A Summary of Durkheims Division of Labor in Society

A Summary of Durkheim's 'Division of Labor in Society' French philosopher Emile Durkheims book The Division of Labor in Society (or De la Division du Travail Social) debuted in 1893. It was Durkheim’s first major published work, and it is the one in which he introduced the concept of anomie or the breakdown of the influence of social norms on individuals within a society. At the time, The Division of Labor in Society was influential in advancing sociological theories and thought. The Division of Labors Major Themes In the book, Durkheim discusses how the division of labor- the establishment of specified jobs for specific people- benefits society because it increases the reproductive capacity of a process and the skill set of the workmen. It also creates a feeling of solidarity among people who share those jobs. But, Durkheim says, the division of labor goes beyond economic interests: In the process, it also establishes social and moral order within a society. The division of labor can be effectuated only among members of an already constituted society, he argues. To Durkheim, the division of labor is in direct proportion to the moral density of a society. Density can happen in three ways: through an increase of the spatial concentration of people, through the growth of towns, or through an increase in the number and efficacy of the means of communication. When one or more of these things happen, says Durkheim, labor begins to become divided, and jobs become more specialized. At the same time, because tasks grow more complex, the struggle for meaningful existence becomes more strenuous. A major theme of the book is the difference between developing and advanced civilizations and how they perceive social solidarity. Another focus is how each type of society defines the role of law in resolving breaches in that social solidarity. Social Solidarity Durkheim argues that two kinds of social solidarity exist: mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity. Mechanical solidarity connects the individual to society without any intermediary. That is, society is organized collectively and all members of the group share the same set of tasks and core beliefs. What binds the individual to society is what Durkheim calls the collective consciousness, sometimes translated as conscience collective, meaning a shared belief system. With organic solidarity, on the other hand, society is more complex, a system of different functions united by definite relationships. Each individual must have a distinct job or task and a personality that is his own. Here, Durkheim was speaking specifically about men. Of women, the philosopher said: Today, among cultivated people, the woman leads a completely different existence from that of man. One might say that the two great functions of the psychic life are thus dissociated, that one of the sexes takes care of the effective functions and the other of intellectual functions. Framing individuals as men, Durkheim argued that individuality grows as parts of society grow more complex. Thus, society becomes more efficient at moving in sync, yet at the same time, each of its parts has more movements that are distinctly individual. According to Durkheim, the more primitive a society is, the more it is characterized by mechanical solidarity. The members of an agrarian society, for example, are more likely to resemble each other and share the same beliefs and morals. As societies become more advanced and civilized, the individual members of those societies become more distinguishable from one another. People are managers or laborers, philosophers or farmers. Solidarity becomes more organic as those societies develop their divisions of labor. The Role of Law Durkheim also discusses law extensively in this book. For him, the laws of a society are the most visible symbol of social solidarity and the organization of social life in its most precise and stable form. Law plays a part in a society that is analogous to the nervous system in organisms, according to Durkheim. The nervous system regulates various bodily functions so they work together in harmony. Likewise, the legal system regulates all the parts of society so that they work together in agreement. Two types of law are present in human societies and each corresponds to the type of social solidarity those societies use. Repressive law corresponds to the center of common consciousness and everyone participates in judging and punishing the perpetrator. The severity of a crime is not measured necessarily as the damage incurred to an individual victim, but rather gauged as the damage it caused the society or the social order as a whole. Punishments for crimes against the collective are typically harsh. Repressive law, says Durkheim, is practiced in mechanical forms of society. Restitutive Law as Restoration The second type of law is restitutive law, which instead focuses on the victim since there are no commonly shared beliefs about what damages society. Restitutive law corresponds to the organic state of society and works through the more specialized bodies of society, such as the courts and lawyers. This also means that repressive law and restitutory law vary directly with the degree of a society’s development. Durkheim believed that repressive law is common in primitive, or mechanical, societies where sanctions for crimes are typically made and agreed upon by the whole community. In these lower societies, crimes against the individual do occur, but in terms of seriousness, those are placed on the lower end of the penal ladder. Crimes against the community take priority in such societies, according to Durkheim, because the evolution of the collective conscious is widespread and strong while the division of labor has not yet happened. The more a society becomes civilized and the division of labor is introduced, the more restitutory law takes place. Historical Context Durkheim wrote his book at the height of the industrial age. Then, how people fit into Frances new social order surfaced as a principal source of trouble for the rapidly industrial society. The pre-industrial social groups comprised family and neighbors, but as the Industrial Revolution continued, people found new cohorts at their jobs, creating new social groups with coworkers. Dividing society into small labor-defined groups, says Durkheim, required an increasingly centralized authority to regulate relations between the different groups. As a visible extension of that state, law codes needed to evolve as well, to maintain the orderly operation of social relations by conciliation and civil law rather than by penal sanctions. Durkheim based his discussion of organic solidarity on a dispute he had with Herbert Spencer, who claimed that industrial solidarity is spontaneous and that there is no need for a coercive body to create or maintain it. Spencer believed that social harmony is simply established by itself, an idea with which Durkheim disagreed. Much of this book, then, involves Durkheim arguing with Spencer’s stance and pleading his own views on the topic. Criticism Durkheims primary objective was to evaluate the social changes related to industrialization and to better understand its ills. But British legal philosopher Michael Clarke argues that Durkheim fell short by lumping a variety of societies into two groups: industrialized and non-industrialized. Durkheim didnt see or acknowledge the wide range of non-industrialized societies, instead imagining industrialization as the historical watershed that separated goats from sheep. American scholar Eliot Freidson pointed out that theories about industrialization tend to define labor in terms of the material world of technology and production. Freidson says that such divisions are created by an administrative authority without consideration of the social interaction of its participants. American sociologist Robert Merton noted that as a positivist, Durkheim adopted the methods and criteria of the physical sciences to examine the social laws that arose during industrialization. But physical sciences, rooted in nature, simply cant explain the laws that have arisen from mechanization. The Division of Labor also has a gender problem, according to American sociologist Jennifer Lehman. She argued that Durkheims book contains sexist contradictions. Durkheim conceptualizes individuals as men but women as separate and non-social beings. By using this framework, the philosopher entirely missed out on the role of women have played in both industrial and pre-industrial societies. Sources Clarke, Michael. Durkheims Sociology of Law. British Journal of Law and Society 3.2 (1976): 246–55. Print.Durkheim, Emile. On the Division of Labor in Society. Trans. Simpson, George. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1933. Print.Freidson, Eliot. The Division of Labor as Social Interaction. Social Problems 23.3 (1976): 304–13. Print.Gehlke, C. E. Rev. . Columbia Law Review 35.4 (1935): 643–44. Print.of On the Division of Labor in Society, Emile Durkheim, George SimpsonJones, Robert Alun. Ambivalent Cartesians: Durkheim, Montesquieu, and Method. American Journal of Sociology 100.1 (1994): 1–39. Print.Kemper, Theodore D. The Division of Labor: A Post–Durkheimian Analytical View. American Sociological Review 37.6 (1972): 739–53. Print.Lehmann, Jennifer M. Durkheims Theories of Deviance and Suicide: A Feminist Reconsideration. American Journal of Sociology 100.4 (1995): 904–30. Print.Merton, Robert K. Durkheims Division of Labor in Society. American Journal of Sociology 40.3 (1934): 319–28. Print.

The Difference Between will and shall

The Difference Between will and shall The Difference Between will and shall The Difference Between will and shall By Maeve Maddox Reader Eric wonders about the uses of will and shall. When do you use will and shall? I know that [they] mean the same thing, but I would like to know when to use them in the correct grammatical sense. In modern English will and shall are helping verbs. They are used with other verbs, but lack conjugations of their own. Both are signs of the future tense. The old Walsh English Handbook that I used in high school gives this rule for forming the future: Use shall in the first person and will in the second and third persons for the simple future tense: I shall sing this afternoon. You will succeed. He will stay at home. My observations suggest that shall is rarely used by American speakers. The two words existed as separate verbs in Old English, the form of English spoken from 450-1150 C.E. The verb willan meant wish, be willing, be about to. The verb sculan (pronounced [shu-lan], had the meanings be obliged to, have to, must, be destined to, be supposed to. In modern usage traces of the old meanings persist for speakers who use both forms. Will can imply volition or intention, while shall can imply necessity: I will scale Mount Everest. (and no one can stop me!) You shall take the garbage out before you do anything else. (You have no choice, Junior!) A second element enters into the use of shall and will. As a matter of courtesy, a difference exists according to whether the verb is used with a first or second person subject. Which to use depends upon the relationship between speakers. Parents, teachers, employers, and staff sergeants are within their rights to tell someone You shall complete this assignment by 9 p.m. Such a construction offers no alternative. It is the same as saying You must complete this assignment. In speaking to an equal, however, the choice is left up to the other person: I shall drive to Tulsa today. You will follow on Tuesday. (Its still up to you.) Heres a frequently quoted joke that illustrates the consequences of using shall and will incorrectly: A foreign tourist was swimming in an English lake. Taken by cramps, he began to sink. He called out for help: Attention! Attention! I will drown and no one shall save me! Many people were within earshot, but, being well-brought up Englishmen and women, they honored his wishes and permitted him to drown. All of which is the short answer to Erics question. For the long answer, take a look at Fowler (Modern English Usage) and the OED. By the way, the verb will in the sense of bequeath derives from the noun will in the sense of wish. A will expresses the wishes of the person who writes it. The verb will (bequeath) does possess a complete conjugation. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Grammar category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:20 Types and Forms of Humor"Wracking" or "Racking" Your Brain?Careful with Words Used as Noun and Verb

Jean Watson Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Jean Watson - Assignment Example A nurse who adopts this model acts in a caring manner to enhance his/her relationship with the patient. The nurse while caring for the patient should base on the value system of an individual. The nurse should place the patient/client in the family, the community as well as the culture context (Sitzman & Eichelberger, 2011). Nursing practice should be personalized while at the same time less technical and generic in nature. The client should be the focus of care and not the available technology for treatments One hard aspect in this model is that it may overlook to express the nurses’ responsibility of providing the patients with physical needs, which is a basic role of the nurse in the health care team. Patients’ biophysical needs are given less weight, and the major focus is on patients’ psychosocial needs (Basford & Slevin, 2003). Ms. M who is 25 years old diagnosed with HIV/AIDS stage III is my patient. Using this model, I would handle her better by allowing her express her fears in regards to the diagnosis. I would obtain information about her, her life experiences, bodily sensations, spiritual and cultural beliefs as well as her goals and expectations so as to provide holistic

Discuss the learning environment on reggio emilia, steiner and Essay

Discuss the learning environment on reggio emilia, steiner and montessori early years settings - Essay Example It is only unique to Reggio Emilia as there are no international colleges to train someone to become a Reggio Emilia teacher whatsoever. The organization of the learning environment for Reggio Emilia is very critical to the early childhood program. It is often known as the childs third teacher. The major aims that are involved in the design of the new spaces or learning environment and the remodeling of the ones which are old usually includes a combination of each classroom with the rest of the school, and the surrounding community that is adjacent to the school. The importance of this learning environment lies with the feeling that all children can come up with the best meaning and make sense of the world through learning environments which support involving, varicolored, sustained, and the changing relationships among people, the experience in the world, ideas and the numerous ways of showing ideas. The preschools are specifically filled with elements such as indoor plants and vines with the natural light evident. The classrooms are open to a center piazza while the kitchens are open to the general view. Additionally, the access to the surrounding communities is all but assured through windows that are almost wall-size. The entries are the ones that mainly capture the attention of the children and the grownups through the mirrors that are on the walls and ceilings. Other important features of this learning environment include the abundant space that is available for the supplies. They are often rearranged in order to draw the attention that is related to their beautiful features. There are studio spaces in each classroom which are in the form of an ample anterior that is centrally located. In the school, there are significant efforts of creating opportunities for children interaction. Waldorf schools are based on the educational philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, who is a philosopher based in Austria. Rudolfs feelings on

An Epic Tragedy of History Essay Example for Free

An Epic Tragedy of History Essay Both Native American literature and film have been inspired by the oral tradition of passing down stories and cultural folkways, through the spoken word. The personal journey of chronicling these stories in literature and film is very allegorical in that the personal journeys that these writers also parallel their struggle with a literal journey. As such, these stories become full of symbolism for the types of cultural artifacts that cannot be assimilated into mainstream culture; not in the English language, not in the Christian religion, and not in the reservations that hindered spirituality. There is a theme in all of the texts and in the film that depicts the struggle of trying to determine where the individual and the culture fit into the wider world that knows little of their existence. Other texts provide specific insight into how conversion of Native Americans into Christianity was essential for those of European descent to explain this mysterious group. It becomes apparent that the oral tradition sustained these groups for centuries until the loss of land led to the loss of more freedoms, especially that of having the right to shape ideas about the world without the influence of others. The film and the Native American writers reviewed all seek to exert their power and use words and motion pictures to explain all the literary and historical meaning of the stories told to them, predating all these modes of communication. Scott Momady in his book, The Way to Rainy Mountain describes the story of the creation of the Kwuda, which was passed down in the oral tradition. What is interesting is that he notes that the names of the tribe did change and there was a sense of this tribe being divided. â€Å"Later still they took the name Gaigwu, a name which can be taken to indicate something of which two halves differ from each other in appearance† (17). It is not only the way that this group of people came into existence but also the diversity and difference within this particular tribe that is extremely important. When Native Americans were forced onto reservations, it was of the utmost importance for the rest of the world not to see all Native Americans as the same, as they were varied with the many tribes and also within tribes. These oral stories become even more important to dictate into print or film to show how Native Americans viewed the world, themselves, and most importantly to realistically illustrate their heritage with the hopes of changing how many whites viewed them. The allegorical and symbolic divide that came to move all of these authors to write stories that bridged the gap in their own respective lives, also helped to create a film as well. The movie Dreamkeeper, directed by Steve Barron, shows how a family divided will struggle to keep tradition alive despite the death or disappearance of an important figure. In this film the pressing issues between the grandfather, grandson, and absent father serves as a metaphor for the intrusion on the culture of the family’s tribe versus the tradition of passing down lineage and heritage. The metaphor is that the grandfather is rooted in the past, the grandson is heading into an uncertain future, and the father is the only link to the present. These cultural threats are more than just the loss of land or the loss of a father, it is the changing of times into a future that is being mapped out by another group entirely, that being white Americans. These maps, so to speak, or the oral tradition that has mapped out the history of entire tribes and families has been written about by other prominent Native Americans in their journey and tragedy of trying to fill this divide between past and present all the while wondering what the future will hold. These types of worries were normally settled by spiritual means, but loss of land meant loss of the ability for Native Americans to go on their spiritual quests. Charles Alexander Eastman in his passage from â€Å"The Soul of an Indian† writes about the mystical quest undertaken by Native Americans in his native Sioux tribe that required several nights away from camp in meditation. He also writes of the divide of the Native American, a common theme in all the reviewed works. â€Å"The red man is divided into two parts,-the spiritual mind and the physical mind. The first is pure spirit, concerned only with the essence of things, and it was this he sought to strengthen by spiritual prayer† (767). Because of this loss of land, essentially the loss of spirit or at least the ways in which spiritual rituals were conducted came to an end. Also, the fear of the future was replaced by Christian ideals to help Americans of European descent understand how these natives fir into their Bible. In this way the Native Americans, already concerned with loss of identity were split even further in a divide that led them to an uncertain and uncharacteristic future. It was only through the oral tradition of preserving identity that Native Americans could attempt to achieve a personal wholeness while the many tribes and family members within tribes became scattered and disillusioned. It is through the personal journeys of the writers that it becomes apparent how the loss of land impacted not only an entire civilization, but individuals, who lost identity and did whatever was necessary to try to discover, rediscover, and preserve all that was left. Gertrude Bonnin, in passages from â€Å"Impressions of an Indian Childhood† talks about living what could be considered a double life. Gertrude sometimes refers to herself as her Sioux name, Zitkala-Sa, which means Red Bird. She was born on a reservation to a Sioux mother and her white father was absent in her life. She struggled between the old ways that her mother tried to teach her in the oral tradition and the ways that people conducted themselves outside of the reservation. She became torn and decided that the reservation life was not for her and the American way of treating Native Americans was not appealing either. So she began compiling all the information she could gather from what was relayed to her by her mother in the oral tradition and then wrote these stories in English. She abhorred the fact that the language of her ancestors had disappeared and she was just as concerned as Eastman was about the loss of spirituality for all Native Americans under the conversion to Christianity. Bonnin writes, â€Å"I prefer to their dogma my excursions into the natural gardens where the voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of birds, the rippling of mighty waters, and the sweet breathing of flowers† (939-940). It becomes clear that for the spirituality of Native Americans to thrive, then land uninterrupted by industrialization was needed in order for this group to be who they had always been before they were removed to reservations. So taking their land was not a simple geographic issue, this also took these peoples’ essence and spirituality from them. It is therefore important for these texts and films to exist as reminder of what was lost, not just space, but a place in history for people who had to rely on a few to pass on as many of the stories given to them in the oral tradition and put it in print or in film. All three written pieces reviewed and the film help to show the importance of the land that was taken from the Native Americans, as well as the influence of the oral tradition of passing down stories and spiritual pathways to each ensuing generation. The film and the written works display both a metaphorical divide in the ways of the respective authors and tribes and the bigger community, showing that differences need to be acknowledged as well as the common goal of this group to gather their cultural artifacts that would have disappeared into an assimilated America. Also, the allegorical journey that all these contributors took to discover their part in history is akin to an epic and a tragedy. Scholars, as well, have looked at the impact of the spiritual strivings of Native Americans and the ultimate need for tribes to achieve a new identity in a foreign land to them, a land that was once their own. It was the need for Christian legitimacy on the part of European settlers that led to a need for Native Americans to be stripped of their spiritual roots and forced to resign to religious conversion. The mission of these Christians â€Å"absorbed Native Americans into a Christian world view that made them comprehensible to Euro-Americans, who were otherwise faced with a population whose mysterious origins threatened to call into question the explanatory value of the Bible† (Wyss, 162). So as Euro-Americans sought to explain the discrepancies with Native Americans and their absence from the Bible, Native Americans had to wrestle with their own identities that were being challenged by these settlers for purposes other than just the acquisition of land. What then became an issue was the questioning of creation on the part of settlers and the â€Å"lost tribe theory† (162) that proposed that Native Americans were part of a tribe that was not thoroughly explained in the Bible. All the while many Native Americans asserted their own creation myths while other Natives tried to assert superiority over whites with the reasoning that if Natives were a part of Israel’s lost tribes then, therefore, they were closer descendants of Jacob. This hierarchy of Biblical place did play an important role on the identity of Natives during their assimilation into Euro-American culture, though the oral tradition certainly did support a different idea for the origins of each tribe. Even those Native Americans that did subscribe to a Christian ideal were â€Å"defined by a constant deferral of home, or the constant movement, both geographical and cultural, of a fragmented people† (165). It seems then that the roots of all Native Americans, who were fragmented and spread across the nation, was entrenched in the oral tradition of creation stories and spirituality. However, the many Native American stories that were told and passed down led to they idea the Euro-Americans had as Natives being savage and mythical, making their stories, even true encounters appear to be false. This led to the Natives â€Å"invisibility in the annals of encounter: constructed as tellers of myth and as peoples of myth, they are denied a place in the national story and a voice in recounting it† (Bellin, 99). This created the powerlessness found in Natives attempting to assert their place in the new America that was founded on laws, both the divine and those conceived by Europeans. The fact that Natives had stories, spirituality, and kinship was not enough to place them in a position of asserting their power in any way that seemed rational to Euro-Americans. As well the illiteracy of Native Americans certainly did not assist this group in gaining any type of recognition for having much to offer the Europeans in their stories. â€Å"the oral nature of much Indian narrative has been taken to explain both the Indians’ irrelevance to history-for what could illiterates offer? -and their inability to remember and record it† (102). As well, Native Americans stories were not just told, they were animated through acting, making the stories more meaningful to the Native audience but meaningless to a person outside of a tribe. It is fair to say that the identity of Native Americans was not only in their oral tradition, but in the ways in which stories were acted out. This is something that is lost even if a story is recounted by a Native to as close to the original message as possible. Much is also lost in translation further undermining any attempts that Natives could make when forced on reservations, where their land and language was taken along with the ties of spirituality that sustained them. It also makes the spiritual identity of Native Americans more complicated when they are not only placed in an Anthropological category of uncivilized, the literary category of completely mythical, and finally over romanticized by scholars, who do not understand the deep meaning behind Native American spirituality and ritual. These rites and rituals are meant to cement a community of people together and individual identity can be created within these rituals. Instead, many times, these acts and stories are perceived as more universal and therefore there is the mistaken implication that Native American spirituality can be lumped into a religion that can be used by all. This has placed and continues to place the sense of community outside of the purposes intended and sadly many people use information gleaned from Native spirituality for profit or for writing scholarly articles that do not take into account the private lives of a single Native, but instead combine individuals into a whole. With a fragmented sense of history and culture, it is right to note that there has been and continues to be fragmentation in the Native American communities, but for an individual, a sense of self requires both community identity and a complex set of cultural artifacts to make that individual whole and not a watered down, assimilated version of the Euro-Americans. To be more clear, the text versions of Native Americans stories involving spirituality and rituals many times do not take into account the personal nature of these events. It is not only a matter of entire communities of Native American feeling the need to forge and reclaim their converted or dismissed identities as a whole, but the essence of the individual in a tribe, separate from others that must do the same. â€Å"Nicknames, shadows, and shamanic [sic] visions are tribal stories that are heard and remembered as survivance [sic]. These personal identities and stories are not the same as those translated in the literature† (Grim, 44). This lack of voice to individual Native Americans and stereotyping of all communities and persons being inherently the same in their spirituality and other social activities makes more important the voices, such as the Native authors and filmmakers reviewed all the more important. These artists have shown how gender, tribe, place, and, politics, to name just a few social forces can affect an individual struggling for acceptance within him or herself and in the larger world. All these factors must be considered when looking at film and literature, separating the individual from the group while at the same time seeing the struggle for those individuals as being the best representation available for a group without a strong voice. In conclusion, the film and the literary works of Native Americans highlight the voice of a specific individual, attempting to speak for their community. Taken with scholarly research, it can be seen the effect of colonialism and religious conversion on the vulnerable Native American population. Their history has many gaps in that the myths and traditions were many times dismissed and the absence from the Christian Bible made their existence confusing and unsettling to the settlers. The voices that have been stifled serve to help save the history of the mainstream at their expense, and this powerlessness and absence from history can only be reconstructed in the best way possible. Though even stories passed down in the oral tradition are lacking in the gestures and actions of the storytellers, which is the essence of oral storytelling. Works Cited Joshua David Bellin, The Demon of the Continent: Indians and the Shaping of American Literature, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. Gertrude Bonnin, â€Å"Impressions of an Indian Childhood† in The Heath Anthology of American Literature Vol. 2. Ed. Paul Lauter, Lexington: D. C. Heath and Company, 1994. Dreamkeeper, Dir by Steve Barron, Hallmark Entertainment Productions, 2003. Charles Alexander Eastman, â€Å"The Soul of an Indian† in The Heath Anthology of American Literature Vol. 2. Ed. Paul Lauter, Lexington: D. C. Heath and Company, 1994. John A. Grim, â€Å"Cultural Identity, Authenticity, and Community Survival: The Politics of Recognition in Native American Religions† in Lee Irwin Native American Spirituality: A Critical Reader, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. Scott N. Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1969. Hilary E. Wyss, Writing Indians: Literacy, Christianity, and Native Community in Early America, Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000.

The North Face Inc Accounting Essay

The North Face Inc Accounting Essay Financial accountants and independent auditors commonly face challenging technical and ethical dilemmas while carrying out their professional responsibilities. This case profiles an accounting and financial reporting fraud orchestrated by the chief financial officer (CFO) of a major public company and his subordinates. The CFO, who was a CPA, took extreme measures to conceal the fraud from his companys audit committee and independent auditors. Despite those measures, the independent auditors identified suspicious entries in the companys accounting records that were a result of the CFOs fraudulent scheme but did not properly investigate those items. Shortly before the fraud was publicly revealed, a partner of the companys audit firm instructed his subordinates to alter prior year audit workpapers for the client to conceal improper decisions made by himself and his firm. History Hap Klopp founded North Face in the mid-1960s to provide a ready source of hiking and camping gear. In 1970, North Face began designing and manufacturing its own line of products after opening a small factory in nearby Berkeley. In 1980, North Face began sponsoring mountain-climbing expeditions across the globe. And North Face became the only supplier in the United States to offer a comprehensive collection of high-performance outerwear, skiwear, sleeping bags, packs and tents. Challenges Sales Growth vs. Quality Control By the mid-1980s, North Faces overburdened manufacturing facilities could not satisfy the steadily growing demand for the companys merchandise or maintain the high quality production standards established by management. New Era In July 1996, a new management team took North Face public, listing the companys common stock on the NASDAQ exchange. The management team established a goal of reaching annual sales of $1 billion by 2003. Later when the actual revenues and profits of North Face failed to meet managements expectations, the companys chief financial officer (CFO) and vice president of sales booked a series of fraudulent sales transactions. Barter for Success at North Face In December 1997, North Faces CFO Christopher Crawford negotiated a $7.8 million sale of excess inventory to a barter company in exchange for trade credits. Crawford knew that the authoritative accounting literature generally precluded the recognition of revenue on such transactions. Crawford, however, structured the transaction to recognize a profit on the trade credits. An Oral Side Agreement Crawford required the barter company to pay a portion of the trade credits in cash. To further obscure the true nature of the large barter transaction, Crawford split it into two parts. 1. On December 29,1997, a $5.15 million sale recorded($3.51 million in cash $1.64 million trade credit) 2. On January 8, 1998, the remaining $2.65 million portion of the barter transaction was booked. Consignments In the third and fourth quarters of fiscal 1998, Todd Katz, North Faces vice president of sales, arranged two large sales to inflate the companys revenues, transactions that were actually consignments rather than consummated sales. The first of these transactions involved $9.3 million of merchandise sold to a small, apparel wholesaler in Texas. Katz negotiated a similar $2.6 million transaction with a small California wholesaler a few months later. Erasing the Past Richard Fiedelman served for several years as the advisory partner for the North Face audit engagement and during early 1998 served for a brief time as the audit engagement partner. During the 1997 audit, the Deloitte audit engagement partner proposed an adjustment to reverse the portion of the $7.8 million barter transaction recorded in December 1997 because he realized that the profit could not be recognized on a barter transaction when the seller is paid exclusively in trade credits. The Deloitte audit partner passed on the proposed adjustment since it did not have a material effect on North Faces 1997 financial statements. While supervising the review of North Faces financial statements for the first quarter of 1998, Fiedelman allowed the company to improperly recognize profit on a portion of the $7.8 million barter transaction booked in January 1998 for which North Face was paid exclusively in trade credits. During the planning phase of the 1998 audit, Fiedelman convinced the new audit engagement partner that the prior year workpapers were wrong and that the previous audit partner had not concluded that it was not permissible for North Face to recognize profit on the 1997 portion of the barter transaction that involved strictly trade credits. As a result of Fiedelmans guidance, the new audit partner did not propose an adjustment to reverse the January 1998 portion of the barter transaction that had been approved by Fiedelman. Fiedelmans subordinates altered the 1997 workpapers to change the conclusion expressed by the 1997 audit engagement partner that North Face was not entitled to record profit on a sales transaction in which it was paid entirely in trade credits. Consequences The SEC sanctioned North Faces CFO, the companys vice-president of sales, and Richard Fiedelman for their roles in the North Face fraud. Questions 1. Should auditors insist that their clients accept all proposed audit adjustments, even those that have an immaterial effect on the given set of financial statements? Defend your answer. No. Clients are not prone to adopting auditors proposed audit adjustments, which forces auditors to somehow determine on an aggregate basis the impact that proposed and/or passed audit adjustments have on a clients financial statements. The most common reason for a client not to make a proposed audit adjustment is that the client disagrees with the need for the given adjustment. We dont want to see that audit engagements ultimately become a tug-of-war between client management and auditors over proposed audit adjustments. 2. Should auditors take explicit measures to prevent their clients from discovering or becoming aware of the materiality thresholds used on individual audit engagements? Would it be feasible for auditors to conceal this information from their audit clients? Yes. To the greatest extent possible, auditors should not provide clients with access to the critical parameters or facets of audit engagements, including materiality limits. According to this case, the CFO used the materiality to subvert the integrity of the entire audit engagement. It is often not feasible to conceal information such as materiality limits from client personnel. For example, auditors always have client personnel pull documents, prepare various schedules to which audit procedures will be applied, and perform other important audit-related tasks. In completing these tasks, client personnel can often determine the auditors intent and/or the scope or materiality limit of a given audit test. Likewise, clients have access to the professional auditing literature and professional publications that discuss the general guidelines that auditors use in making important strategic decisions during the course of an audit, including the selection of materiality limits for individual accounts or financial statement items. 3. Identify the general principles or guidelines that dictate when companies are entitled to record revenue. How were these principles or guidelines violated by the $7.8 million barter transaction and the two consignment sales discussed in this case? According to FASB 605 Revenue Recognition Revenues and gains are realized when products (goods or services), merchandise, or other assets are exchanged for cash or claims to cash. Revenues are considered to have been earned when the entity has substantially accomplished what it must do to be entitled to the benefits represented by the revenues. Generally, barter transactions in which a company receives trade credits in exchange for merchandise should be recorded at the fair value of the merchandises given up since the ultimate realizability or economic value of the trade credits is typically not determinable at the time of the exchange. So, even though the exchange element of the revenue recognition principle is satisfied by such a transaction, the realized element is not necessarily satisfied, meaning that any profit on the transaction should be deferred. In the case at hand, there was clearly some question as to the fair value of the excess merchandise that was being sold to the barter company. A conservative treatment of the transaction might have dictated that a loss or writedown of the merchandise was actually the most appropriate accounting treatment for the transaction. FASB 605-15-25 Sales of Product when Right of Return Exists prohibits a seller from recognizing revenue (or profit, of course) when the given customer can return the product and the ultimate payment to be received by the seller hinges on the customer reselling the product. Both features of the revenue recognition rule were violated by the decision of North Face to record the large consignment sales: there was not a true exchange since the two customers did not pay for the merchandise and the given transactions were not finalized until the customers resold the merchandise, meaning that the realized requirement of the revenue recognition rule had not been satisfied. 4. Identify and briefly explain each of the principal objectives that auditors hope to accomplish by preparing audit workpapers. How were these objectives undermined by Deloittes decision to alter North Faces 1997 workpapers? According to AICPA AU Section 339. 03, audit documentation serves mainly to: a. Provide the principal support for the auditors report, including the representation regarding observance of the standards of fieldwork, which is implicit in the reference to generally accepted auditing standards. b. Aid the auditor in the conduct and supervision of the audit. Both of these objectives were undercut by the decision of the Deloitte auditors to alter North Faces 1997 audit workpapers. First, by modifying the 1997 workpapers and not documenting the given revisions in those workpapers, the Deloitte auditors destroyed audit evidence, evidence that demonstrated that the 1997 audit team had properly investigated the authoritative literature relevant to barter transactions and proposed an audit adjustment consistent with the requirements of that literature. Second, the alteration of the 1997 workpapers affected the decisions made on the 1998 audit. That is, the auditors during the 1998 audit relied on the apparent decisions made during the 1997 audit and thus reached an improper decision on the accounting treatment that would be appropriate for the barter transaction recorded by North Face in January 1998. 5. North Faces management teams were criticized for strategic blunders that they made over the course of the companys history. Do auditors have a responsibility to assess the quality of the key decisions made by client executives? Defend your answer. Yes. Major strategic blunders by client management can create an environment in which client executives and their key subordinates have a strong incentive to distort their entitys accounting records and financial statements. More generally, the overall quality of top managements decisions affects the inherent risk present during a given audit. Event though assessing the quality of key decisions made by client executives is not often seen as an explicit audit procedure within an audit program, auditors need to be aware that the competence of top management and the wide-ranging implications of that competence to all facets of an audit.

Blackberry Case Study Essay

Once the leader of mobile devices for business associates across the United States, in recent years BlackBerry has loss significant market share to its competitors such as Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android. Struggling to keep afloat, although BlackBerry only holds five percent of the total mobile device industry, it still succeeds in its consulting business solutions that BlackBerry offers its clients. BlackBerry Business Solutions offers hardware, software, and applications to improve businesses’ performance in several industries such as healthcare, wholesale and retailing, pharmaceuticals, and financial services. The need for efficiency and access to data in the healthcare industry has recently become a standard protocol of how physicians and healthcare providers treat patients. Especially since the handheld electronic devices and e-commerce applications markets have been expanding rapidly, this trend has in turn provided an outlet of immediate access and diversity of physician-oriented applications available in the marketplace. Research conducted by Manhattan Research states, â€Å"more than 80 percent of U.S. physicians [have] smartphones [in] 2012–up from 64 percent in 2009–and half of that group will use their phones for patient care, administrative functions†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Versel). BlackBerry has recognized these needs from the healthcare industry providing unique and customizable solutions to various clients’ problems by providing them with solutions and applications offered by their 70+ Healthcare ISV (independent software vendor) partners (Partner Solutions). BlackBerry has distinguished their business model by, â€Å"still dominat[ing] among physicians and healthcare application developers, through the iPhone and Google Android are closing the gap quickly†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Versel). BlackBerry can see their successes throughout the entire healthcare continuum by offering e-commerce solutions that improve business and clinical performance across several categories within the healthcare industry which differentiate the services the can offer various businesses than Apple and Android. For instance, Mercy Health Partners, a conglomerate of 30+ hospitals across four states, needed to be able to provide immediate mobile access to patient records and clinical information at the bedside so physicians can more efficiently manage patient care (BlackBerry). BlackBerry Business Solutions were able to uniquely assess Mercy Health Partner’s needs and expand their health information systems by offering an e-commerce application called Clinical Xpert Navigator provided by on of their partners, Thompson Healthcare (BlackBerry). The Clinical Xpert Navigator gave Mercy a way to access and securely deliver patient information such as patient medications lists, transcribed report, lab results, and electronic health records at their various locations and right at their patients bedside tables. As a customer, Mercy Health Partners received an exclusive BlackBerry Enterprise Solution as apart of their business solutions model, which ran on BlackBerry smartphones and tablets making it a cost-effective use of their technology. This cost efficiency has in turn resulted in benefits seen in both Mercy Health Partners’ business performances but also their clinical patient care performance. The necessity for time in today’s society is critical for any industry. BlackBerry’s Business Solutions offer clients within the healthcare industry more time through e-commerce applications that directly improves the quality of care, access to care, and continuous care they can ultimately offer their patients in need and help save more lives. http://www.itproportal.com/2012/03/30/iphones-share-us-smartphone-market-very-close-android/ http://sg.blackberry.com/newsroom/success/Mercy_BCS.pdf