufacture the surgical hip and knee joints used for most joint replacement surgery.As a company operating in the surgical supplies industry, Lysus has always been subject to regulation and must complete compliance reports every year to declare that it is using surgical grade materials for its manufacturing and also that it maintains the requisite level of hygiene in its processes. These reports are a legal compliance matter and must be signed by two directors. Lysus surgical supplies has been a private family (or ‘insider’) company throughout its history. Owned jointly by Simon Mara, his wife and brother, Mr Mara owns 51% of the shares, his wife, 20% and his brother 29%. All three are directors of Lysus surgical supplies. As the company grew, they sought to employ members of the extended family as much as possible, partly to provide them with jobs and partly to ‘give a feeling of family’ in the company. It was often described as a ‘tight-knit’ culture with family members occupying the senior positions and with few appointments made from outside the company to important roles. When the company grew to a certain size, Mr Mara decided that he needed a qualified accountant on the board of directors to help with investment appraisals, costings, cash flow management, compliance issues and financial reporting. He eventually appointed Amy Tsang, a relatively inexperienced but ambitious person to the board. This was her first role as finance director. Simon Mara was known to be a strong and domineering person. Some former employees described him as a bully who was unable to discuss matters in a calm manner. He was described as quick to anger and capable of intimidating even his senior colleagues such that they would feel unable to challenge him at all. This was also the case with Amy Tsang, the new finance director. She found him overbearing and impossible to challenge. She always did as he asked,even when she felt uncomfortable with what she was being asked to do. When the joint replacement industry became more competitive, Mr Mara had the idea that he could reduce the company’s unit costs by switching some of the surgical-grade materials used in manufacture for a cheaper industrial grade instead. Such a switch would be undetectable to the surgeons using the artificial joints but did increase the risk of fracture and deterioration once the replacement joints were used in a patient. Mr Mara asked Amy Tsang, as an accountant and finance director, to produce detailed costing calculations for the switch and to forecast how this change would affect profits. She also calculated the costs of retooling the factory to allow the industrial grade material to be used. Later, on Mr Mara’s instruction, she approved the investment and oversaw the changes in manufacturing and the purchasing processes, in the full knowledge that such changes were both illegal and unethical. Mr Mara assumed that because many of the senior employees were family members, and that he could control Amy Tsang,that the switch to industrial grade material would go undetected. The problem came to the public attention some time later when joints made from the inferior material began to deteriorate and immobilise previously mobile patients. The industrial grade material used in the joints often caused infection in patients and some vulnerable patients died of the effects of the product failure. John Qua was the investigative journalist who brought the problems at Lysus to national attention. He thought that the problems arose as a result of a probity risk and that the probity or integrity failure was on the part of Mr Mara and Amy Tsang. Mr Qua’s mother had received a Lysus hip joint and subsequently experienced a great deal of pain and distress when the joint deteriorated, producing some unfortunate side effects including blood poisoning. Although his mother was able to have the joint safely removed and replaced by a better quality artificial joint, John Qua researched further and found other patients who had not been so fortunate. It was John Qua’s investigations into Lysus which alerted the regulatory authorities to the use of the inferior materials in the joints. It soon emerged that the cause of the increased failure of the implants was the use of the inferior industrial-grade material. When the regulator responsible for the safety of surgical supplies discovered, thanks to John Qua’s research, why the joints degraded, they investigated the use of the inferior materials. The legal officers investigating the case noted that two directors had signed the most recent compliance reports, certifying that the company was fully compliant with material usage and quality standards. These were Simon Mara and Amy Tsang. John Qua was angry with Lysus surgical supplies, because of how his mother and others had suffered. He was particularly angry with Simon Mara and Amy Tsang. As a business journalist, he often wrote articles on the behaviour and performance of listed companies. He became convinced that it was in the public interest for producers of surgical supplies, such as Lysus, to be subject to the regulatory requirements of listed companies. In a published article, he wrote: …whenever I look at company failures such as that at Lysus, I become increasingly convinced that robust ways of embedding risk awareness and risk management are essential in all companies and not just in listed companies. It was the fact that Mr Mara could get away with his offences that is most worrying. He bullied a young accountant,Miss Tsang, into highly unprofessional behaviour, and without the systems in place to enable the offence to be challenged internally, he initially got away with it. Had a whistleblowing system been in place, or a separation of roles at the head of the company, Mr Mara could not have done this terrible thing. Someone would have challenged him and told him not to be so unethical and arrogant. The result is that, with such a high impact business risk having been realised, innocent people working for Lysus may lose their jobs whilst patients may have to suffer the effects of this for many years. Once the case came to the public attention, Mr Mara was arrested and prosecuted for the illegal sale of non-compliant surgical materials. Amy Tsang was also prosecuted and then investigated by her professional accounting body. After an appeal, she was ‘struck off’, thereby preventing her from working as an accountant in the future. The company itself was wound up after sales declined, and all 130 employees lost their jobs. Patients continue to suffer the effects of the defective joint replacements and will do for several years into the future. Required:

问答题(c) The ZPT case came to the attention of Robert Nie, a senior national legislator in the country where ZPT had its head offi ce. The country did not have any statutory corporate governance legislation and Mr Nie was furious at the ZPT situation because many of his voters had been badly fi nancially affected by it. He believed that legislation was needed to ensure that a similar situation could not happen again. Mr Nie intends to make a brief speech in the national legislative assembly outlining the case for his proposed legislation and some of its proposed provisions. Required: Draft sections of the speech to cover the following areas: (i) Explain the importance of sound corporate governance by assessing the consequences of the corporate governance failures at ZPT; (10 marks) (ii) Construct the case for the mandatory external reporting of internal fi nancial controls and risks; (8 marks) (iii) Explain the broad areas that the proposed external report on internal controls should include, drawing on the case content as appropriate. (6 marks) Professional marks will be awarded in part (c) for the structure, flow, persuasiveness and tone of the answer. (4 marks)

问答题(b) The CEO of Bridge Co now questions whether buying a software package was the wrong approach to meeting the CRM requirements at Bridge Co. He wonders whether they should have commissioned a bespoke software system instead. Explain, with reference to the CRM project at Bridge Co, the advantages of adopting a software package approach to fulfilling business system requirements compared with a bespoke software solution.(10 marks)

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问答题Physical evidence, people and process are three important elements of the marketing mix for services. Analyse the contribution each of these three elements could make to the success of iTTrain’s entry into the IT certification market. (9 marks)