CASE 1: Diane Barone was a good friend of yours in high school and is from your home town. While you chose to major in accounting when you both went away to college, she majored in marketing and management. You have recently been promoted to accounting manager for the Snack Foods Division of Melton Enterprises, and your friend was promoted to regional sales manager for the same division of Melton. Diane recently telephoned you. She explained that she was familiar with job cost sheets, which had been used by the Special Projects division where she had formerly worked. She was, however, very uncomfortable with the production cost reports prepared by your division. She emailed you a list of her particular questions: 1. Since Melton occasionally prepares snack foods for special orders in the Snack Foods Division, why don't we track costs of the orders separately? 2. What is an equivalent unit? 3. Why am I getting four production cost reports? Isn't there one Work in Process account? Instructions: Prepare a memo to Diane. Answer her questions, and include any additional information you think would be helpful. You may write informally, but do use proper grammar and punctuation. CASE II Curtis Rich, the cost accountant for Hi-Power Mower Company, recently installed activitybased costing at Hi-Power's St. Louis lawn tractor (riding mower) plant where three models-the 8- horsepower Bladerunner, the 12-horsepower Quickcut, and the 18-horsepower Supercut-are manufactured. Curtis's new product costs for these three models show that the company's traditional costing system had been significantly undercosting the 18-horsepower Supercut. This was due primarily to the lower sales volume of the Supercut compared to the Bladerunner and the Quickcut. Before completing his analysis and reporting these results to management, Curtis is approached by his friend Ed Gray, who is the production manager for the 18-horsepower Supercut model. Ed has heard from one of Curtis's staff about the new product costs and is upset and worried for his job because the new costs show the Supercut to be losing, rather than making, money. At first, Ed condemns the new cost system, whereupon Curtis explains the practice of activitybased costing and why it is more accurate than the company's present system. Even more worried now, Ed begs Curtis, "Massage the figures just enough to save the line from being discontinued. You don't want me to lose my job, do you? Anyway, nobody will know." Curtis holds firm but agrees to recompute all his calculations for accuracy before submitting his costs to management Instructions: (a) Who are the stakeholders in this situation? (b) What, if any, are the ethical considerations in this situation? (c) What are Curtis's ethical obligations to the company? To his friend