The course will be held jointly by Dr. Mariana Sailer (WU) and Dr. Ruth Ann Strickland (University of Western Ontario). The course can be attended by students from WU and the Western, as well as a small group of incoming exchange students from WU’s other partner universities. The course comprises also social activities (WU campus tour and a Heurigen dinner) and practical learning opportunities at two companies.

In this course, we discuss fundamental issues of advanced management accounting and control in an international context. We identify important tools of management accounting, which are widely used in corporate practice all over the world. We focus on topics especially important for decentralized large international firms like product costing, budgeting and variance analysis.

The course is based on an international textbook (Garrison, Ray, Libby, Theresa & Webb, Alan (2020): Management Accounting. 12th Canadian edition. McGraw Hill Ryerson) to allow for discussing all related topics in English.

You need to be able to use Excel or a similar calculation program.

Certificates will be awarded to the participants of the course.

Students develop a solid understanding of basic and more advanced concepts of management accounting and control in an international context.

They gain insight into the questions of how and when management accounting tools may be helpful for controlling the firm. They develop skills to see the (increasing) need for management accounting tools in large decentralized companies and learn to judge the costs and benefits of the usage of different management accounting tools. Additionally, they know about the importance of considering non-financial information in management accounting.

Attendance is a basic requirement for continuous assessment courses (prüfungsimmanenten Lehrveranstaltungen (PI-LV)). One lecture can be missed without notification.

The first two weeks (May 6 to May 18) will be a mix of synchronous Zoom meetings and asynchronous lessons with recorded lectures and walk-through problems.  The intention is to give maximum flexibility during this period as Western students arrange their travel schedules, and WU students work around other courses they are taking.

• May 6 will have a Zoom meet & greet with all students and will introduce the course and its material. Chapter 1 will be discussed. This is scheduled from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm, Eastern time; 3:00 to 6:00 pm Vienna Time.
• May 14 will have a Zoom session to discuss data analytics and to work on problems together. This is scheduled from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm Eastern time; 3:00 to 6:00 pm Vienna time.
• All other days in the first two weeks will have asynchronous recorded lectures and walk-through problems. Each chapter will have a set of practice problems, including one to submit electronically to the course instructors.    
• The Group Hand-In in the first course week will be a short assignment that students will work on in mixed groups. This will provide an opportunity to work with others and to get to know them a bit better. Students will arrange meeting times with their group members. This should not take more than 2 hours. The exact date for submission may change to allow maximum flexibility.
• May 21 – 31 will be in person at WU. Reflections will be submitted for the Company Tours, with students applying course concepts to what they experienced on the tours.
• May 24, 9 am company tour at Verbund (detailed information regarding meeting point sent via email)
• May 28, 4 pm company tour at KPMG (detailed information regarding meeting point sent via email)

This course is a PI course with attendance requirements. Students can miss one session without notification. Students who are not present in the first unit will be deregistered and another student from the waiting list will receive the place.

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mariana.sailer@wu.ac.at