Question 1 Responsibility accounting is a system that collects, summarizes, and reports accounting data related to the responsibility of manager

in a corporation (gsu). It is used to measure the performance of people and departments to foster goal congruence. Responsibility accounting is useful in evaluating efficiency and effectiveness of managers based on the financial performance of each department (Dictionary, 2013). It is based on an assumption that every cost incurred will be the responsibility of every individual (Bragg, 2010). It has four main elements which are assigning responsibility, establishing performance measures of benchmarks, evaluating performance and assigning rewards. This concept is dealing with the problem in difficulty to determine each departments performance based on their probability (Geek, 2013). In a corporation, responsibility centers are an important segment where there are different managers who are accountable for each department (Mowen, 2012). It is a subunit in an organization whose manager is held accountable for specified financial results. Responsibility center define exactly what assets and activities each manager is responsible for (Holtzman, 2013). There are different types of responsibility centers which responsible for different tasks. For examples are cost centers, revenue centers, profit centers and investment centers.

Question 2 A maintenance department is often known as the cost center of an organization as it incurs costs (Bofilios, 2011). It is a department that deals with cleaning, security, gardening, maintenance and operation. There are several types of cost center such as production cost center (Dutta, 2009). A maintenance department can be known as the service cost center. It is a cost center which provides services to other production, process or service cost center. The maintenance department can share their responsibility by working together to minimize the cost. Cost control, cost reduction and cost management are needed. For example, the employees can make regular checking or maintenance to reduce the chances of machinery breakdown and company do not need to spend money to buy the components or a new machine. Management accounting system plays an important role in recognizing the shared responsibility in the maintenance department. It helps the owners, managers and employees to plan and control the money of the organization (Wright, 2013). It helps in decision making too. The cost management helps in this. Cost management system is one of the key ways to contribute to the improvement of the corporation. The cost control techniques are also important for evaluating the efficiency of business such as budgetary control. They can prepare a cost budget or analysis to shows the cost incurred by the department. Unnecessary costs should be eliminated to reduce the cost. For example the maintenance department can try to find the supplier who can give the same components at a lower price.

Question 3 A cost center is an organizational unit which has control over cost but not revenue (Flamholtz, 1996). Thus, the needs of more information are not necessary for a more effective management of a cost center. Cost center only concern on the cost but not other things. For example, if the company cost center is the production department, they only need to control the purchasing cost but not the sales level. They do not need extra information other than the price of factor of production and the cost incurred. Additional information will not lead to the efficiency of the cost center. It may lead to inaccurate cost budget or analysis as they may include other factor rather than focusing on the cost only. Lastly, the main purpose of a cost center is to minimize the cost. The manager is evaluated based on the differences between the actual costs compared to the budgeted costs. Information needs by the department are all about cost such as sales analysis. Too much of information may bring stress to the employees of the department or center. When the staffs are not motivated, the effectiveness will reduce.