Marlene McHarris was recently appointed chief executive officer of a diversified corporate organization. The company has been organized along functional lines similar to Illustration 1-5. This company has three separate manufacturing divisions. each dealing with different products and markets. Each manufacturing division is headed by an assistant vice president, with a vice president for manufacturing heading up all manufacturing operations. One vice president proposed that the organization would be more efficient if the company set up each manufacturing division as a decentralized unit. As the vice president pointed out, "Each of these manufacturing divisions is sufficiently dissimilar that they would operate better on their own. If each division had its own engineering and accounting staffs, there would be less need to cross division lines each time an engineering study or an accounting report is required. Moreover, the accounting sections could adapt their decision- making and performance-evaluation functions to the needs of the specific manufac- turing divisions rather than treat them all alike."

Required Prepare comments on the advantages and disadvantages of the proposal. Your supervisor is the controller, who coordinates accounting activities for all three divisions.