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Graduate
Management
Accounting Course
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How
the course evolved - This course evolved from an approach I wrote about in 1994.
See Martin, J. R. 1994. A controversial issues approach to enhance management
accounting education. Journal of Accounting Education (Winter): 59-75. (Summary).
All of the materials outlined below are located on the
MAAW web site. Each section (with a couple of exceptions) has a set of questions
with links to materials where answers can be found or developed. These materials
could be used as a self study course, or as an upper level or graduate course by
any professor who teaches management accounting. Although I don't believe
textbooks should be used in an upper level or graduate level management
accounting course, various sections of the course could be used to supplement a
textbook based course at any level. (At the upper level I believe students
should be reading, summarizing, and discussing articles and cases, not
textbooks). My approach is to have students summarize articles and then comment
on them in class. I place the summaries on the MAAW web site so that we can all
learn from each other's work. MAAW currently contains more than 400 article and
book summaries. I have not included cases in the outline below because of time
constraints, but for those who could expand this into two courses, cases could
add more depth to the material.
How to study this material. One approach is to read everything
you can find about a topic (including all the article and book summaries) and then go to
the questions to test your understanding of the related concepts. However, since
the questions provide links to potential answers, the
questions can be used as a guide indicating what to read and when to read
specific materials.
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1. Introduction - Perhaps a quick review to emphasize
that familiarity with traditional
management accounting topics is a prerequisite for this course. See MAAW's
Book for various topics, or most any cost or management accounting textbook.
However, MAAW's book places more emphasis on criticisms of the traditional
topics such as standard costing and responsibility accounting.
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2. A Framework for Management Accounting - See the Framework
topic. I like to compare the individualistic and collectivist concepts at
the beginning of any management accounting course. This helps set the stage for
many of the following topics. The main point to emphasize is the difference
between the whole systems view versus concentrating on the individual parts of
an organization. Several articles are also relevant to this section such as
Caplan, E. H. 1966. Behavioral assumptions of management accounting. The
Accounting Review (July): 496-509. (See Framework
Puzzle Summary). (Questions).
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3. Kaplan & Johnson’s Relevance Lost: The Rise and
Fall of Management Accounting - See the Relevance
Lost topic. The book could be assigned, but I use my question and answer
summaries instead. Kaplan's 1983 paper could be assigned here as well since he
gave us an early wakeup call before Relevance Lost was published. See Kaplan, R.
S. 1983. Measuring
manufacturing performance: A new challenge for managerial accounting research.
The Accounting Review (October): 686-705. (Non
USF user link). (Summary).
(Questions: Short List,
Long List).
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4. Japanese Management Methods - See the Japanese
Management topic. Although this is a very broad topic and could be a course
by itself, I believe an understanding of Japanese methods (particularly the
methods used by Toyota) are essential for an understanding of the need for
changes in traditional management concepts and management accounting. We wrote
about this in a paper published in 1992, so I use that as a starting point for
this topic (See Summary).
(Questions).
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5. Statistical Process Control - MAAW's
Chapter 3 section on SPC can be used here and supplemented with several
articles. I think this is a very important topic because it emphasizes the
difference between the accounting concept of control (budgeting and standard
cost variance analysis) and the statistical concept of control. SPC provides a
basis for criticizing standard costing and a basis for the concept of quality
promoted by Deming. (Questions).
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6. Deming’s Theory of Management and Whole Systems
Concepts - See the section on Deming's
Theory of Management. This is another topic that could be an entire course,
but I believe Deming's theory is the best source of material on the concept of
whole systems thinking and will help students understand the criticisms of
traditional management and management accounting. Deming's book (The New
Economics...) could be assigned here, but I use my summary of the book instead.
(Questions).
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7. Activity Based Cost Systems, Capacity Measurement, and the
Controversy over how to use ABC - See the Section
on ABC. MAAW's Chapter 7 could be used as a review of ABC. Students should
be familiar with activity based costing, so the emphasis should be placed on the
issues involved. There are several article summaries in this section related to
why companies have so much trouble implementing successful ABC systems. Another
issue that's been around for nearly 100 years is how to measure capacity. For
example, Church and Gantt wrote about the capacity issue many years ago (See the
Gantt
Summary and Church
Summary). See the Capacity
Related section for other articles. (Questions).
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8. The Just-In-Time philosophy and Controversy over JIT vs.
ABC - See the JIT section. JIT is
another broad topic but students should have some familiarity with it from
previous courses. MAAW's Chatper 8 section on JIT can be used to review the
topic, but I think the emphasis in an upper level or graduate course should be
placed on how traditional accounting methods conflict with the concepts of JIT,
and the potential conflicts between ABC and JIT. The articles on Continuous
Improvement are also relevant to this topic. (Questions).
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9. The Theory of Constraints (TOC), and ABC vs. TOC -
See the TOC section. This is another
topic that could be the basis for an entire course. But it is an important
topic, much too important to ignore. In my view it is the second best source of
information related to whole systems thinking. MAAW's Chapter 8 section on TOC
could be used to review this topic, but there are several article summaries that
can be used. Goldratt's books could be assigned, but MAAW contains summaries of
four of Goldratt's books, i.e., The Goal, What is this thing called TOC, The
Haystack Syndrome, and Necessary by not Sufficient. I emphasize the conflict
between TOC and traditional accounting concepts and the potential conflict with
ABC. (Questions).
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10. Activity Based Management (ABM), CAM-I, and the
Controversy concerning overselling ABC concepts. See the sections on ABM,
Cost Management, and CAM-I.
I use my summary of the CAM-I conceptual design to introduce or review the CAM-I
projects. MAAW's Chatper 8 section can be used to review the ABM concepts and
Johnson's different view of ABM. Since ABM includes several models and many
concepts (See ABM models and concepts
summary), it is difficult to cover, but it sets up many other topics and
issues in management accounting. (Questions).
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11. German Cost Management and Resource Consumption
Accounting - See the Section
on RCA. This is a relatively new topic and can be covered with a number of
articles. MAAW contains several articles summaries related to Resource
Consumption Accounting. I don't try to cover this topic in depth, but it is a
topic that students should be exposed to in upper level and graduate management
accounting courses.
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12. Product Life Cycle Management and Environmental Cost Management. See
the sections on PLC and Environmental
Cost. I put these topics together because the PLC topic leads to a whole
systems view which includes the environment. I use my summary of PLC articles
summaries as a basis for discussing this topic in class, but this is one of CAM-I's
concepts and some of the CAM-I material
should be used as well. (Questions).
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13. Investment Management, and Investment Management vs.
Capital Budgeting - See the section on Investment
Management. My summary of article summaries can be used to discuss the
issues in this section. This is another concept emphasized in the CAM-I
conceptual design. (Questions).
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14. The Contribution Margin Approach and Related
Controversies. See the section on Contribution
Margin and Direct Costing. The controversy related to direct costing vs.
absorption costing can be traced back to articles in the N.A.A.
Bulletin. But now the controversy is more involved because it includes
throughput costing as well as ABC. (Questions).
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15. The Responsibility Accounting Controversy. See the
section on Responsibility
Accounting. I introduce this controversy in MAAW's Chapter 9. The material
on investment centers, and ROI in Chapter 14 is also useful as review material,
but the articles by critics of responsibility accounting (e.g., C. J. McNair)
provide the main basis for this section. (Questions).
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16. The Quality Cost and other Controversies related to
Constrained Optimization Techniques. See the sections on Constrained
Optimization and Quality
Related Issues. I emphasize the quality cost controversy to represent the
constrained optimization controversy. This includes the conflict between Juran,
Taguchi, and Deming's views of quality. The main idea is to emphasize the
conflict between continuous improvement and optimizing assuming static
constraints. (Questions).
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17. Relevance Regained and Profit Beyond Measure - See
the Relevance Regained
section. No advanced course on management accounting would be complete
without considering Johnson's articles and books. We summarized those two books
and several articles that can be used to address the issues raised by Johnson,
and Johnson and Broms. Profit Beyond Measure also adds to the previous materials
on Toyota and Japanese Management Methods. (Questions).
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18. The Balanced Scorecard and Strategy. See the
sections on the Balanced Scorecard
and Strategy. These
topics are separate but closely related. The Balanced Scorecard is promoted as a
way to support the organization's strategy, so a discussion of strategy is a
prerequisite to a study of the balanced scorecard. (Questions).
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19. EVA and other Performance Measures. See the
sections on EVA and Performance
Measurements. This is a can of worms because there is so much disagreement
on how performance should be measured, but it follows from the balanced
scorecard and is an important topic. (See question 25 in the Balanced Scorecard
Questions).
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20. Change Management. See the Change
Management section. This is a relatively new topic for management
accounting, but one that a CAM-I group was developed to consider. We summarized
several articles in this area that are used as a basis for discussing this
topic.
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Summary of
Question Links |
Review
Questions |
