Explain the concept of moral relativity and provide one criticism.

Suppose that tennis champion Roger Federer is invited to endorse a major sports brand. He learns that the brand is known for exploiting child labor in developing countries. If he does not endorse the brand, soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo will take the endorsement deal. Suppose further that Roger is a utilitarian. What course of action should he take?

The graph below shows the position of an object as a function of time.  The letters H-L represent particular moments of time.  At which moment in time is the speed fo the object the highest? test01-position-vs-time.png

You are a graduate of USF’s accounting program and after several years in public accounting you accepted a position at a mid-size corporation in Tampa 8 months ago. Your immediate supervisor is another former USF student. While at USF you socialized briefly while in Beta Alpha Psi but had not seen this person until your interview. You feel that you were given the job because of this prior relationship. While reviewing the year-end financial statements with your supervisor she shared her concern about this year’s net income: company management had hoped for a 10% increase from 2023 to 2024, but the numbers support only a 5% increase.  Your supervisor is afraid that the company will miss analyst earnings forecast of $0.17 per share. She suggests a simple way to allow the company to meet analyst forecasts. Even though the company’s policy is to assess the value of inventory at lower of the cost or market for each inventory item individually, your supervisor suggests assessing the value of inventory at the product category level instead, which will result in a significantly smaller write-down of inventory and therefore an increase in net income. She argues that “we can always go back to the old policy next year.”  Required: Using the Framework for Understanding Ethical Decision Making in Business (in Ferrell and Fraedrich, Chapter 5  page 21 of the course readings), discuss factors other than ethical issue intensity that you believe would affect your decision whether to support/not support your supervisor on this issue.      

Discuss how investors would respond to the company’s earnings (i) if you agreed with your supervisor’s suggestion and the information became public. I expect a complete discussion, not just that stock prices will go up or down, but why. Use your knowledge of capital markets, agency theory, etc., to help explain the impact.   

Discuss some important characteristics of the company (for example, earnings, management, etc.) that could increase/decrease investor’s perception of the amount of estimation risk.   

The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) provides a way to estimate the company’s expected rate of return or cost of equity capital. However, the CAPM does not consider a type of risk – estimation risk. What is estimation risk?   

Based on our readings, what are the moral/ethical philosophies that could explain your supervisor’s behavior? Note: You need to provide a complete discussion of more than one philosophy.   

Airline ID for “AIR SHUTTLE” [BLANK-1]

Explain whether and how the external and internal auditors potentially impact the value of the firm’s stock.