Course Objectives

This course aims to give students a very intensive grounding in the key areas and core concepts of Management Accounting:

• Identification and classification of costs, and their behaviour
• Application of tools and techniques used to plan, control and make decisions
• Budgetary control, reporting of organisational performance and calculation of variances
• Investment appraisal, break-even analysis and profit maximization to support short and long term decision-making.

There is a strong focus on application of techniques and on appreciation of recent literature.

Course Description

• Analyse the development of Management Accounting to its current position and appreciate clearly the distinction with Financial Accounting.
• Appreciate the reasons for the development of different costing systems.
• Demonstrate a clear awareness of the potential dysfunctionalities arising in the use of financial information.
• Apply cost information to decision making and control for both the short and the long term.
• Analyse the sensitivity of decisions to changes in basic data assumptions.
• Critically review the role of accounting information for performance measurement purposes.
• Synthesise a range of literature sources to produce a written analysis of a contemporary issue in Management Accounting.

Suggested Textbooks

• R. Garrison,- E. Noreen – W. Seal (2012) Management Accounting, European Edition, 4th Edition, McGraw-Hill.
• Colin Drury (2008) Management and Cost Accounting, 7th Edition, South – Western Cengage Learning.