Grizzlies are known to like to eat marmots. In spring when grizzlies come out of hibernation they spend unproportionate amount of energy and time hunting those small squirrel-like animals from under the stones. The scientist were puzzled by this fact, because according to their estimated calculations the energy spent on hunting the marmots was much more than the calories received from eating them.
So the scientists tried to come up with some logical explanation to this seemingly illogical fact. One of the possible explanations was that marmots are of such great value to grizzlies as a delicacy that bears would make this enormous effort to get marmots for dessert. There probably were some other explanations, but I would not remember, as they were less plausiable.
After further observation and scrutiny the scientists discovered that grizzlies were not specifically targeting marmots as their dessert course. They did indeed relentlessly turned over a lot of rocks after coming from hibernation, but not for marmots. In reality they had to do that exhausting exercise in order to sharpen their claws after the winter sleep, to get ready for the real summer hunting season. And the marmots, if they happened to be under some of the turned-over rocks, served only as a side benefit, unexpected, but appreciated bonus.
This was the parable our professor told us at the end of the very first class in Managerial Accounting. The moral is that everything may be not what it seems. And when managers need to make business decisions they need to look beyond the picture spelled out by dry numbers in the accounting books. They need to make decisions based on all available relevant information, which often includes much more than just pure accounting entries.
I like this parable, and I like Managerial Accounting. It allows even us, the right-brained students in MBA programs, to get a shot at solving the problems and using some creativity beyond the number-crunching propensities of left-brainers.
