Rationale and Learning Objectives:
This module is designed to build on the 1st and 2nd Year modules and extend both the breadth of students’ technical competence and the depth of their critical and contextual understanding of accounting. The learning objectives are to (i) extend technical competence into areas where accounting intersects with marketing, strategy and operational/IT aspects of management, (ii) deepen reflective understanding of the range of ways in which accounting interacts with marketing, strategy and operational/IT practice and practices, and (iii) extend the critically informed understanding of accounting in organizational and wider governmental contexts, and as professional and consultancy knowledge form, and consider such issues as accounting and ethics, accounting and tax, and environmental accounting. In designing content and delivery, we seek to further enable students to develop a high level of technical competence in, and contextual and critical understanding of, accounting. We will also seek to complete our design of coverage across technical and reflective knowledge areas to meet the requirements of Professional Accountancy Bodies (e.g. ACCA, CIMA) for exemption from one or more of their examinations.
Content:
The content will cover the roles of Financial Reporting and Internal and External Audit in the management and governance of large business entities, and the development of accounting-marketing and accounting-strategy crossover techniques (e.g. Customer Profitability Analysis, Strategic Management Accounting, the Balanced Scorecard). Accounting and Governance will also cover the roles of the accounting profession and the Big 4 firms in setting legal and regulatory agendas nationally and transnationally, and promoting tax efficiency and avoidance schemes. Governance and ethics will be an integral theme here, and thus will also cover the emergence of environmental and green accounting. Seminars will require students to work on specific technical accounting questions in case-based settings, including groupwork, and will extend the focus on a critical engagement with the adequacy of proposed solutions and recommendations for management action.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module students should be able to:
Identify and explain the role of Internal and External audit in the management and governance of large business entities
Identify and explain the development of accounting-marketing and accounting-strategy crossover techniques
Critically and adequately analyse the multiple accounting, consulting and professional service roles and operations of the large accountancy firms.
Critically and adequately apply key concepts to ‘real’ business case-based problems
Critically and adequately analyse technical accounting questions and contemporary case-based business problems, and give recommendations for management and strategic action
Demonstrate how governance, professionalism and ethics are interlinked.
Assessment
Assessment Methods & Exceptions
Assessment: The assessment will be 25% coursework (1000 words) and 75% unseen 3 hour examination.