Management Accounting Of Amcor Limited

Discuss about the Management Accounting of Amcor Limited.

 

 

Introduction

This study deals with a company named as Amcor Limited that is an Australian-based multinational packaging company and headquartered in Australia (Amcor.com 2017). The company is listed in Australian Stock Exchange and creates packaging solutions by using flexible as well as rigid plastics packaging. Amcor Limited is the leader in the packaging manufacturer where they offer customers with sustainable packaging solutions with highest quality as possible. There are two main packaging broad lines of Amcor Limited that is Rigid Plastics as well as Flexibles. Furthermore, Amcor Limited manufactures PET bottles as well as hard plastic containers. Amcor Limited is a global packaging leader where their core values are to attain social responsibility and to conduct long-term business strategy in the most appropriate way. The current segment elucidates the operations of Amcor Limited and how it relates with the present case that is explained in the study (Simons 2013). The Amcor case is one of the popular cases where many criticisms had been noted and this study highlights on one of those cases that need urgent attention by the Senior Management of Amcor Limited. Balanced Scorecard approach and strategy map approach for Amcor Limited has been presented in graphical format that clearly demonstrates the action or initiatives that needs to be undertaken by the management based on four important dimensions, that is customer perspective, financial perspective, learning & growth perspective and internal process perspective (Valmohammadi and Ahmadi 2015).

The Amcor Case:

The Amcor case has been taken from the news article “The Sydney Morning Herald” that is titled as “No compensation for Amcor in court case” (Butler 2017). In this particular scenario, it was noted that Amcor Limited is to receive no compensation for breaches of duties by the Senior Executives who secretly purchased two businesses that belongs to the packaging giant. Due to that, Victorian Supreme Court Judge declared that Amcor Limited had failed to show the case where there is a breach by executives that include cardboard box that has damaged Amcor Limited. Addition to that, it was ordered by two of the Executives named as Trevor Barnes and Craig Holihan for paying the packaging company that is half of the profits reaped from one of the business. After the judgment, it clearly to understand that an end long-running litigation was conducted between Amcor Limited as well as Executives that had run up legal bills that estimates more than millions of dollars (Reefke and Trocchi 2013). Furthermore, Mr. Hodgson had sued Amcor Limited for wrongful dismissal where Amcor Limited responds to the allegations when Executives swindles the company by purchasing two businesses from the knock down prices in the early 2000. After summarizing the judgment, it was noted that executives of Amcor Limited were hiding their interests in the companies that actually was found manifestly incompatible with the employment relationship in a serious dimension. It was the Executives of Amcor Limited who was using the information in improper ways as they have gained from the employees of Amcor Limited. This particular case will return to court on April 2016 for a directions hearing (Rampersad and Hussain 2014).

Long-term goals and objectives of Amcor Limited

There are five key areas that Amcor Limited desire to achieve as their long-term goal and objectives for attainment of sustainable workplace. These long-term objectives are as follows:

• Environment- Amcor Limited believes in implementing environmental management systems as well as improving environmental performance. Addition to that, Amcor Limited sets regulatory measures as well as working towards EnviroAction targets (Perkins, Grey and Remmers 2014).
• Community- Amcor Limited conducts open as well as constructive dialogue with the communities. Addition to that, Amcor Limited supports local community projects as well as utilizes packaging expertise for addressing social and environmental needs (Cooper, Ezzamel and Qu 2017).
• Workplace- Amcor Limited aims at maintaining safe workplace, engaging as well as developing with the associate through maintaining an assorted workplace and providing equal opportunity (Keyes 2016).
• Marketplace- Amcor Limited utilizes life cycle assessment capabilities that offer customer responsible packaging as well as supporting sustainability objectives of the customers. Addition to that, Amcor Limited promotes the role as well as benefits of responsible packaging (Cooper, Ezzamel and Qu 2017).
• Economy- Amcor Limited aims at demonstrating good governance, business continuity management as well as sensible risk taking (Cooper, Ezzamel and Qu 2017).

Identification of group of stakeholders

The key stakeholder of Amcor Limited include investors, customers and suppliers, co-workers, supplies of capital, industry bodies as well as government and media where the company operates within the stipulated time frame (Kaplan and Anderson 2013).

Competitors of Amcor

Amcor Limited faces intense competition from the competitors namely, Georgia-Pacific LLC and Silgan Holdings Inc (Cooper, Ezzamel and Qu 2017).

Formulating a Balanced Scorecard for Amcor

Perspectives	Objective	Performance Measures		Initiatives
		Lag	Lead
Financial Perspective	Increased shareholder value                           Low-cost operation         Driving growth in the merge market	Revenue Growth                             Lower costs of production process         Diversified market	Sales Mix   Production as well as operation expenses Sales growth by region	Initiatives taken for expanding diversified product business units in both packaging as well as materials for driving growth through acquisition of other packaging manufacturers such as Deluxe packages, flexible Americas and Nampak Flexibles (Cooper, Ezzamel and Qu 2017). It means continued focus on new techniques as well as materials for optimizing production Expanding in the high-growth markets where Amcor Limited participation is relatively low for countries such as South Africa and Brazil (Cooper, Ezzamel and Qu 2017).
Customer Perspective	Expanding customer base                 Industry leading customer loyalty     Positive impact on the community as well as society	Market Share                   Customer Retention     Environmental Impacts of packaging	Number of new customers                 Number of retained customers and on-time delivery rate Number of sustainable packaged produced	Developing a differentiated range of products by bringing new products as well as production technologies and materials (Cooper, Ezzamel and Qu 2017) Responsible packaging initiatives   Maintaining market leadership from number of acquisitions as well as mergers and focusing on knowledge and expertise in getting access to rigid plastics packaging.
Internal Business Perspective	Product Leadership Strategy     Customer Intimacy strategy   Operational Excellence Strategy	Developing new products     Innovating existing packaging products   Improving speed to market	Customer relationship management systems Customer support service     Customer interaction	Decreased operation costs as well as cycle time   Ensuring high standards of quality as well as delivery time Optimizing supply chain of the packaged products (Coe and Letza 2014)
Learning and Growth Perspective	Human Capital Information Capital Organization Capital	Skills Systems   traditions	education Databases   management	awareness Networks   configuration and joint effort

Strategy Map for Amcor Limited

Concluding Statement and recommended suggestions

On critical analysis, it is understood that Amcor Limited should adopt the balanced scorecard approach as well as strategy map for monitoring the corporate and the divisional performance (Hoque 2014). Both the mentioned approach considers as one of the important tool for bringing sustainability performance that need proper attention by the Senior Management of Amcor Limited. After that, Amcor Limited should be using ambitious goals for continuously improving the environmental impacts of the operations in case of greenhouse gases emissions, municipal water use and waste that go to landfills. The approach that is recommended to Amcor Limited is identifying as well as implementing environmental improvement opportunities that will help in motivate the staff members of Amcor Limited (Cooper, Ezzamel and Qu 2017).

At the end of the study, it is concluded that Amcor Limited offers sustainable packaged materials to the end users. The above analysis has been done by preparing balanced scorecard and strategy map for the company named as Amcor Limited so that the company minimizes the allegations that was faced by them during the past years. The above analysis explains balanced scorecard approach and strategy map approach as it will directly help in minimizing the risk assessment as and when applicable. All the four dimension of balanced scorecard is unique by nature and signifies different perspectives such as customer, financials, learning & growth and internal process. By this, it was clear to understand each of the perspective and link it with the case study so that proper measures can be taken for future attainment of goals as well as objectives in the most appropriate way.

References

Amcor.com. 2017. Amcor - Home. [online] Available at: https://www.amcor.com [Accessed 18 May 2017].

Butler, B. 2017. No compensation for Amcor in court case. [online] The Sydney Morning Herald. Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/business/no-compensation-for-amcor-in-court-case-20120320-1vgv4.html [Accessed 18 May 2017].

Coe, N. and Letza, S., 2014. Two decades of the balanced scorecard: A review of developments. The Poznan University of Economics Review, 14(1), p.63.

Cooper, D.J., Ezzamel, M. and Qu, S.Q., 2017. Popularizing a management accounting idea: The case of the balanced scorecard. Contemporary Accounting Research.

Hoque, Z., 2014. 20 years of studies on the balanced scorecard: trends, accomplishments, gaps and opportunities for future research. The British accounting review, 46(1), pp.33-59.

Kaplan, R. and Anderson, S.R., 2013. Time-driven activity-based costing: a simpler and more powerful path to higher profits. Harvard business press.

Keyes, J., 2016. Implementing the IT balanced scorecard: Aligning IT with corporate strategy. CRC Press.

Perkins, M., Grey, A. and Remmers, H., 2014. What do we really mean by “Balanced Scorecard”?. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 63(2), pp.148-169.

Rampersad, H. and Hussain, S., 2014. Personal balanced scorecard. In Authentic Governance (pp. 29-38). Springer International Publishing.

Reefke, H. and Trocchi, M., 2013. Balanced scorecard for sustainable supply chains: design and development guidelines. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 62(8), pp.805-826.

Simons, R., 2013. Performance Measurement and Control Systems for Implementing Strategy Text and Cases: Pearson New International Edition. Pearson Higher Ed.

Valmohammadi, C. and Ahmadi, M., 2015. The impact of knowledge management practices on organizational performance: A balanced scorecard approach. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 28(1), pp.131-159.