CHAPTER 22

1. CHAPTER 22 Management Control Systems, Transfer Pricing, and Multinational Considerations

2. Management Control Systems • Management Control Systems are a means of gathering and using information to aid and coordinate the planning and control decisions throughout an organization and to guide the behavior of its managers and other employees

3. Management Control Systems • Many management control systems contain some or all of the balanced scorecard perspectives: • Financial • Customer • Internal Business Process • Learning and Growth

4. Management Control Systems • Consist of Formal and Informal control systems: • Formal systems include explicit rules, procedures, performance measures, and incentive plans that guide the behavior of its managers and other employees • Informal systems include shared values, loyalties, and mutual commitments among members of the company, corporate culture, and unwritten norms about acceptable behavior

5. Evaluating Management Control Systems • To be effective, management control systems should be closely aligned to the firm’s strategies and goals • Systems should be designed to fit the company’s structure and decision-making responsibility of individual managers

6. Evaluating Management Control Systems • Effective management control systems should also motivate managers and their employees • Motivation is the desire to attain a selected goal (goal-congruence) combined with the resulting pursuit of that goal (effort)

7. Two Aspects of Motivation • Goal Congruence exists when individuals and groups work toward achieving the organization’s goals – managers working in their own best interest take actions that align with the overall goals of top management • Effort is exertions toward reaching a goal, including both physical and mental actions

8. Organization Structure and Decentralization • Decentralization is the freedom for managers at lower levels of the organization to make decisions • Autonomy is the degree of freedom to make decisions. The greater the freedom, the greater the autonomy

9. Decentralization vs. Centralization • Total decentralization means minimum constraints and maximum freedom for managers at the lowest levels of an organization to make decisions • Total centralization means maximum constraints and minimum freedom for managers at the lowest levels of an organization to make decisions • Companies’ structures generally fall somewhere in between these two extremes, as each has benefits and costs. A structure is chosen based on cost vs. benefit analysis

10. Benefits of Decentralization • Creates greater responsiveness to local needs • Leads to gains from faster decision making • Increases motivation of subunit managers • Assists management development and learning • Sharpens the focus of subunit managers

11. Costs of Decentralization • Leads to Suboptimal Decision Making, which arises when a decision’s benefit to one subunit is more than offset by the costs or loss of benefits to the organization as a whole. • Also called Incongruent Decision Making or Dysfunctional Decision Making

12. Costs of Decentralization • Focuses manager’s attention on the subunit rather than the company as a whole • Increases costs of gathering information • Results in duplication of activities

13. Decentralization and Multinational Firms • Multinational Firms – companies that operate in multiple countries – are often decentralized because centralized control of a company with subunits around the world is often physically and practically impossible • Decentralization enables managers in different countries to make decisions that exploit their knowledge of local business and political conditions and to deal with uncertainties in their individual environments • Biggest Drawback to International Decentralization: Loss or lack of control

14. Choices about Responsibility Centers • Regardless of the degree of decentralization, management control systems use one or a mix of the four types of responsibility centers: • Cost Center • Revenue Center • Profit Center • Investment Center

15. Transfer Pricing • Transfer Price – the price one subunit (department or division) charges for a product or service supplied to another subunit of the same organization • Management control systems use transfer prices to coordinate the actions of subunits and to evaluate their performance

16. Transfer Pricing • The transfer price creates revenues for the selling subunit and purchase costs for the buying subunit, affecting each subunit’s operating income • Intermediate Product – the product or service transferred between subunits of an organization

17. Three Transfer Pricing Methods • Market-based Transfer Prices • Cost-based Transfer Prices • Negotiated Transfer Prices

18. Market-Based Transfer Prices • Top management chooses to use the price of a similar product or service that is publicly available. Sources of prices include trade associations, competitors, etc.

19. Market-Based Transfer Prices • Lead to optimal decision making when three conditions are satisfied: • The market for the intermediate product is perfectly competitive • Interdependencies of subunits are minimal • There are no additional costs or benefits to the company as a whole from buying or selling in the external market instead of transacting internally

20. Market-Based Transfer Prices • A perfectly competitive market exists when there is a homogeneous product with buying prices equal to selling prices and no individual buyer or seller can affect those prices by their own actions • Allows a firm to achieve goal congruence, motivating management effort, subunit performance evaluations, and subunit autonomy • Perhaps should not be used if the market is currently in a state of “distress pricing”

21. Cost-Based Transfer Prices • Top management chooses a transfer price based on the costs of producing the intermediate product. Examples include: • Variable Production Costs • Variable and Fixed Production Costs • Full Costs (including life-cycle costs) • One of the above, plus some markup • Useful when market prices are unavailable, inappropriate, or too costly to obtain

22. Cost-Based Transfer Pricing Alternatives • Prorating the difference between the maximum and minimum cost-based transfer prices • Dual-Pricing – using two separate transfer-pricing methods to price each transfer from one subunit to another. Example: selling division receives full cost pricing, and the buying division pays market pricing

23. Negotiated Transfer Prices • Occasionally, subunits of a firm are free to negotiate the transfer price between themselves and then to decide whether to buy and sell internally or deal with external parties • May or may not bear any resemblance to cost or market data • Often used when market prices are volatile • Represent the outcome of a bargaining process between the selling and buying subunits

24. Comparison of Transfer-Pricing Methods

25. Comparison of Transfer-Pricing Methods

26. Comparison of Transfer-Pricing Methods

27. Multinational Transfer Pricing and Tax Considerations • Transfer prices often have tax implications • Tax factors include income taxes, payroll taxes, customs duties, tariffs, sales taxes, value-added taxes, environment-related taxes, and other government levies

28. Minimum Transfer Price • The minimum transfer price in many situations should be: • Incremental cost is the additional cost of producing and transferring the product or service • Opportunity cost is the maximum contribution margin forgone by the selling subunit if the product or service is transferred internally

29. Multinational Transfer Pricing and Tax Considerations • Section 482 of the US Internal Revenue Code governs taxation of multinational transfer pricing • Section 482 requires that transfer prices between a company and its foreign division or subsidiary equal the price that would be charged by an unrelated third party in a comparable transaction • Transfer price could be market-based or “cost-plus” based