Module BUSS2061: MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING

Department: Business School (Business) [Queen's Campus, Stockton]

BUSS2061: MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING

Prerequisites

• ECOS1081, Introduction to Accounting

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• Give students a grasp of major techniques of modern management accountancy.
• Instil an appreciation of the theoretical underpinnings of these practices.
• Develop a critical awareness of the limitations of management accounting techniques.

Content

• Introduction; corporate goals; objectives of management accounting in the organisational context. Value of information.
• Costing: Stock Valuation and Profit Measurement: Cost concepts; Traditional costing approaches; Quantitative costing techniques: cost estimation and prediction.
• Information for Decision-Making: Activity-Based Costing (ABC); Cost behaviour; cost-volume-profit (CVP) analysis. Relevant costs; limiting factor analysis; Pricing decisions. Linear programming: application to managerial decision problems. Appraising Risk: decision-making under conditions of uncertainty. Capital budgeting.
• Information for Planning and Control: Budgetary control and planning. Standard costing and variance analysis. Variance investigation models; behavioural aspects of management accounting. Strategic management accounting.
• Management Accounting: Past, Present, Future: Explaining the gulf between theory and practice; agency theory. Current and future developments in management accounting.

Learning Outcomes

• Appreciate the importance of organisational goals in the choice and design of management accounting information systems.
• Understand the concepts of cost and value of information in both perfect and imperfect forms.
• Understand the attributes of information which lead to its having value, and the implications of this for information systems design.
• Understand the mechanics of, uses of, and arguments relating to marginal, absorption and activity based costing methods.
• Understand the role of accounting information in the pricing process.
• Understand the role of budgeting in the planning, control and resource allocation process.
• Appreciate the factors to be considered in the setting of standard costs, and be able to identify when standard costing is an appropriate system to use.
• Understand models for the investigation of reported variances, and form an informed opinion as to the practical usefulness of such systems.
• Appreciate the behavioural effects of management accounting information, and be able to suggest possible methods of ensuring goal congruence and preventing dysfunctional behaviour.

• Evaluation the relevance of costs in the decision process.
• Employ the linear programming approach to scarce resource allocation.
• Prepare budgets, making use of spreadsheet software.

• Written Communication -e.g. through preparation of seminar tasks and summative assessment.
• Interpersonal Communication – e.g. using e-mail to communicate with other students and tutors; discussing solutions to exercises in workshop meetings with both the workshop leader and other students in the group, for example, working as a group to prepare the case study analysis and report required for certain seminar tasks.
• Planning and Organising - e.g. preparing for fortnightly workshops; preparing the relevant material before lectures. Large amounts of information need to be organised in a meaningful manner for students to be successful in this module.
• Problem Solving - e.g. by applying the necessary analytical and quantitative skills, to make use of the taught material.
• Initiative – e.g. by searching relevant literature and information sources in preparation of summative assignment.
• Computer Literacy - e.g. by word-processing and spreadsheet applications in tackling workshop questions; accessing, and downloading information from the module's web pages; using e-mail to communicate with tutors and other students.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Lecture delivery will cover the technical material underpinning the course as preparation for seminars which will enable students to develop appropriate skills and understanding of concepts.
• The formative assessment seeks to ensure basic technical outcomes are achieved early in the module to enable the development of more advanced skills in later sessions.
• Summative assessment consists of a time constrained in-class test and an examination. The broad topic of the in-class test will be released approximately one month ahead of the assessment. Students will be able to take one textbook into the test, ie the recommended reading for this module. The examination addresses the students' understanding of the key concepts introduced in the module.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Online Multiple Choice Test.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University