← Every exhibit
Four metric objects, four unanswered questions
Keep the measured object, work signal, calculation burden, possible behaviour, and outcome check in separate columns.
| Metric object | What it measures in this framework | Work it may signal | What it may leave out | Outcome question still open |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net sales | Sales after explicitly defined reductions. | Transaction creation, volume, and commercial timing. | Product economics, service burden, acquisition cost, and shared cost. | Did the activity create acceptable economics and durable customer value? |
| Gross margin | Net sales less the defined product or sales cost boundary. | Product mix, price discipline, and generated gross-margin result. | Costs outside the selected product-cost boundary and less measurable account work. | Is the margin definition stable, attributable, and sufficient for the decision? |
| Contribution margin | Net sales less variable costs assigned to the decision or sale. | Incremental economics when cost assignment is credible. | Fixed cost, shared overhead, unassigned work, and policy-dependent items. | Are assigned costs truly incremental and within the decision's influence? |
| Profit | Result after the declared scope of costs and other items. | Overall economic result for a business scope. | Causal attribution, uncontrollable allocation, and non-financial work. | Which part of the result can the compensated role control? |
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Reference & Evidence
Source: Author's framework grounded in the metric and work boundaries described by Cassidy and Wischkaemper (1959). The definitions are deliberately scope-dependent; rows are synthetic and do not describe a live accounting system.
Each line is a claim from the register this journal publishes against, resolved from the register at build time.
- B The report's own enumeration: "The three basic sales compensation systems used by the wholesalers were: (1) Commission on generated gross margin; (2) commission on net sales; and (3) salary, commission, and bonus", and "Three basic sales compensation systems were used by the wholesalers, but within each type there was some variation" cassidy-wischkaemper-1959-institutional-wholesale-grocers ·
CW59-C2 - B The count is the report's: "The compensation system used by four wholesalers in the study was commis"sion on each salesperson's generated gross margin cassidy-wischkaemper-1959-institutional-wholesale-grocers ·
CW59-C3 - B Four wholesalers used net-sales commission, with variation including a single rate, graduated rates, and commodity categories based on gross-margin yield cassidy-wischkaemper-1959-institutional-wholesale-grocers ·
CW59-C4 - B One wholesaler combined salary, net-sales commission, and a bonus tied to average daily generated gross margin, and the report says the plan would not fit every situation cassidy-wischkaemper-1959-institutional-wholesale-grocers ·
CW59-C5 - B The scope is nine purposively selected firms in 1959: "Case studies were made of nine selected wholesaling firms whose annual sales to food service operators ranged from slightly less than" one million dollars to almost five million, which is a historical description and not a benchmark cassidy-wischkaemper-1959-institutional-wholesale-grocers ·
CW59-C6
Grades: A, verified against the printed page of the primary source · B, primary source, text layer only · C, authoritative secondary · D, reported.