The making ethical decisions box "should you stay or should you go? " addresses a dilemma worthy of consideration. it describes: ethical decisions that need to be considered when employees leave a faltering business to start their own, eventually competing against their previous employer. the slow death of a business and how important it is to delay payments, sell off assets and do everything possible to save a failing business except dismissing employees who need their jobs for survival. the unethical and disloyal decision to leave your family business and start your own, taking with you all the family business's trade secrets. an unethical situation where the business owner's need for capital causes him/her to delay all payments to suppliers for 120 days, forcing several of his close business relationships out of business.

White company has two departments, cutting and finishing. the company uses a job-order costing system and computes a predetermined overhead rate in each department. the cutting department bases its rate on machine-hours, and the finishing department bases its rate on direct labor-hours. at the beginning of the year, the company made the following estimates: department cutting finishing direct labor-hours 6,000 30,000 machine-hours 48,000 5,000 total fixed manufacturing overhead cost $ 264,000 $ 366,000 variable manufacturing overhead per machine-hour $ 2.00 " variable manufacturing overhead per direct labor-hour " $ 4.00 required: 1. compute the predetermined overhead rate for each department. 2. the job cost sheet for job 203, which was started and completed during the year, showed the following: department cutting finishing direct labor-hours 6 20 machine-hours 80 4 direct materials $ 500 $ 310 direct labor cost $ 108 $ 360 using the predetermined overhead rates that you computed in requirement (1), compute the total manufacturing cost assigned to job 203. 3. would you expect substantially different amounts of overhead cost to be assigned to some jobs if the company used a plantwide predetermined overhead rate based on direct labor-hours, rather than using departmental rates?