Accounting (ACCT) 454
Decision Analysis (Revision 3)

>> Overview | Outline | Evaluation | Course Materials | Special Course Feature
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Overview

This course provides advanced coverage of accounting concepts and the use of accounting information for managerial decision-making. Lesson 1 provides an overview of the purpose of management accounting as compared with financial accounting, and traces the history of management accounting. It also outlines some of the uses of cost information. Part II of Lesson 1 discusses cost behaviour. Lessons 2 and 3 cover data analysis techniques—linear programming and regression analysis—as well as activity-based cost systems.

Lesson 4 provides a wide-ranging examination of activity-based management, including pricing and profitability analysis and the strategic cost management technique of target costing. Lesson 5 covers decentralization, discussing levels of decentralization and some of the benefits and conflicts it causes. Lesson 6 introduces the balanced scorecard as a total business unit performance measurement platform.

Lesson 7 covers financial measures of performance, including sales, profitability, and productivity variances, and it deals with transfer pricing techniques and issues. Part II of Lesson 7 continues coverage of financial performance measurement, dealing with return on investment and economic value added. Lesson 8 completes the study of the balanced scorecard with a discussion of the customer, internal business processes, and employee perspectives. Lesson 9 considers the role of management accounting in performance evaluation and incentive and compensation, including a discussion of the principal-agent paradigm. Lesson 10 concludes the course with a look at the ethical considerations related to agency theory and control.

Outline

• Lesson 1: Management Accounting and Decision Analysis
  o Part 1: Understanding Management Accounting
  o Part 2: Understanding Cost Behaviour
  
  
• Lesson 2: Resource Allocation, Capacity Cost and Assigning Resource Costs
  o Part 1: Resource Allocation and Capacity Cost
  o Part 2: Assigning Resource Costs to Production Centers
  
  
• Lesson 3: Activity-Based Cost Systems and Cost Estimation
  o Part 1: Activity-Based Costing
  o Part 2: Cost Estimation and Regression Analysis
  
  
• Lesson 4: Activity-Based Management and Cost-Based Decision Making
  o Part 1: Activity-Based Management
  o Part 2: Cost-Based Decision Making
  
  
• Lesson 5: Decentralization
  
  
• Lesson 6: Balanced Scorecard: Measuring Total Business Unit Performance
  o Measuring Total Business Unit Performance
  
  
• Lesson 7: Financial Measures of Performance, Return On Investment (ROI) and Economic Value Added (EVA)
  o Part 1: Financial Measure of Performance
  o Part 2: Return on investment and economic value added
  
  
• Lesson 8: Nonfinancial Scorecard Perspective
  o Measuring Customer Internal Business Process and Employee Performance
  
  
• Lesson 9: The Agency Theory Perspective on Managerial Accounting
  o Part 1: Incentive and Compensation Systems
  o Part 2: Formal Models in Budgeting and Incentive Contracts
  
  
• Lesson 10: Ethical Considerations Related to Agency Theory and Control
  o Ethical Considerations
  

Evaluation

To receive credit for ACCT 454, you must successfully complete three written assignments and a final exam. The weighting of each assignment and the exam is indicated in the chart below. The passing grade for the final exam is 50 percent. To receive credit for the course, you must pass the final exam and achieve an overall course grade of at least a "D" (50 percent).

Note: Students planning to transfer this course to a Professional Accounting designation (i.e., CMA, CGA, CA) are advised that they will be required to achieve a grade higher than the minimum passing grade. See http://business.athabascau.ca/profAcct/ for details.

Course Materials

Textbook

Kaplan, Robert S. and Atkinson, Anthony A. 1998. Advanced Management Accounting. 3rd edition. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc.

Other material

The course materials include a study guide and a course manual/assignment booklet.

Special Course Feature

Students taking the individualized-study online or e-Class version of the course must have access to an IBM-compatible microcomputer with Office 97 or 2000 Professional software, primarily for Excel use.

Athabasca University reserves the right to amend course outlines occasionally and without notice.
Courses offered by other delivery methods may vary from their individualized-study counterparts.


Athabasca University
1 University Drive
Athabasca, AB T9S 3A3
(780) 675-6111, (800) 788-9041
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Opened in Revision 3, Oct. 30/02. To archived version.
This page was updated by G. Zahara