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Prof Alnoor Bhimani MAR 3.21

This course is available on the CEMS Exchange, Diploma in Accounting and Finance, Global MSc in Management, Global MSc in Management (CEMS MIM), Global MSc in Management (MBA Exchange), MBA Exchange, MSc in Accounting, Organisations and Institutions, MSc in Economics and Management, MSc in Management and Strategy, MSc in Management of Information Systems and Digital Innovation and MSc in Regulation. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This introductory course may also be taken by MSc students who have not previously studied accounting subjects. Students in the MSc Accounting and Finance programme are not permitted to enrol in this course or in AC491. This course cannot be taken concurrently with AC415 Management Accounting for Decision Making.

The course is capped at 50 students.

Enterprises must today tackle markets that are affected by global economic and business forces and advances in digital technologies. They face intense competition from ever-changing corporate strategies of their competitors and new business models. At the same time, the interface between business decisions and management accounting has become more complex but significantly impacts corporate performance. This course provides students with an introduction to how accounting information and cost management techniques influence managerial decisions and performance evaluation. It discusses links between management accounting and corporate strategy, marketing and international control issues.  Especial attention is placed on how management accounting is affected by technological advances such as robotics, AI, web-based systems, and digitalisation.  The course includes both qualitative and quantitative material and is not purely calculations based.  Extensive use is made of cases as a mode of instruction.

The course will cover:

- established managerial accounting concepts such as cost-volume-profit relationships, overhead cost allocations, activity based costing, the balanced scorecard, target cost management and quality costing;

- relationships between accounting information and flexible organisational technologies such as just-in-time operations, enterprise resource planning, computer integrated system, 3-D manufacturing, robotics and AI systems;

- cost management and marketing, corporate strategy, e-business and internet-based enterprise issues;

- organisational arrangements such as functional and multidivisional firms and virtual enterprises;

- comparative international management accounting systems;

- accounting controls associated with responsibility centres, financial performance measurement, variance analysis, and incentives;

- strategic accounting tools and practices.

The course will provide participants with:

- an understanding of how strategic, market and technological innovations impact management accounting;

- an appreciation of how modern management accounting tools operate in competitive business environments;

- a knowledge of how behavioural, organisational and cultural factors affect management accounting practices.

30 hours of seminars with office hours in the WT.

Teaching is delivered in two 90 minutes sessions each week. Sessions contain a variety of technical content, practical exercises, and case analyses.

There will be a reading week in week 6 of WT. 

Students are expected to analyse case studies. Two pieces of case-based written work will be collected during the course as advised by the instructor. Students should expect to actively contribute to case discussions which are key to understanding the applied and practical part of the course.

A detailed reading list will be given out at the start of the course. The following books will be used:

• Bhimani A., Horngren C., Datar S. and Rajan M.  Management and Cost Accounting (Pearson, 2023);

•  Bhimani, A., Accounting Disrupted: How digitalization is changing finance (Wiley, 2021)

• Bhimani A., Financial Management for Technology Start-ups (Kogan Page, 2022).

Exam (80%, duration: 2 hours, reading time: 15 minutes) in the spring exam period.
Case study (20%) in the WT.

(This comprises two sets of case study analyses, each worth 10%.)

This is an introductory course which emphasises applied managerial issues and basic quantitative accounting analysis.  Students interested in real life management issues and not just in-depth technical accounting calculations will enjoy the course most and perform well.