Part 2 book “Accounting principles” has contents: Long-Term liabilities, financial statement analysis, managerial accounting, job order costing, process costing, budgetary planning, budgetary control and responsibility accounting, incremental analysis and capital budgeting, standard costs and balanced scorecard, and other contents. | 14 Corporations: Dividends, Retained Earnings, and Income Reporting CHAPTER PREVIEW As indicated in the Feature Story below, a profitable corporation like Van Meter Inc. can provide real benefits to employees through its stock bonus plan. And as employees learn more about the role of dividends, retained earnings, and earnings per share, they develop an understanding and appreciation for what the company is providing to them. FEATURE STORY Owning a Piece of the Action Van Meter Inc., an electrical-parts distributor in Cedar Rapids, equivalent of about five years’ worth of salary. For example, a Iowa, is 100% employee-owned. For many years, the person earning a $30,000 salary would earn $300,000 in company has issued bonuses in the form of shares of wages over a 10-year period. During that same 10-year company stock to all of its employees. These bonus period, it was likely that the value of the employee’s shares distributions typically have a value equal to several weeks of would accumulate to about $150,000 (five years’ worth of pay. Top management always thought that this was a great salary). This demonstrates in more concrete terms why program. Therefore, it came as quite a surprise a few years employees should be excited about share ownership. ago when an employee stood up at a company-wide meeting and said that he did not see any real value in receiving the company’s shares. Instead, he wanted “a few hundred extra bucks for beer and cigarettes.” A 12-member employee committee has the responsibility of educating new employees about the program. The committee also runs training programs so that employees understand how their cost-saving actions improve the company’s results— As it turned out, many of the company’s 340 employees felt and its stock price. It appears that the company’s education this way. Rather than end the stock bonus program, however, program to encourage employees to act like owners is the company decided to educate its .
