Moss and McAdams Case Study Analysis
Moss and McAdams Accounting Firm Case Study Analysis
1. SITUATION SUMMARY
Moss and McAdams Accounting firm is a regional accounting firm, with 160 employees located across six offices in Minnesota and Wisconsin. The primary services of the firm are Corporate audits and Tax preparation. Though over the last two years, the partners decided to move aggressively into the Consulting business. They projected that 40 percent of their growth in the next five years would be from consulting. Seth Moss (who played for the NFL in the 1950s) was one of the founding members of the firm. M & M operated within a matrix organizational structure in which a manager was usually assigned to several accounts depending on the size of the work, most especially in tax preparation projects a manager could be assigned to 8 to 12 clients. As well as, senior and staff accountants were usually assigned to multiple account teams.
Bruce Palmer, one of the employees of the firm, had just being promoted to an accounts manager and assigned to lead the team to audit Johnsonville Truck. Ken Crosby a new employee of M&M, was hired to manage Special Consulting Projects. Ken had worked for a big 5 accounting firm for Nine years before joining M & M. Upon joining the firm he was able to secure a major consulting project with Springfield Metals for the firm. Ruby Sands is the office Manager at the Green bay office of the firm in Wisconsin. She is responsible for assigning employees to different accounts. Ruby did her best to ensure staff were assigned to multiple projects under the same manager, but this wasn’t always possible and sometimes accountants had to work on projects led by different managers.
Bruce palmer was assigned to lead a five member team to carry out the auditing of Johnsonville Truck. This was his first assignment after he had been promoted. Few weeks into the project, Palmer discovered his team was slipping behind schedule...