Professor Wim A Van der Stede, A213

This course is intended for students on MSc Accounting and Finance, MSc Law and Accounting and MSc Management, Organisations and Governance. Other students may be admitted only with the agreement, in writing, of the MSc (Accounting) Course Tutor,  if they have sufficient academic background knowledge and if places permit. This course cannot be taken in conjunction with AC411 Accounting, Strategy and Control.

This course aims to provide an advanced overview of current developments in thought and practice of management accounting, strategy, and organisational control. Particular emphasis is given to the economic and behavioural analysis of management accounting issues and to strategic and organisational aspects of control systems design.

Strategic and organisational behaviour perspective: Management Control in decentralized organisations: organisational architecture; strategy formulation and implementation; results accountability. Planning and budgeting: translating strategy; financial target setting. Performance measurement, performance evaluation and incentive compensation systems. Control systems and organisational change. International differences in management accounting and control. Strategy, organisation and control in global firms. Corporate governance and the roles of managers and financial executives in performance reporting. The ethics and economics of earnings management practices.

Economics and organisational design perspective: Cost system design, including Activity-Based Costing and economic approaches to the allocation of overhead costs. Capital budgeting. Intra- and inter-firm organizational forms, strategies and control systems. The roles of accounting and financial management in the public sector. Management accounting and the strategy-firm-control transformation. Changes in the finance function and corporate financial roles.

Detailed choice of subjects will be determined by those lecturing on the course.

21 two-hour lectures (AC410) and 18 one-hour classes (AC410.A).

A variety of types of assignments are given for class discussion including exercises and case studies. Many classes examine complex cases with advanced team-based case preparation and in-class participation and presentations being an absolute requisite. Two pieces of written work, or equivalent, per term are assessed.

Detailed reading lists will be given out at the start of each part of the course. Illustrative references include: K Merchant and W Van der Stede, Management Control Systems: Performance Measurement, Evaluation, and Incentives (Prentice Hall, 2007); Bhimani (ed.) Contemporary Issues in Management Accounting (Oxford University Press, 2006).

A three-hour written examination in the ST.