Goodner Brothers, Inc. free essay sample

Goodner Brothers set ambitious sales goals. In order to achieve these goals, they were known to undercut their competitor’s prices. In the text, it is pointed out that â€Å"To compensate for low gross profit margin, Goner scrimped on operating expenses, including expenditures on internal control measures. † Goodner Brothers should have not saved on internal control measures so they could have caught Woody stealing their inventory. Goodner Brother’s should have had more employees to have an appropriate check and balances strategy. The bookkeeper should have been the one entering invoices into the computer while having someone check her work to make sure no fraudulent activity took place. Having Woody enter inaccurate amounts of orders into the computer allowed him to steal the vast amounts of inventory. Also, Goodner Brothers should have had two executives approve the purchase of inventory from wholesalers. When Woody brought inventory from a fictitious outside wholesaler, Al should have had another executive sign off on the approval of the transaction. We will write a custom essay sample on Goodner Brothers, Inc. or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Then Al would not have had a conflict of interest with dealing with his friend Woody’s fraudulent activity. Finally, Goodner Brothers should have kept a closer eye on their inventory. They needed someone to watch over the inventory at all times. Perhaps Goodner should have had a guard who would only let deliverymen and sale reps enter the ware house if they had the proper invoices to do so. There were a lot of internal control weaknesses at Goodner Brothers. They should have had implemented proper internal control measures in order to prevent the fraud committed by Woody. Goodner Brothers lack of internal controls is an example of what auditors look for when they begin an audit of a company. In the article Revisiting Materiality, Gist and Shastri point out that an audit staff can reduce audit failures if they act with due care. In order to act in due care, the staff needs to maintain an attitude of professional skepticism at a heightened level. Professional skepticism requires auditors â€Å"need to be alert to patterns and situations of material misstatement due to error or fraud, remain alert to internal control weaknesses that increase the risk of fraudulent activities, and management bias that increases the risk of fraudulent financial reporting. Al’s lack of action caused Woody to steal a large amount of inventory. An audit staff would have been able to catch Woody in the act of theft if they acted with due care and used professional skepticism during the audit. 2. Goodner’s had no true internal controls set up at the regional offices * The owners trusted employees because of background checks. * Insufficient control consciousness within the organizat ion, for example, the tone at the top and the control environment. * Absent or inadequate segregation of duties within a significant account or process. Absent or inadequate controls over the safeguarding of assets (this applies to controls that the auditor determines would be necessary for effective internal control over financial reporting). * The absence of an internal process to report deficiencies in internal control to management on a timely basis. * Sales people were allowed to collect payments. * Sales people were allowed to deliver tires. 3. The best thing the Goodner’s could have done would be to set up controls separate duties. If Woody wouldn’t have been allowed to deliver products or collect the payments this never could have happened. Woody should have been able to issue the sale, but a delivery team should drop off the tires and the customer should have to send the payment in to the sales department or accounts receivable department. The second control policy would be to keep inventories more secure. Goodner’s should set up a position in the inventory department that all they do is allow for inventory to be put in the warehouse or released. Keeping track of all transactions that deal with inventory. If Goodner would have had better controls on their inventory, Woody never would have been able to go through the warehouse and pick and choose items that he could easily hide off the books. A third policy that Goodner should have set up is never allowing employees who deal with sales to do the year-end inventory check. Only auditors should be allowed to do the year-end inventory check. This weeks article â€Å"When the Boss Trumps Internal Controls†, perfectly goes along with what could be prevented if proper internal controls were inline and properly practiced. In the article the president clearly saw weaknesses in the accounting system and took advantage of everything she could. The exact same thing Woody did to the Goodner brothers. All of this could have been prevented if the internal controls were properly inforced. 4. A lot of people were partially responsible for Goodner Brothers, Inc. losses. First was the company’s management. The company provided very minimum security for its inventory. With just padlocks and no one to protect its inventory, everyone could access the warehouse and leave with tires without any records of that person being ever there. Also, it seems like the company did not practice job rotation. With just 10 to 12 employees for every sales outlet, the employees were founding themselves having multiples responsibilities in the same company. For example the sale manager was also the sale district. The people in charge of the sales were also the ones teaming up to hand-count the inventory. In addition, they were no internal control because the company relied on the honesty and integrity of their employees. The sales representatives were allowed to enter transactions directly into the system and access customers’ account and do all the modifications they wanted to do without any limit. Another person partially responsible for the situation was Al Hunt. As Woody’s friend, he should have asked him more seriously about how and where he was getting the tires, and when he realized that his friend was maybe involved in a fraudulent activity, he should have stopped buying tires from him and tried to talk him out of this situation. But instead, he pretended that there was nothing strange happening and just kept buying from him. Finally, Felix Garcia the sales manager for the Huntington Sales Office is also responsible for the losses of the company. As the sale manager, he never contacted any customers about their complaints and just let subordinates deal with those issues. When in 1996, the inventory shrinkage represented 2. 1 percent of the inventory, he did not think it was excessive and did nothing to understand this shrinkage. He believed that his only job was to sell tires and that was it so he never investigated any strange situation happening in the company.

male aggressiveness essays

male aggressiveness essays Compared to many other places in the world, the homicide rate for Miami-Dade County is troublingly high. The principal contributors are men. It is known that men are more prone to commit homicides than women. It is not known, though, what makes men so much more aggressive than women. Experts propose various theories, yet none provides a definitive explanation. Should one look to the side of genetics for answers or explore social structures and cultures? It may be some combination of genetics and social structure that will lead us to the answers, including to the question of why Miamis homicide rate is comparatively high. Some say that aggression can be traced to genetics. Testosterone, a male hormone that is linked to aggressive behavior, pumps through the veins of all men in large quantities, whereas only a small amount is found in women. By contrast men have low levels, but women have high levels, of the neurotransmitter seratonin, which inhibits aggression and impulsivity. Female have a larger "verbal" portion of the brain which is said to be the reason why they can express feelings and emotions more readily than males. These facts point to genetic reasons why men are so aggressive, but there is still another side of the question to explore. Why is the homicide rate in Miami-Dade County higher than that of, say, urban areas of Switzerland which have virtually no violent crime? If biologists are correct, there are no rational differences in the genetic makeup of males, or for that matter females, that can account for such variation in rates of homicide and other kinds of violent crime. Thus there must be some nongenetic reason why homicide rates differ from country to country. In areas of Europe such as Switzerland, a homicide is nearly unheard of; people rarely kill each other. They live in peace with one another and learn to respect other men and women. Such societies teach their men and women to be tole...

What is so important about the 14th Amendment How did it fundamentally Essay

What is so important about the 14th Amendment How did it fundamentally change the Constitution - Essay Example One point that shows the importance of the 14th amendment is the issues that it raised with regard to the issue of citizenship in the United States. The 14th amendment made this clause clear as it stated that it offers for the individual born in the United States citizenship. This means that as long as one was born in the United States, they had the right of an American and citizenship (Daniels). This was imperative in that it devolved the constitution to a point where it offers for the nationality and unity of all the people living in the United States. Prior to the formation of the 14th amendment, the United States had gone through many challenges and issues because there was an imbalance and lack of common ideology between the African Americans and the whites (Ames, 2009). However, when the 14th amendment got to play, it clearly got the issue to rest. This was a very important landmark to the African Americans as they began getting jobs without the fear of discrimination by the wh ites. Prior to the 14th amendment, African Americans living in the United States went through a lot of suffering. The whites always deemed them inferior and felt that they did not deserve effective lives in the United States. During those days, the African Americans lived poor lives and did not have a means of feeding their families. Quite opposite to this, the whites were very rich, owning huge areas of land. This much land was important for their agricultural lives. This made the whites require many workers to till their lands. The African Americas that did not have a source of income went to the whites in search of jobs and they were given opportunities though the treatments they received were rather poor. This went on further and turned to slavery. However, the 14th amendment outlined clearly that everybody born in the United States is equal to any other person born in the country and this is important

Pick a stance on the rights of animals based on Peter Singer's article Essay

Pick a stance on the rights of animals based on Peter Singer's article Famine - Essay Example The concept that we try to use to extract an argument for animal rights is the concept introduced by Singer that proximity does not matter. Whilst in this particular case, the proximity spoken of was geographic, .i.e., small child in neighbor’s house vis a vis a Bengali child, the proximity could also be in terms of species. In the logic of Peter Singer, animals cannot be denied rights given humans even if they are proximally different from the latter. Animal rights can find justification in theories of right that are embedded in time. It is interesting to begin this exposition by looking at the fairly recent debate between Singer and Judge Richard Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. At the heart of the debate was a statement made by Posner, that â€Å"human beings prefer their own. ... The statement that â€Å"human beings prefer their own† should in itself be subjected to critical scrutiny. Indeed, the phrase â€Å"preferring one’s own† denotes a value choice in favour of an entity or a construct that hews closely to how one perceives him or herself and possesses many of the same characteristics that he or she has. Indeed, the very same moral intuition that drives the argument of Posner is the same so-called moral intuition that has been the basis for the discrimination on the basis of gender (e.g., the discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders), of race (e.g., the discrimination against blacks) and of religion (e.g., the discrimination against Islam.) History has amply demonstrated the folly of taking that statement, â€Å"human beings prefer their own†, as justified and benign. The moral equality theorists argue that there must be an equal consideration of the interests of human beings and animals. Peter Singer is perhaps one of the leading lights of animal ethics. He states the principle of moral equality as follows: The essence of the Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests is that we give equal weight in our moral deliberations to the like interests of all those affected by our actions.3 The main defense for this theory is that the properties that we ascribe to humans that distinguish them from animals are not properties  that all human beings have, and thus, the logic deployed by those who distinguish humans from animals as a means to justify unequal treatment of humans and animals may give rise to a case of discrimination. For example, not all human beings are capable of rational thought – an example would be infants. Some humans have dementia or schizophrenia. Does the argument then

Statistics Coursework Plan Essay Example for Free

Statistics Coursework Plan Essay In this project, I will be investigating how accurately students can estimate an angle size and the length of a line. I am investigating it to see if age, gender and mathematical capabilities have an effect on how accurate students can estimate a length of a line and an angle size. I will be using secondary raw data which is given to me to my teacher who has collected the data from other students. The accuracy of the data is unknown and also human errors are also likely Outliers and anomalies distort the mean of the data taking it to either of the two extremes. To avoid any Outliers or anomalies affecting the accuracy of this study, I will remove them before taking the sample size of around 80-100 students and I will be using stratified sampling so each category categorized by gender, age and maths set have a equal proportion in the sample as in the total population so the results are as accurate as possible. Any outliers which I may have missed can be eliminated by using the formula – Q1-(1.5)*(IQR) or Q3+(1.5)*(IQR). The three hypotheses I will be investigating will be: Boys estimate the lengths of a line and angle sizes better than girls. – I will be investigating this as boys tend to partake in activities which involve measuring more than girls and so are better than girls at estimating lengths of a line and angle sizes. Year 8 students estimate the angle sizes and lengths of a line better than Year 10 students. – I will be investigating this because Year 8’s may not have the pressure of other subjects yet as they do not have any real exams however Year 10 students may have been preoccupied with other thoughts and so are less accurate at estimating the lengths of a line and angle sizes. Students who are better at estimating the lengths of a line are also good at estimating the angle sizes. – I will be investigating this as students who are good at estimating one are likely to be better at estimating the other as they have good estimation and measuring skills.

Causation and Moral Responsibility for Death Essay -- Euthanasia Physi

Causation and Moral Responsibility for Death ABSTRACT: The distinction between killing and letting die has been a controversial element in arguments about the morality of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. The killing/letting die distinction is based on causation of death. However, a number of causal factors come into play in any death; it is impossible to state a complete cause of death. I argue that John Mackie’s analysis of causation in terms of ‘inus factors,’ insufficient but non-redundant parts of unnecessary but sufficient conditions, helps us to see that moral responsibility for death cannot rest on causation alone. In specifying the cause of death, some factors can be considered alternatively as either causal factors or merely parts of the presupposed background conditions. If a factor is moved from the background field into the causal field, the result is a changed background field. Comparisons of cases of killing and letting die often do just this; hence, the cases depend on different pres uppositions and the causation cannot be directly compared. Moral judgments determine how to apportion factors to the causal and background fields. The distinction between killing and letting die has been used by many to condemn euthanasia and assisted suicide while giving approbation to withdrawing life-support systems in at least some patients. In the recent United States Supreme Court decision which denies a right to physician-assisted suicide, Chief Justice Rehnquist writes that "when a patient refuses life sustaining medical treatment, he dies from an underlying fatal disease or pathology; but if a patient ingests lethal medication prescribed by a physician, he is killed by that medication." (1) It is doubtful, ho... ..., no.3 (1976): 15-16. (7) John Mackie, The Cement of the Universe: A Study of Causation, paperback edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980). (8) Ibid., 60-62. (9) Ibid., 63. (10) Ibid., 66-67. This statement of a "gappy" universal is fundamentally the same as Mackie’s, but I have altered the formulation for consistency. (11) O.H. Green, "Killing and Letting Die," American Philosophical Quarterly 17 (1980): 195-204, and Helga Kuhse, The Sanctity-of-Life Doctrine in Medicine: A Critique (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). (12) Kuhse, 50-51. (13) Ibid., 67-68. (14) Ibid., 68. (15) President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, Deciding to Forego Life-Sustaining Treatment: Ethical, Medical, and Legal Issues in Treatment Decisions (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983), 69.

John Berger Essay Essay

While in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, I traveled through the different galleries and their various cultures; discovering all sorts of arts from Contemporary art, to American art, Japanese art, and even the Egyptian art where I could appreciate the complexity of mummies. Throughout all these diverse cultures of art, I was questioning myself and started to wonder how I could understand art beyond others’ opinion about them. Moreover, I realized that it was a question John Berger, critic of art and author of the Ways of Seeing, raised in his essay, and it is a question that will always be raised while demanding how to understand a certain art. Walking through a room where various French artists had their paintings exposed, I fell in front of the artwork (see above) painted by Paul Gauguin. I did not choose a French artist to make me remember the French culture that I am missing here in Boston, nor to pretend that the French are advanced in art, but a way to analyze and understand, with the experience of a famous art critic, an artwork from an artist who astonished me in my previous art classes. D’ou venons-nous, Qui sommes-nous, Ou allons-nous? By Paul Gauguin I chose a painting that had a warm expression, and complex story emanating from it. As the title of my essay indicates, the title of the painting translated in English is â€Å"Where are we from? Who are we? Where are we going? So many questions in the title and the painting, but there were as much coming through my mind while studying this image. This artwork is very ambiguous because I do not know how to start looking at it. I can observe people appearing half naked in the foreground, but we cannot really tell why they appear there. The statue in the back makes the questioning more obscure. It seems lik e an Oracle that gives people their destiny, and that is maybe why they all look so sad. Truly, I felt that this image was a representation of my origin country, West Indies, by the color Gauguin used. He used the blue to symbolize the ocean surrounding the island, and the mixed race of the habitants by the warm and beige color or the characters. I felt as if I was in the center of the painting, more precisely in the position of the child being observed in the right corner, and waiting to be reassured. I also felt like the person in the middle of the painting, standing up and waiting for answers while traveling through this painting. Gauguin’s artworks are extremely complicated to decipher, so are they to analyze. Gauguin is an artist I studied back in France in my art classes. Consequently, I had seen many of his works, and even the painting I chose; However, I had never asked myself how knowing about his life could help me study his paintings. I was taught in my art classes how to analyze art in a more technical way than in an analytical way like Berger supported. Indeed, when we were looking at the entire structure of the painting with my art class method, we were focusing on the brush strokes, the color, the tone, lines and forms, and the composition of the painting. If I had to describe the work of art I chose based on technical features, I would examine the painting saying that the brush strokes could express many emotions at the same time, and describe the painter style and art movement. Gauguin was also part of the post-impressionist painters with artists such as Paul Cezanne or Van Gogh. Post impressionist art was more focused on color, lines, outlines and perspective. Concerning Gauguin, the complexity of shapes is very important in his paintings due to their abstract significations. In fact, the lines were not straight; they were round and suggesting bodies that we did not see in art before. Moreover, the color had its importance. Post impressionist artists like Gauguin used color and color combination in order to create ‘vulgar’, ‘calm’ or ‘bold’ impressions (Robert Hughes). The analysis of the painting I just did was very technical and structural, but in no sense relevant for understanding the thought process as Berger explained. I was subject to mystification as John Berger explained in his essay as â€Å"the process of explaining away what might otherwise be evident† (103). Indeed, mystification appeared while I was looking at the painting. I could sense a certain limit of my understanding due to the previous art classes I had. In other terms, it meant for me that words were coming before seeing whereas seeing should come before words as Berger deciphered in his essay. My mind was already set for a certain critic about the painting based on the knowledge I had; Consequently, I could not have another point of view vis-a-vis the painting I was staring at. Although I learned a lot from my art classes, especially how to describe an artwork contextually, the observations and point of view of Berger about art gave me enough elements o have a complete analysis of an image, both contextually and historically. Using Berger as a guide for art description helped me to learn more about the painting historically, and much more about the painter himself to have a complete understanding of the artwork. Prior to this assignment, it had never occurred to me to use the biography and the background of the painter in order to facilitate my understanding of the painting. When Berger quoted â€Å"When we see a landscape, we situate ourselves in the it. If we saw the art of the past, we would situate ourselves in history. † (100) in the essay led me to start the analysis of Gauguin’s painting in a very different way. Actually, when I focused more on the painter’s life, and follow Berger’s analysis, I learned that Gauguin wanted to commit suicide after he painted this image. Plus, even though there was a caption under the image saying that it was his last painting, I would not have noticed that it was his last painting, which refers to what Berger described when he talked about Van Gogh’s last painting. Berger cited â€Å"The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe† (97). Clearly, it means that the details you know about a certain painting will prevent you from analyzing it innocently. Based on the art experience I acquired in class, I would have said that the image implies sadness because of the choice of colors, which were darker than his previous works. However, I think that the title gives us more details about his thoughts while he was painting. Through reading of artistic reviews or even my art book, named Shock of the New by Robert Hughes, I discovered that this work of art should be read from right to left, with the three main groups of people illustrating the questions that are asked in the title. The first group with the three women looking at the child represents the beginning of Gauguin’s life, making a reference to his parents, then there is the group in the middle which symbolizes all the experiences he went through while being a young adult. The last group shows an old lady close to death because of the darker color he used, moreover, there is an odd white bird at her feet, which could represent the guide to heaven. In the background of the painting, there is a blue statute, which represents what Gauguin described as the hereafter. This painting seems like a flash back of his life, and these three questions lead us to comprehend him better. Gauguin left a lot of non-answered questions about this painting, considered as a testimony to his life by many critics of art. Indeed, this painting is very complex. I learned by reading my previous art book, that Gauguin wrote a letter to his friend stipulating the reasons of the painting. In this letter, Gauguin said that he had decided to commit suicide in December; therefore, he wanted to paint on a huge canvas all the things he had on his mind for so long. Things he absolutely wanted to paint before his death. In this letter, Gauguin also confessed that the value of this painting is so much ahead of his precedents, and that it was a one of a kind that he could not nor would not try to produce a better painting. This sentence clearly explains that he reached the height of his life, and that now he drew this painting, there was nothing else he could do better or similar except terminate his life. Gauguin was wondering a lot about the existence of the world, and this perpetual questioning led him to the entitlement of this painting. As I said earlier in my essay, each group of people appearing in this painting is applied to a specific question of the title. Those questions made me think about my own life. Indeed, the questions he used are somehow important to everyone to really understand the meaning of their lives. Berger said â€Å"The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe† (97). While looking at this painting, I could recognize some events of my life, for instance, I could recall where I am from and what are my origins, as well as how I did to accomplish such academic success and arrive in the United States. Furthermore, due to my art background, I could understand better the expression and feelings Gauguin was trying to deliver in this painting with his powerful colors and thick traits. Approaching art is not easy at first glance, thus approaching it with different methods makes it more difficult to understand. Throughout my life, I have been able to view art in many different context, either artistically speaking when I was in art classes in France, or analytically this year when I had to analyze art with the support of an art critic opinions. For me, both ways were complementary to each other and drastically improved my understanding of art. Complementary in the sense that I could rely on my technical knowledge of art to understand the structure of a painting, and also analyze the story of the painting as Berger mentioned to fully understand the underlying message of an artwork.