Accounting, Strategy and Management

The purpose of the course is to offer the students the opportunity to develop their skills to understand and analyse the effects and conditions and effects of accounting in practical settings such as the company or other organizations. The course provides an advanced overview of theoretical and practical developments on the understanding of the mutual links between accounting, strategy and management. Organizational control is an essential function of management to ensure that organizational objectives and strategies are carried out effectively, but it is also shown how accounting can configure strategy and management. Good accounting and management control increases the probability of organizational success. The course is also designed to develop the students¿ skills in applying interpretive case study methods that can be used in project work and thesis writing.

The course will cover the following topics:
- Strategy and the design of planning and control systems
- Management control systems and strategy implementation
- The constitutive role of accounting and calculative devices to strategy and strategic change
- Diffusion of accounting technologies and management ideas.
- Management and Leadership in control systems

Accounting systems, techniques, concepts and reports are used in organizations and companies to improve efficiency/effectiveness and facilitate internal and external accountability to third party agencies such as owners and the wider society. The course puts focus on how accounting technologies are developed and used to understand how and whether expected effects are achieved in practice. The course contains the following core elements:
- The management processes around budget making and evaluation processes, its leadership styles and the distortion strategies of reporting.
- How accounting concepts are diffused globally and implemented in various local companies and organizations.
- The strategies of external and internal reporting and how external reporting enacts strategy.
- How accounting systems influence employees¿ identities (the scepticism and resistances to accounting change).
- The link between accounting and strategy (from bean accountant to strategic account, and how accounting is involved with shaping markets).
- How experts, like management consultants and auditors participate in stabilizing accounting technologies

The candidate is able to:
- Understand the various theories and their different characteristics in understanding the processes of the use, implementation and change of various accounting techniques and concepts considered.
- Be able to apply and use the theoretical models for analysis of practical cases/examples
- Evaluate and compare the use and strengths/weaknesses of each theory presented in the course.

Lectures