Essay about Reflecting on St. Augustine at ACS - 1475 Words

Maturing as a person, whether it is physical, emotional, spiritual, or intellectual require a person to change and transformation these changes can vary in when or how they take place. While growing up, people change their perspective and gain new insights about new experiences. In â€Å"The Confessions,† readers see St. Augustine struggle with the question of â€Å"Who am I?† while figuring out his belief in God. The mission of Villanova University is to help create â€Å"thoughtful, intellectually-curious, and spiritually-grounded† students before they graduate. Thus, ACS helps transform young children to be mature adults. Students read â€Å"The Confessions† in ACS because they see Augustine’s struggle to find his identity and religion on his own terms.†¦show more content†¦These texts have the â€Å"literature, history, and politics; truth and moral values; the gods and God† that show students how to be like Saint Augustine (Mis sion). ACS shows the path of how one can attempt to be like Augustine but it is the student’s choice to think about â€Å"higher things.† Though the Confessions is the foundational text for the course, other texts help engage students to think of these â€Å"higher things† because of the moral values learned through them. The Bible (Genesis) helps give one answer to our beginning and how we came to be. It is the first text to be read because it necessary to answer the question, â€Å"Who am I?† It touches on the subject of evil and shows how humans fell from a state of grace to our current state of sin. It corresponds to the confessions when Augustine questions how evil can exist if God is good. In Books X through XIII, Augustine reflects on Genesis and the meaning of the Trinity, the creation story and even time. â€Å"Gilgamesh †explores the boundaries of friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu which corresponds to the friendship between Augustine and Am brose. Enkidu motivated Gilgamesh to embark on his journey to find the cure for immortality; similarly, St. Ambrose provided Augstine the tools for his conversion to Christianity. â€Å"The Odyssey,† â€Å"The Aenid,† and â€Å"The Inferno† explore literature and poetry by examining the heroes epic journeys. Odysseus, Aeneas, and Dante use adventures set upon by a greater force to

Financial Crisis Is a Man Made Catastrophe Free Essays

What is Financial Crisis? The term financial crisis is applied broadly to a variety of situations in which some financial institutions or assets suddenly lose a large part of their value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and many recessions coincided with these panics. Other situations that are often called financial crises include stock market crashes and the bursting of other financial bubbles, currency crises, and sovereign defaults. We will write a custom essay sample on Financial Crisis Is a Man Made Catastrophe or any similar topic only for you Order Now Financial crises directly result in a loss of paper wealth; they do not directly result in changes in the real economy unless a recession or depression follows. TYPES Is financial crisis really a man-made disaster? Let’s take example of Late 2000’s financial crisis also known as Global Financial Crisis. The financial crisis was triggered by a complex interplay of valuation and liquidity problems in the United States banking system in 2008. The bursting of the U. S. housing bubble, which peaked in 2007, caused the values of securities tied to U. S. real estate pricing to plummet, damaging financial institutions globally. Questions regarding bank solvency, declines in credit availability and damaged investor confidence had an impact on global stock markets, where securities suffered large losses during 2008 and early 2009. Many causes for the financial crisis have been suggested, with varying weight assigned by experts. The United States Senate issued the Levin–Coburn Report, which found â€Å"that the crisis was not a natural disaster, but the result of high risk, complex financial products; undisclosed conflicts of interest; and the failure of regulators, the credit rating agencies, and the market itself to rein in the excesses of Wall Street. Causes of Financial Crisis Macroeconomic conditions: Low interest rates made bank lending more profitable, while trade deficits resulted in large capital inflows to the U. S. Both made funds for borrowing plentiful and relatively inexpensive. The U. S. housing bubble: The falling prices of houses and low interest rates to finance or refinance the house s were easily available. As such home loans were very easily available. But when time came to pay back the loan many defaulted which led to bursting of housing bubble and its impact led to financial crisis. Relaxation in rules led to large banks to increase their financial leverage and expansion of issuance of mortgage backed securities. Inaccurate credit ratings: Credit ratings were awarded inaccurately which led to an inflated balloon and when it busted it led to financial crisis. Technological factors: The cause of the crisis can be seen also in principles of technological development and in long economic waves based on technological revolutions. Crisis and stagnation were a result of the end of the long economic cycle originally initiated by the Information and telecommunications technological revolution in 1985-2000. The market had been already saturated by new â€Å"technical wonders† (e. g. everybody has his own mobile phone) and – what is more important – in the developed countries the economy reached limits of productivity in conditions of existing technologies. Boom and collapse of the shadow banking system (SBS): The shadow banking system is the collection of financial entities, infrastructure and practices which support financial transactions that occur beyond the reach of existing state sanctioned monitoring and regulation. The core activities of investment banks are subject to regulation and monitoring by central banks and other government institutions – but it has been common practice for investment banks to conduct many of their transactions in ways that don’t show up on their conventional balance sheet accounting and so are not visible to regulators or unsophisticated investors. The shadow banking system saw a boom but once investors started losing interest and no more wanted their funds to be used in SBS and changes in business policies led to its collapse which ultimately led to financial crisis. How to cite Financial Crisis Is a Man Made Catastrophe, Papers

International Journal Of Management Science -Myassignmenthelp.Com

Question: Discuss About The International Journal Of Management Science? Answer: Introduction The size of the firm whether big or small is not the concern in the modern world of business. What matters is that there should be clear comprehension among the managers regarding the cost. It is essential to have and maintain a healthy understanding of the various methods of costing since it will be helpful and better to locate the challenges that take place in the trade (Hemmer and Labro 2016). This study that into consideration the TDABC and the understanding of the special characteristics. The report further aims at the ways that will ascertain the methods under which the TDABC will be different from the ABC model costing and the Traditional methods of ABC costing. This study will further assess the costing system that is associated with the implementation of the model in West farmers Ltd. Depiction of the Clients firm The West farmers Ltd. is known as one of the leading companies of Australia that is associated with the construction of materials and in the areas of lime manufacturing. Adelaide Brighton Ltd. is engaged with the process of manufacturing and supplying wide range of goods concerned with constructing the infrastructure, processing of building materials throughout the territories of Australia. The activities of the firm consisted of manufacturing, importation and delivering cement, concrete, lime goods and premixed concrete. West farmers Ltd. has a wide base of operational facilities that prompted the supply of materials to the customers. This company organized a good production capacity in order to meet the demands of the customers throughout the country (Campbell 2017). It allowed the organization to offer the supply of packaged materials and the supply of the logistics in all the regions of Australia and Asia. Elaboration of the Time-Driven Activity Based Costing and its essentials The Activity based methodology of costing is presently viewed and treated as a complete method of costing (Kalpan et al. 2014). Therefore, the model suffers from an amount of criticism for the approach that is being undertaken with several such of the ABC costing have stopped using this method. The original procedure of ABC costing provides a greater system of costing. The variety of products and services under the new model of Time Driven Activity based costing method will have the capacity to incorporate a large amount of variations and complications by offering an improved quality of information ignoring the restrictions linked with the scheme of ABC costing. Modern day customers focus on the business inventions by generating and providing a wide range of products that will offer their support to the large order and channels of tracking the orders at various levels of technical support. As stated by Velasquez, Suomala and Jrvenp, there is an increase in the maximum number of consu mers (Mrtl and Schmied 2016). These consumers need an appropriate management of customer data along with the administration of the profit generated by them. The method of ABC costing has attracted the concentration of different costing methodology among the products that varies from the upper limit, custom and standard products. TDABC system helped in offering better information regarding the earnings and the frequency of profits by demonstrating the differences in the cost method among the customers that has lower demand and ease of service than the ones that has greater demand with the preferences of complex customer (Armitage, Webb and Glynn 2016). Based on the time required in performing the activity of the method of TDABC is able to recognize the sum of every unit or procedure together along with the allocation of cost to the resource group. It has been noted, that the demand for TDABC can guess the amount of resources that have been released (Phan, Baird and Su 2017). TDABC method of costing has been successful in capturing the various characteristics of activity through the time equation that usually takes time as per the activity. The TDABC method of costing is therefore observed as the function of diverse features. Following are the characteristics of the Time Driven Activity Based Costing: The initial characteristic of TDABC costing is easily comprehendible and makes the model accurate. The model of TDABC assists in offering visibility during the process of utilization capacity. Time Driven Activity Based Costing method drives the cost into the operation, orders and thorough processing of customers, materials and orders (Cooper 2017). TDABC runs on a monthly basis to trace the economies of the present business functions. The model of TDABC combines an effective way with the information that is available from the ERP and the customer relationship management that makes the system of TDABC vibrant. The model of TDABC is helpful in guessing the resources of demand. It will enable the organization in making the budget for resource capacity in respect of the anticipated ability to order and complication. Differences between ABC, TDABC and Traditional costing system In the current situation, the system of TDABC helping in offering variations of the ABC model due to the ability of easy execution of the purposes that is needed to manufacture goods and services that are sold in the market. Traditional system of costing assigns the product overhead associated with the capacity of the cost driver, mainly the direct labour hours that are needed to manufacture the product (Otley 2016). An important element that origins the cost to take place is cost driver. For instance, direct labour hours, machine hours and direct material hours that are included in manufacturing the products. In the ABC method of costing, the cost occurred in manufacturing the products are distributed for the activities that is essential to manufacture the item. On the contrary, the model of TDABC helped in easy measurement of the efficiency of the products occupied in manufacturing the product at a given level of capacity against the consumption (Cooper, Ezzamel and Qu 2017). However, the cost equation helped in providing less costly system than the traditional method of ABC costing. The Time Driven Based Costing system is known as economical and reasonable than the ABC method of costing (Mahal and Hossain 2015). The chief reason for this is that the methods makes the method of costing easy and diminishes the instances of surveys that are used in the method of ABC costing. The TDABC allocates the cost directly to the units of cost. The model of transitional absorption costing helps in dividing the costs generated from the resources by using the capacity cost to predict the requirement of resources for each unit of cost. According to the words of Onat, Anitsal and Anitsal, the Time Driven Activity model based on costing system needs time projections to route the orders of the consumers and it is not compulsory that the cost should be equal. This is because of the fact that the TDABC projects in innumerable times varying on the features of application by using the reproduction of variables and equations. On the other hand, in ABC costing method the amount of cost drivers that were used in distributing the cost activities is not considered and it is not considered or obligatory to allocate he cost. The table stated below provides differences between the ABC, TDABC and Traditional ABC: ABC Traditional ABC Time Driven Activity Based Costing The ABC method of costing deals with various activities of overheads that are identified. The traditional method of costing usually helps in distributing the overhead cost to every unit that is produced. The Time driven activity based costing method helps in analyzing plenty groups of resources. The method of ABC helps in distributing the overhead cost to numerous activities with the help of resource driver The model predicts the situations where the matrix of quantity turns into the driver of product overhead. It projects the sum of overall cost for every resource groups. The ABC method of costing distinguishes the cost driver for each of the activities. In the traditional method of costing, the managers distributes the cost of production only to the products (Leeet al. 2015). It determines the practical capability of every resource group specially the available working and training hours. The ABC method settles on the cost driver for every activity by separating the total amount of cost activity from the practical amount of activity driver. The system of traditional accounting is not being able to distribute the non-manufacturing cost engaged with the production of the items particularly the management expenditure. The method calculates the cost of each unit of the resource group by separating the amount of cost to each unit of the group through practical capacity. Whether the TDABC is appropriate for the Client company When the model of Time Driven Activity Based costing is applied in the clients firm of West farmers Ltd. It can be observed that the model is simple and easy to comprehend. Further, the model is effective and inexpensive compared to other models such as Traditional ABC and ABC. The Time Driven Activity Based costing helped in making the costing system easy be diminishing the need of survey and interview of all the employees. The Traditional method of costing will help West farmer Ltd. in allocating the cost resources to the activities that are related in driving them to the cost objects. A significant consideration that can be drawn from the study is that the mechanism of TDABC will help West farmer Ltd. in allocating the resources directly to the objects of cost by using a smart set of framework in predicting the profit. The model will help in computing the cost that is required for the supply of resource capacity (Santana and Afonso 2015). For instance, the department of processing of the West farmer Ltd. on implementing the model of TDABC will be able to determine the cost used in technology, supervision and resources. The TDABC uses the rate of cost capacity in determining the departmental resource cost in the cost unit by establishing the demand for the resource capacity needed by each cost objects (Maiga, Nilsson and Jacobs 2014). Keeping in mind the example of customer order sub-division, the model of Time Driven Activity based costing will be helpful for West farmer Ltd. in estimating the time required for processing the orders of the customers. The Time Driven Activity Based Costing support in stimulating the original process that is used in carrying out the work for West farmer Ltd. The Time Driven Activity Based costing will be beneficial for West farmer Ltd. in capturing a large number of variations than the conventional model of ABC without forming any demand for data storage, projections and processing of materials (Sigenza Guzmn, Van den Abbeele and Cattrysse 2014). West farmer Ltd. implemented the TDABC and it will be able to sustain the difficulties instead of using the imprecise model of ABC for the business activities. The model of TDABC will help West farmer Ltd. in projecting the cost object with the ease and in terms for transactions of each unit that is processed in the department. There is proof of various companies that uses the ERP system for storing the data. These data varies from packaging and delivering method (Adeleke et al. 2017). In relation with the West farmer Ltd, it implemented the model of TDABC, which will help the company in storing the complex business information in an efficient way for transactions that has a fluctuating nature. In the case of West farmer Ltd. the TDABC helps in improving the complexity of time equation. As a result of this, the TDABC Model will help West farmer Ltd. in gaining more number of varieties without forming the exploding demand for estimates of storage, data and processing capabilities. Conclusion In the conclusion, it can be stated that this report has been presented by using the TDABC method based costing. An organization like West farmer Ltd. will be able to grasp the complexity instead of being forced to use the effortless and accurate model of ABC. The model will allow the company to avoid the time consuming, costly and subjective activity of the conventional ABC. The TDABC model at the preliminary stages estimated the historical data. Subsequently, its fundamental power is to help in predicting the future. Hence, the TDABC will assist the managers in overcoming the crisis of incorporating the data is ERP and CRM system. References Adeleke, S.O., Healy, G.N., Smith, C., Goode, A.D. and Clark, B.K., 2017. Effect of a Workplace-Driven SitStand Initiative on Sitting Time and Work Outcomes.Translational Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine,2(3), pp.20-26. Armitage, H.M., Webb, A. and Glynn, J., 2016. 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Cost consciousness: conceptual development from a management accounting perspective.Qualitative Research in Accounting Management,12(1), pp.55-86.