Finance Manager in Home and Personal Care Products - Essay Example

Introduction Lisa as a finance manager in Home and Personal Care Products, has the mandate and the obligation of ensuring that the company’s finances are well managed and at the same time keep record of all the assets of the company and all it mergers and acquisitions for better financial consumption. In her dream job, she has to ensure that every transaction did observe ethics in the process of acquisition. Moreover, she had to understand the culture of the newly acquired companies and mergers in order to harmonize them with the parent company so that they can achieve the primary goal of the company. Discussion While investigating the financial activities and the operations of the newly acquired company, she found out that the company had issues with appropriate accounting practices that were geared towards inflating sales and earnings of workers. Most conspicuously, the company was involved in very expensive commercial aimed at marketing and creating awareness of the company. The expenses were exorbitantly high amounting to millions of dollar. Secondly, the company had a number of assets without a clear list on their nature. However, on deeper examination of these assets, she found out that, the controversial and expensive commercials were among the assets. To deal with the issues, Lisa had to follow the right procedure in solving an ethical issue as presented by IMA. To do so, she went on to Anderson, who was her immediate supervisor in the newly acquired company. Before doing the visit, she prepared herself adequately well with the plan of valuations of the parent company. The plan was supposed to inform Anderson on the requirement of the mergers and acquired company by the mother company’s policy on valuation of her assets and financial control at large. However, to her surprise, Anderson did not pay much attention to the plan that was fundamental in harmonizing the organization with the operation of the parent company. The issue at hand, juts needed the intervention of the chief finance officer of the newly acquired company Anderson, to be resolve by providing clear information on the assets that the company held. This is because they are the major stakeholders of the stalemate that has been identified by Lisa. He rubbished the need of Lisa to gain more understanding of the other accrued liabilities. Anderson turns her down and insists that it is none of her business. Anderson is quick to assert that Lisa does not understand and comprehend the business, and the journal entries are standard practice. He claims that if Lisa understood the nature of uncertainty of the prestige fragrance business, she would be able to go in line with what the company wants. This was to deal with the rising issues with the new company; Lisa had the difficult of challenging the perspective and position of Anderson without losing his trust and that of the finance team at the same time distancing the newly acquired company. Her efforts received a blow since the right channels of resolving the issues were receiving some resistance. She had to follow the guidelines of IMA so that they could solve the issue amicably and work in harmony in order to maintain the progress of the companies. First instance, she observed confidentiality while dealing with the issue as she discussed with the affected group only without disclosing it to either the subordinate or the higher management team. She did seek the advice of her senior in the newly acquired company who is the chief financial officer so that they can clarify the issues surrounding the operations s of that company. She did approach the issues with a lot of competence for the fact that she came up with clear information and facts on the issues at hand. That was supposed to help in solving the issues amicably between the two of them. However, all her efforts were in vain for the fact that Anderson did not pay attention to her concerns and did not regard them as urgent. Thus throwing her to a dilemma on what to do in order to solve the problem and at the same time keep the company together with each stakeholders being vibrant and geared towards achieving the organizations goals and objective. The IMA guidelines provide for an alternative of solving such issues in case the first option of saving it with the immediate person in line did fail. She had to solve the issue since if she ignored it, it would compromise her work since she was a newly promoted employee to a dream of her job. An audit would be conducted and figure out that she did not work towards ensuring that the company assets were well valued with harmonization of the merged and acquired companies with the parent company. Conclusion Thus in my opinion Lisa should take a step to the next level of the management of the company in order for her to have things right. She has to inform Anderson of the developments first to comply with the guidelines of the company in resolving conflicts. However, she might meet resistance with the management for the fact that the board of manager trust Anderson’s management for he has been an integral part in the management of the company at large. They, therefore, might buy the idea of Andersen on the management criteria of the finances of the newly acquired company. In a situation that the management did back up Anderson on the valuation of the new companies assets, she has to keep her findings and make and unwavering position on the arguments on the issue. This important since that she may stay clear of any issues that may arise in case the company did evaluation and the same errors found. She has to indicate that she noted the errors and followed the right channels as she tried to solve the issue at hand. By so doing, she will not jeopardize her career for the mistakes that she did not do. The rising issues are not any different in any new firm. It is up to the finance manager to find out faults and manage them adequately within the organization (Archie and Buchholtz, 2008). References Archie B. Carroll and Ann K. Buchholtz. (2008). Business and society: Ethics and stakeholder management. Annual review of sociology (pg. 970) Read More