Internship Final Report
Table of Contents
Introduction 3
Ch. 1 Management, Planning, & Control 4
Ch. 2 Organizational Processes & Procedures 6
Ch. 3 Appropriate Means for Ethical Decisions 8
Ch. 4 Organizational Performance 10
Ch. 5 Value Creation in a Global Context 12
Ch. 6 Career Skills 14
Conclusion 17
Introduction
The University Finance
internship has been an incredible learning experience. The internship uses experiential learning as
a base for the academic work. Kolb
(1984) described the cycle of experiential learning. After completing a task time is taken to
reflect and document what has been done.
Theories are used for comparison to allow for evaluation. The career skills and professional
competencies needed for a career in accounting will be evaluated.
Chapter 1
The goal of a
business is for sustained profitability.
Customers, competitors, and company should be the focus of the company’s
future plans (Elkin, 2007). The way the
company manages information, plans, and controls will affect the focus on the
customers, competitors, and company.
Plans
are forecasted desired outcomes. Nolan,
Goodstein, and Goodstein (2008) describe strategic planning as the ability of a
company to plan for an uncertain future by preparing for multiple future
possibilities. The vision for University
Finance’s future is to work with non-profits to help with their accounting
needs. The Finance department isn’t
prepared to meet the vision for the future because the planning process wasn’t
completed. The vision was set in place
but a formal plan isn’t in place for the organization to move forward toward
the vision. The lack of planning has the
organization stuck focusing all of its attention on the company and none on the
customers and competitors. The
organization will not reach its vision until it puts multiple plans in place to
account for an uncertain future.
University
Finance has serious concerns with control.
For proper control consistency is necessary. In the internship promotions are occurring
every month. Management is constantly
changing. The business environment can’t
have the control necessary for sustained success with the constant movement of
interns. Each new manager and intern
will have different approaches, priorities, and means for completing tasks and
documentation. The precision of
execution and small details will be lost as interns move in and out of positions. Organizational control will decrease until
each intern becomes accustomed to the proper techniques necessary for the
positon. Loss of control means a loss of
focus within the organization. A
solution for this concern is to lengthen the time spent in the internship. Communication is important as interns need to
reach out others if they are uncertain about what to do and good leaders will
reach out to interns to effectively communicate what needs to be done.
Information
management plays a role in the business environment. Information should be organized, easily
located, and consistent. The ability of
Finance interns to access accurate, up-to-date information in a timely manner
will improve decision making. Currently
all the information for the University Finance is stored in Google Drive. Google Drive has files which are outdated,
inconsistent, and difficult to locate.
As research of files is often done in Google Drive one may encounter a
several similar files with slight differences.
Poor information management leads to decisions based on outdated or
missing data and wasted research time.
An information filing system designed for University Finance would improve
the management of information.
The
focus of University Finance should be on meeting the customer’s needs, keeping the
competitive edge over competitors, and improving the company. The company is slowly moving toward its
vision of the future. The inefficiencies
of the organization’s information management, planning, and control are detrimental
to the organization focusing on the customer’s needs and beating competitors.
Chapter 2
Organizations have
procedures in place for completing tasks and processes in place to achieve
business objectives. Having processes
and procedures in place allows the business to have a uniform application of
procedures and processes across the globe.
A customer can have the same experience with the organization no matter
which branch or office they go to.
Each
week interns are continually learning how to use the processes and procedures
in place. Not everything learned by
interns are documented and presented to the new intern replacing the current
one. Robertson, Daniel, and Beruvides
(2015) believe maintaining the knowledge gained by the current intern and
having the knowledge accessible to the next intern is critical to being
successful. Mistakes are often made by
new interns and without having the knowledge passed down the next intern will
make the same mistake. The documentation
needs to be easily understood. The
current documentation for University Finance procedures and processes is often
generic and doesn’t provide the detail necessary. The documentation could be a how to guide,
notes, or information about the process or procedure. Without accessible documentation of processes
and procedures the constant in and out flow of interns will negatively affect
the performance of the organization. A
solution to this problem is for interns to continue the process of documenting
what needs to be done.
One
procedure that has been effective is the time necessary for the internship. Interns must complete ten of hours of work
for the internship each week. The ten
hours is normally more than enough time to complete all the required tasks,
attend meetings, check e-mail, and complete other unproductive tasks. Interns can use the remaining time of the ten
hours to find other productive tasks to complete or ride out the clock. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is explained by
Lester (2013). Interns have a list of
needs they desire to fulfill in order of importance. When each need is fulfilled the intern will
move on to the next need. Every intern
has different levels of needs they will fulfill. The two end needs of the internship are the
need to graduate and the need to learn and grow from the internship
experience. If an intern only desires to
graduate then they will most likely chose to ride the clock out with their
extra available time. Interns with the
desire to learn and grow from the internship experience will reach out to management
or other interns for tasks or find a topic to research and consider for
improving or implementation. Completing
tasks on time and reaching out for extra tasks demonstrates an intern’s
personal presentation. The ultimate need
of the student will affect how much is accomplished and how much the intern
gains from the internship experience.
The procedure for granting
Wave accounting software access has excellent documentation. The instructions are a step by step guide on
how to grant access. The guide includes
screenshots showing the web pages. Notes
are given by the guide creator to pass along the details of completing the task
correctly.
The
organization will continue to grow and move closer to its goals. Documentation of processes and procedures is
essential to maintain and pass along the knowledge from one intern to the next. Documenting processes and procedures is an
excellent way for interns to spend their extra hours each week. Without proper documentation and access the organization
will repeat the same mistakes and lose efficiency.
Chapter 3
Organizations have
different levels of ethics. Decisions
made in the internship should be made with a high level of consideration for
ethics. The internship is a part of the
education process by University University.
Any decisions made by interns are reflections of the University and of University’s ethical guidelines.
Interns
must make daily decisions regarding the internship. These decisions can be based on consequential
or non-consequential theories. Kant’s
Categorical Imperative is a non-consequential theory. Johnston (2006) describes Kant’s theory as
using morals to make decisions. Kant
believed decisions should be based on morals and reasons and to ethical these
decisions can’t be based on the future consequences of the decisions. Business decisions need to be made with
ethics in mind. For interns to gain
benefit from the decision making process then they must make ethical
decisions. University has diverse group of
students coming from different cultures and backgrounds. Consideration should be given to how
decisions affect everyone. Unethical
decisions could have a negative impact on other interns and University University.
The
time clock manager decision was based on ethics. The time clock has two settings: employee and
manager. Managers and leadership were
given the status of time clock manager.
With time clock manager status interns could review every intern in
across University Finance and University Consulting making corrections or editing the
time clock data. More than half of the
interns in Finance had manager status.
Too many interns had unrestricted access to the time clock data and could
edit their time or other intern’s time clock.
The decision was made to restrict access to the time to leadership and
to interns with essential needs of accessing the time clock data. The decision affected managers and
leadership. Managers were unable to
adjust their own or department members’ time clock data. Directors were tasked with being responsible
with making the time clock adjusted requested by interns. The decision was the correct one because it
eliminated many opportunities for interns to make the unethical decision to
adjust their own or any intern’s time clock without completing the time.
A
major concern of the Finance department is the lack of accounting principles
being followed. One principle
incorrectly being followed is revenue recognition. Bloom and Kamm (2014, p51) describe the point
of revenue recognition as “when a good or service is transferred to the
customer, meaning the customer has control of that good or service, revenue
should be recorded.” The accounts
receivable department receives invoices from other departments concerning the
amounts the other organizations owe to the University organizations. A framework doesn’t exist for recording the
revenue properly. When an invoice is
received by accounts receivable it is entered in the system without knowledge
of the transfer of ownership to the customer.
Decisions
should be based on the appropriate principles, concepts, and framework. University Finance should use the framework from
the major accounting boards and associations to guide them on proper
accounting. By considering the ethics of
a decision and not the consequences better decisions will be made by Finance
interns.
Chapter 4
Organizational
performance can be affected by the structure, management, and leadership. Organizations should be structured to meet the
needs of the business. Management and
leadership can make necessary changes to the structure to improve performance.
The
structure of an organization depends on the needs of the business. The organization could use a functional,
divisional, or matrix structure. Organizations
using functional structures are divided by department or duties. The use of a functional structure can reduce
the amount of communication and collaboration amongst departments. University Finance operates as a functional
structure. To reduce concerns with
communication amongst departments Randal and Jaussi (2003) suggest using
cross-functional teams for projects or problem solving. By obtaining ideas from multiple departments
the team will have multiple perspectives and an increased diversity of ideas
and solutions. The increased amount of
ideas and solutions means the possibility of taking the correct action is
increased.
Management
and the amount of experience in those positions can affect performance. The first new interns of this year came into
a situation where two departments had new interns for manager and clerks. This situation creates a department with no
experience in how the department is supposed to function. The quality of the performance of the
department is reduced and knowledge is lost.
To counter the chances of this situation occurring again the next set of
new interns were spread across the departments.
The spread of interns created a situation where there would be an intern
in the department to take over the responsibilities when the managing intern
left. The outgoing manager would have
the time and opportunity to instill the necessary knowledge to the incoming
manager.
Leadership
is ultimately responsible for the performance of an organization. Leadership provides the guidance necessary to
achieve the goals of the company. The
goal setting theory described Locke and Latham (2006) believes setting higher
goals will result in greater achievements by the employees. University Finance leadership has a lofty goal of
working as an actual company and a lessor goal of assisting small
non-profits. The Finance department can
reach these goals but the issue is in how to achieve them. The most recent outgoing Finance Vice President
and Director didn’t have any accounting experience or background to base
decisions on. A formal plan wasn’t in
place to help guide the leadership team in making the appropriate
decisions. Little communication came
from the top leadership. The result is
the strides being made for the organization to reach its goals are
unconnected. Leadership sees a need to
address and finds out how to address the need.
The need of sending out W-2 tax forms was identified. The issue with sending out W-2 forms is that
a cumulative total of wages and taxes for last year wasn’t maintained for each
employee. If the W-2s are sent out they
could have incorrect data because of the information not being maintained.
Structure,
management, and leadership have an effect on performance. The organization has a lack of consistent
leadership and management. The negative
affect on performance will slow the organization down from reaching its goals.
Chapter 5
University
Finance could have the opportunity to expand globally. Each potential global market has different
economics, government, and laws affecting value creation. How University Finance operates to create value in
each global market will be affected by each market’s economics, government, and
laws.
Each
market operates in a different economy. University Finance currently operates in a country with a robust economy and
growing market for accounting and financial services. In order to expand to smaller countries University Finance will have to understand where it fits into the market. A couple of the University organizations have the
current ability to help small non-profits and would be able to expand globally. The radio and ELV department has the ability
to expand globally. The services of University are essentially free of charge to customers so it wouldn’t have to be
concerned about the economy of other markets to compete with competitors.
University
Finance currently operates in a capitalist market in the United States. Markets across the globe operate with
different levels of government influence or control. In China the government controls which
foreign companies are allowed to operate, where they operate, and what services
they can provide (Schuman, Jiang, & Ramzy, 2012). University Finance would have to get approval
from the Chinese government to operate.
The government would then license University Finance to only operate in
certain places and offer only certain services. University Finance can expect more
government regulations and restrictions placed on them than the domestic
companies they are competing against.
The cost of successfully operating in China could outweigh the potential
gains.
Most
countries across the globe have laws based on one of two systems: civil law or
common law. The United States operates
under common law. In common law
countries the legislative body makes the laws but the judicial system
interprets the laws. Civil is a system
where the judicial branch must base decisions on the written codes and judges
are less likely to protect individuals and corporations (Shakar, 2011). University Finance has more protection under the
common law system. Common laws are based
on the precedents of previous decisions and how the law is interpreted. Countries with similar laws as the United
States would offer the easiest transition.
Expanding
globally offers great opportunities but many hardships. The University organizations could find the most
lucrative market and expand into it.
Careful consideration must be made as economies, governments, and laws
could make profitability difficult in certain global markets.
Chapter 6
Professionals
with successful careers not only have the skills needed but use them to drive
business results (Morgan, 2011). The
internship offers many opportunities to learn, use, and improve my career
skills. The skills gained and
improvements made will be valuable for my career.
Active
Listening involves giving others full attention to understand what they are
saying. The director of finance has to
be able to help the managers in the different departments solve problems. I didn’t have experience in all the
departments so it was important for me to listen to the managers as they
explained their issues and ask questions to determine what exactly the issue
was. The accounts payable department had an issue concerning invoices. I was able to listen to the issue and
determine the problem was concerning what to do with the invoices received. I have learned to make sure I have all the
information I need and have asked any questions before I attempt to solve the
issue.
Judgment
and decision making is weighing the costs and benefits of actions and making
the correct choice. Decisions have
positives and negatives. One decision
made was to have one manager for the audit and tax department. The decision benefits the organization by
allowing it to operate effectively with one less intern. The downside is this gives one less manager
position for an intern to promote up to and more responsibilities for the
manager for both departments. The most
important part of the decision making was keeping University Finance running
efficiently. The correct decision was
made to combine the tax and audit manager position. To make the best decision I needed to consider
what was most important, positive and negative effects.
Critical
thinking is an effective way to solve problems.
The problem was too many interns had edit access to the time clock. The strength of the decision was to reduce
the number of interns who had edit access to everyone’s time clock. The weakness of the decisions was now
department managers couldn’t see their interns’ time and documentation for
their time. If the time clock status for
the department managers had been left as is then the strength and weakness of
the decision would have been reversed.
Another part of the decision was our ability to provide access on an as
needed basis.
Communication
is one of the most valuable skills for any career. After a few emails I realized I needed to
include more information in e-mails. The
delays in responses back and forth made it difficult to solve problems or get
information from others quickly. E-mails
need to be clear and concise in order to eliminate a misunderstanding or having
to send several responses to inform the recipient.
Time
management is the skill I practiced the most during the internship. I have ten hours of internship time to put in
and the time it takes for completing coursework to account for each week. I must consider how to allot my time between
the coursework and the internship. As
manager and director I must consider other interns time. I must assign tasks for interns to get their
time in but not overly burden them so they don’t have time to work on academic
assignment.
Today’s
business environment is constantly changing.
The ability to adapt to change is about learning new information and
using it for decisions and future problems.
The internship is over a short amount of time. I only spent two weeks as an audit clerk, two
more weeks as a manager, and four weeks as director. As soon as the change happens I must be ready
to make the decisions and solve the problems that come with the position.
As
accounts payable manager I had one of my most valuable experiences of being
thrown into a situation and asked to improve the situation. The accounts payable department had new
interns as manager and clerk. The
department wasn’t performing. I replaced
the accounts payable manager to get the department moving again. I worked with the clerk to learn about the
department and figure out what needed to be done. I was able to contact the senior advisor for
support and was able to take control of the department. I enjoyed successfully completing my task and
learned from being in an uncertain situation.
The challenges I face will be like this one. I will be tasked to complete assignments I am
not certain about and look forward to competing them well.
Communication
is one of the most valuable skills. I
have to learned how better use written communication. I was also able to speak during Finance
meetings. Speaking online to others was
a different experience and offered a chance to speak publicly in a different
environment. The speaking opportunity
was another chance to work on a skill I am not fully comfortable with. Because I am a shy and introverted person I
will continually be faced with communication challenges.
My
strengths are teamwork and hard work. I
enjoy helping others and working hard to get the job done. I hope my strengths can help me prosper in my
career.
Conclusion
The
internship has been a journey.
Reflecting back on what was accomplished and what could have been better
is very beneficial to the learning experience.
Mistakes are made but there is the opportunity to learn from them. The experience has will prove to be a
worthwhile undertaking.
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