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Management Accounting & Control (895N1)

15 credits, Level 7 (Masters)

Autumn teaching

The main aim of this module is for you to critically reflect on how and why management accounting techniques changed during the 20th century and beyond, the theoretical controversies explaining this, and the practical ramifications for designing and using management accounting systems.

By the end of the module, you'll understand:

• traditional management accounting techniques such as product costing, budgeting, standard costing and economic theories of decision-making and their theoretical underpinnings in bureaucracy, Taylorism, mechanistic organisation, and economic rationality. You'll be able to assess their applicability, strengths and weaknesses
• new techniques of management accounting, including accounting for customers and flexible manufacturing, strategic management accounting, activity-based costing/management and balanced scorecards
• their essential features, and assess their applicability, strengths and weaknesses
• new rational theories of management accounting especially contingency and agency theory, to address limitations of traditional theories, and how to assess their worth
• practical techniques of management accounting, including contemporary practices; how and why their multiple aims and the changing socio-economic environments in which they operate cause difficult design and operational decisions
• analyse these practical issues using the major theories employed in contemporary management accounting research.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 150 hours of work. This breaks down into about 33 hours of contact time and about 117 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2024/25. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum.

We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.