MSc Accounting and International Management

This module aims to introduce students to the core concepts and models underlying contemporary strategic management, their theoretical and empirical foundations, their limitations, the arguments surrounding them and their practical application to real issues facing real companies.  This module provides students with an understanding of the conceptual and analytical tools of strategic management and economics.

• Theories, frameworks and introduction
• Internal resources and competencies of firms
• External environment in which firms operate
• The process of internationalisation
• Globalisation and regional integration
• Collaborative behaviour and strategic alliances
• Integration/responsiveness framework and strategy

This module introduces students to the basic concepts, principles and techniques involved in marketing, and to the role of marketing management within all types of organisations (retail, consumer goods, industrial goods, service, non-profit oriented, domestic and international). Students will develop an appreciation of the special requirements for successfully conducting marketing activities by concentrating on the market-oriented approach to doing business.

• Marketing planning                                                                                                         
• Marketing environment                                                                 
• Segmentation, targeting and positioning 
• Buying behaviour (consumer behaviour and business to business) 
• Product 
• Promotion
• Price and distribution  

This course is about how organisations behave and how people behave in organisational settings. It is both practically useful and intellectually challenging. The module will explore three distinct bodies of knowledge: firstly, your informal and tacit knowledge of organisations gained from everyday life; secondly, the mainstream approaches to organisational behaviour (OB) and management studies; and finally, alternative, critical approaches drawn from OB and the wider social sciences.

Topics include:

• Motivational theory
• Critical approaches to motivation and work
• Technology and progress
• Varieties of authority
• Power in organisations
• Bureaucratic rationality
• Post-bureaucracy: real or imagined?

This module aims to provide students with the opportunity to develop their critical knowledge and understanding of the decision-useful and stakeholder-related aspects of financial reporting. This is achieved through an exploration of the principles and methods that underlie both the preparation and presentation of financial statements in an international context.

• Main objectives of financial reporting
• Implications of globalisation of accounting practice
• Preparation of main financial statements
• Regulatory framework of financial reporting
• Analysing and interpreting financial statements – financial ratios
• Current issues in financial reporting

This module aims to develop further students’ critical knowledge and understanding of financial reporting by considering broader social and political aspects of accounting practice. It is an intermediate to advanced study of financial reporting that builds on the concepts and techniques covered in the International Financial Reporting 1 module (MMM062). Students will develop both applied and theoretical expertise and skills, as a result of this course.

• Provisions
• Preparation and interpretation of the key components of group accounting reporting
• Creative accounting
• Financial instruments: classification and presentation (fundamentals)
• The concept of public interest in the context of accounting theory and practice
• Further evaluation of the usefulness of financial statements

This module covers the development of corporate governance codes of practice in the UK and around the world. Students undertaking this course will gain a critical and holistic view of corporate governance, which will include an examination of some of the key contextual factors: boards of directors, institutional investors, transparency, sustainability reporting, ethical issues and responsible investment.

• Theoretical frameworks for corporate governance, accountability and ethics
• The consequences of corporate governance weaknesses and failure
• The UK corporate governance framework: codes of practice and governance reviews
• Internal mechanisms: board effectiveness, the role of non-executive directors, remuneration structures
• External mechanisms, especially the role of institutional investors
• International corporate governance: comparative analysis
• Corporate governance and stakeholder accountability: holistic governance
• Responsible investment

What am I going to do when my course ends, and how am I going to achieve it?  This module has been designed to help Accounting, Informatics and Business Management students answer those two questions, and empower them to take the actions required.  It’s a suite of sessions that pays close attention to the general pathways Business Management, Accounting and Informatics students tend to take, and their aspirations as expressed during pre-sessional career activities & induction surveys. Students will choose this the mix of custom-made sessions that best suit their stage in life and supplement them with the open careers programmes offered at the University, the online content on the Henley Careers Blackboard site and 1-2-1 careers consultations.

The Project enables students to undertake independent research on a specified topic relating to international accounting and/or financial management. With the guidance and support of a supervisor, students manage their own project, taking an aspect of theory and applying it to real companies. Previous projects, for example, have involved analysing published accounts of listed companies to investigate financial performance, dividend policy and the management of capital structure.

• Define objectives of research
• Research subject company
• Synthesise relevant literature
• Identify relevant data
• Analyse data
• Evaluate findings

Students undertaking this module will gain an awareness of the appropriate use of methodology, theory, data, literature review and original research that is required for a Masters dissertation. Students will thus be equipped with the necessary skills that will enable them to conduct their own piece of original research, analyse the results and present their findings.

• The nature and practice of research
• The literature review process and the composition of a literature review
• The nature and role of methodology in management research
• The role and application of theory in management research
• Quantitative and qualitative data sources
• Data analysis and writing up research findings

This module concerns the entrepreneurial activity and the distinctive features of management in the SME environment, its complexity, the additional challenges and risks related to the small dimension, but also its advantages.

By the end of the module students are expected to be able to question theories and standard knowledge, often referring to large corporations, and apply this body of knowledge to SMEs.

The module consists of lectures and seminars. The seminars focus on the students’ groupwork on their Business Plans. Entrepreneurs and experts from the business world contribute to the module by sharing and discussing their experience.

• Concept of entrepreneurship and the economic role of entrepreneurs
• Business plan
• The importance of SMEs
• Networks and clusters
• Sources of finance
• Marketing
• Innovation
• Internationalisation

This module uses annual reports and accounts, company web sites and share price data to study aspects of business strategy over time; company performance and executive remuneration; and financial performance and valuation. It involves group work, presentations and discussions, as students are asked to analyse a selection of materials, in order to apply the knowledge developed across the programme. Assessment is individual and based on case studies.

Content may include the analysis of:

• a company’s strategy
• its executive remuneration policy
• its financial performance
• its share price performance
• the use of other performance measurement metrics (such as the Balanced Scorecard)
• the value of the company using various valuation techniques to assess future prospects and to evaluate the current share price

This module aims to foster a critical awareness of organisational design (OD) issues to enable informed decision-making in the workplace. The course will highlight contemporary thinking, which places greater emphasis on a more adaptive, emergent process of organising to suit complex changing circumstances within an international context. Theory and practice of contemporary organising are examined for their links with organisational performance.

• The structural perspective: hierarchy and traditional design choices
• The relational perspective: groups and teams
• The relational perspective: networks and virtual organising
• The information perspective: the role of information and ITC in OD
• Designing across borders
• Re-designing organisations: change and OD approaches
• Re-designing and downsizing organisations
• Designing the post-industrial organisation

Enterprise Systems (i.e. ERP, CRM, SCM and KMS) are used to reinforce the efficiency and productivity of businesses, however implementation failure-rates remains high. This module helps students to understand the organisational and business impact of using Enterprise Systems, the potential role of Enterprise Systems in organisational transformation and change, and highlights the benefit and risk aspects involved in systems implementation.

Outline content

• Understand Enterprise System solutions;

• Appreciation of Enterprise Systems implementation methodologies;

• Understand business risk factors, and how such risks can be minimised;

• Appreciating the impact of Enterprise Systems on stakeholder relationships;

• Consider the business benefit of integrating business functions; • Understanding the business conflict involved in process reengineering and customisation.

This module aims to define the ‘cultural industries’ and identify the key features of these sectors that explain their structure and functioning over time. It identifies the main challenges for organisations involved in the production or distribution of cultural products and services, and critically analyses the various ways in which organisations have responded to these challenges in different commercial and cultural contexts.

• Protecting intellectual property rights
• Creative individuals, teams and clusters
• The perpetual search for innovation amid shifting logics
• Managing uncertainty: a historical perspective
• Strategic planning
• Technological change
• The role of networks

Clusters, or localised production systems, are a pattern of business organisation to be found in a variety of industries and countries around the world. These include creative industries such as video and film industries, design and fashion, advertising, music, publishing, but also IT, bio-medical and engineering industries, as well as agro- and food-processing industries. Clusters are major contributors to national economies and have attracted the interest of policy makers as well as academics.

The module covers conceptual and empirical aspects of the topic. It includes a discussion of the business dynamics taking place within clusters and to what extent these are a source of competitive advantage for newly established as well as long-established firms.