Management accounting may be seen as a way of providing information in three main areas: costing, decision-making, and planning and control. The emphasis of this module will mainly be on the first area (i.e., information for costing). In reality, however, it is often difficult to separate this area from the other two. For example, standard costing provides costing information which is then used as a tool for planning and control.
This module will develop students’ basic knowledge of management accounting and the context in which it operates. Students will learn about the traditional ‘routine or period-oriented’ concepts and techniques of costing such as absorption and marginal costing, system design such as job-order
and process costing, and also the non-routine or ad hoc approaches relevant for decision-making. These concepts and techniques will be considered mainly in the context of manufacturing organisations, yet they are also relevant to the service and not-for-profit sectors.
The module is complete and self-contained in itself but also provides students with the conceptual knowledge and technical skills to progress to other second and third year modules in management accounting.
Module Aims
• To develop an understanding of the main concepts and ideas underlying management accounting practice.
• To support and encourage education and learning, and foster the capacity for individual study.
• To encourage and facilitate critical, analytical thinking as a foundation for subsequent academic study, employment and personal development.
• To provide the necessary support to enable the successful completion of the degree.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of the module, students will be able to:
Knowledge & Understanding
Technical and critical understanding of:
• The contexts in which management accounting (MA) operates.
• understand introductory ideas of cost and management accounting issues;
• understand costs, volume and profit in various business contexts;
• understand various issues of cost allocations and accumulations in relation to business and technology;
• understand conventional costing systems; and
• develop an understanding of various issues in relation to determining product costs, including relevant costs.
Skills & Abilities
Technical, analytical and evaluation skills in:
• Applying recent and current management accounting approaches
• Applying management accounting in different organisational contexts
• Using management accounting to manage organizations
• Key conceptual aspects and practical application of cost and management accounting issues
• Engage in written and oral communication for analysing management accounting issues of all
types covered
This module will be set against a broader understanding of MA as a means of communication in organisation and a managerial tool that inevitably comes with a wide range of behavioural implications.
Learning Aims and Outcomes
By the end of this module, students will have developed their:
1. Understanding of the importance of cost information and costing systems for effective management of organisations within a competitive business environment;
2. Understanding of traditional and contemporary approaches to costing, planning, control and performance measurement in organisations; and
3. Critical understanding of a variety of issues concerning the use of management accounting information for planning, control and performance measurement.
The weekly lectures are designed to introduce the key concepts of E-Commerce and E-Business technology and evaluate the opportunities and challenges of conducting businesses online. They will also address some of the central issues that concern e-commerce activities, such as: the infrastructure, online revenues, payment systems, digital marketing, digital security, and ethical, moral & legal issues.
The fortnightly classes introduce the students to the latest debates on social issues pertinent to the field of e-commerce, such as: the temporal and spatial unboundedness, the digital divide, privacy concerns, security breaches, and legal issues.
Module Aims
* Developing an understanding of e-commerce activities.
* Analysing the technology of electronic commerce and electronic business;
* Raising the awareness of students about the current debates in academia and the world of practice in relation to e-commerce practices.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of the module, students will be able to:
1. identify and evaluate the strengths and limitations of E-Commerce;
2. analyse the latest technological trends of trading and marketing;
3. identify new and viable options for services using the Internet; and
4. develop and present arguments for the role of E-Commerce in global competition, partnerships and trading.
Module Aims
The module aims to give the students an introduction to the main concepts associated with corporate financial decision making.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of the module, students will be able to:
1. Understand the concepts of value, net present value, and risk, and how to apply these in financial decision making
2. Understand the process of capital budgeting and the concept of efficient markets
3. Understand the fundamental principles of capital structure and payout policy
4. Understand the fundamental principles of option pricing theory and how to apply these in financial decision making
Skills for Your Professional Life (Transferable Skills)
The students will learn communication skills. Additionally, the students will learn structured problem solving – how to structure a problem and break it down into manageable smaller bits.
A common feature of finance is the need to make good use of and where possible best use of limited resources; constrained optimization techniques can often guide us in this need. Basic concepts in probability are used in finance to describe the inevitable uncertainty regarding the future. Most of us dislike risk and prefer to avoid risk, though only if the price for avoiding that risk is acceptable. We study how expected utility theory helps us measure how averse we are to taking such risks.
We then proceed to use these building blocks to examine several concepts: choice under uncertainty, maximizing returns and minimizing risk subject to constraints, mean-variance analysis and net present value.
Module Aims
The aim of this course is to familiarize you with the basic mathematical tools and the analytical skills necessary to understand modern finance theory.
Learning Outcomes
On completion of the course you should be able to
1. Apply basic mathematical techniques and tools used in modern finance.
2. Describe and evaluate measures of risk aversion using expected utility theory.
3. Understand the concept of 'efficient frontier' when investing in risky assets.
4. Evaluate choices using the net present value approach.
Module Description
This course focuses on the theoretical and empirical underpinning of trading strategies adopted by fund managers. The course shall outline the main theories of risk and return and explore the implications of these theories for investors' decisions. In doing so the course shall address questions such as: What is the appropriate measure of risk for a particular security? How might investors decide on the weightings of different assets in their portfolios? How can we identify mispriced stocks? Should you invest your savings in an actively managed fund or in a passive fund?
The course shall begin with an overview of how investors measure a security's risk and return and then, using Markowitz's mean-variance criteria, shall illustrate how efficient portfolios can be constructed. The main difficulty with Markowitz style optimisers is how fund managers predict future risk and returns of individual securities. In this course we shall introduce some of the approaches used to make those predictions.
Bonds are often regarded as a relatively low risk asset class. Alternative measures of bond risk are evaluated, and a portfolio strategy that claims to remove all risk is outlined and critically evaluated.
Module Aims
The main aims of the course are:
* to give students an appreciation of different approaches to portfolio management
* to examine how investors may fully exploit the benefits of diversification
* to provide students with an understanding of the models that are relevant to the management of bond portfolios
* to introduce students to the main asset pricing models
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of the module, students will be able to:
* understand what is meant by an efficient portfolio and how to identify efficient portfolio;
* explain how investors may fully exploit the benefits of diversification
* understand the importance of the CAPM and APT;
* evaluate competing measures of bond risk.
Skills for Your Professional Life (Transferable Skills)
Upon successful completion of the module, students should be able to:
* develop quantitative skills from assessing risk and returns across different asset classes such as stocks and bonds.
* Identify and implement investment strategies in determining the optimal mix of risk-return investment portfolios.
* critically evaluate portfolio performance and adjust portfolios to meet the investment objectives.
* evaluate financial information and make investment management decisions.
Module Aims
• To familiarise students with techniques for handling financial data
• To build a bridge between financial theories and practice
• To introduce students to regression analysis with financial applications
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of the module, students will be able to:
• Understand the principles of regression analysis and hypothesis testing
• Appropriately apply and interpret regression models
• Conduct appropriate hypothesis tests of financial models
• Examine and manipulate data using EViews
• Estimate financial models using EViews
Skills for Your Professional Life (Transferable Skills)
The module is geared towards building up or enhancing the following transferable skills:
• Fluency in data download, manipulation and statistical analysis
• Ability to run basic statistical models and interpret and present findings
• Obtain knowledge of additional issues in regression analysis that will allow you to appropriately apply these methods in a wider range of situations
This module builds on the first year module BE400 to develop and deepen several of the themes introduced there. The intention is to dig deeper into the concepts of management, work and organisation in order to understand something of their provenance, evolution, context of use, and relevance today, as well as the fundamental social dynamics underpinning them. This module also explores the interplay of management theory and practices of organisation. Theory (ie, what we think something is or how we think something works) and practice (ie, how we do things and what we do when we do them) are not separate endeavours but, as we shall see, theory has very practical, concrete effects on how we organize and operate and what we think we are doing when we organize and operate.
The focus is on understanding the social, historical, economic, and cultural context within which practices of organizing, and organisational theory, emerge. What we do now is always in some kind of relation with how we thought and did things in the past. Therefore, beginning to understand the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of organizing today we need to have a sense of what came before. The module considers a number broad – and overlapping – topics in the field of organisational behaviour and explores these with reference to both their historical origins and their contemporary relevance. Here the focus is on the social and cultural dynamics and power relations and that produce organisation. ‘Organisation’ here has three meanings, organisation as an entity, a thing (an organisation); organisation as an activity, a practice (organizing) and organisation as an idea (organisation theory). All these three meanings have a direct impact on how we organize and manage in our daily lives and work.
Whilst a clear description of organisational realities is important, to really understand management, work and organisation, it is necessary to move beyond description, first to analyse and then to critically evaluate. Analysis means moving beyond description to understand the social processes and dynamics that give rise to particular phenomena. Without such an understanding, practical managerial action is impossible.
All analysis requires some theory, even if it is implicit and ‘common sense’. Not all theories are equal, which is why we also need some critical evaluation. On the one hand we expect you to develop your abilities to evaluate and critique the theories and practices we are studying on the module. As a first step, this means evaluating the evidence for specific claims and understandings: what have empirical studies of organisation discovered and what evidence do they use to support their claims? A second step is also required: what are the underlying theoretical assumptions and are these consistent, both internally and externally with what else we know about organisations. A final critical move we will be working on in this module draws upon the Greek origins of the word ‘critique’, from kritos or ‘judge’. By the end of this module you should be able to articulate a judgement on specific management and organisational practices, evaluating them in terms of power relations and their effects on various stakeholders and particularly employees. This is an essential skill set for all managers, who are often in a privileged and influential positions when it comes to making changes to the way we organise.
Module Aims
• Provide an understanding of organisational behaviour as a complex and contested terrain.
• Provide an appreciation of the organisational behaviour and enable students to identify and explore its contributions.
• Develop students’ appreciation of the challenges in managing people the development of management thinking over time, the ways in which broader social change affects organisations and their management and what the future needs of organisations might be and what demands they put on those who manage them.
• Through class discussion, reading, participation and assessment develop students’ abilities to engage in critical argumentation.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of the module, students will be able to:
The module introduces students to a historical and critical understanding of people’s behaviour in workplaces.
Students successfully completing this module should be able to:
• Demonstrate a social scientific understanding of organisational behaviour, drawing on theories, themes, concepts and practices from a range of relevant disciplines (including psychology, sociology and cultural studies) and organisational settings.
• Explain and evaluate classical and contemporary organisational theories, concepts and practices.
• Apply social scientific concepts to explain and evaluate current issues in the management and experience of work organisations.
• Reflect upon their learning about organisational behaviour in the context of their own experiences in organisations and secondary accounts of organisational behaviour.
Skills for Your Professional Life (Transferable Skills)
In addition to providing you with an education, at Essex Business School we aim to help you become highly employable. In this module we use an embedded employability approach where the module content, structure and the module assessment are designed to contribute towards your employability.
Your time and your degree at the University of Essex will enable you to develop understanding of and skills in
*Written Communication
*Oral Communication
*Research Skills
*Critical Thinking
*Teamwork-Collaboration
*Digital and Technical Fluency
*Innovation and Curiosity
*Data and Analytics
*Personal Brand
As a student at the Essex Business School and of management and organisation studies, you will have the opportunity to develop your understanding of and skills in
*Commercial Awareness
In this module we will not aim to cover all these areas, but we will at least touch upon quite a few. Managers are, or should be, first and foremost skilled ab able communicators – management is by and large made of communication of various kinds with various kinds of interlocutors. Your understanding and skills in Written Communication, Oral Communication, Research Skills, Critical Thinking, Teamwork-Collaboration and Innovation and Curiosity will develop through the two assignments. The assignments produce a Learning Portfolio, and the process of producing it will take you through all of those elements. First you will review just one scholarly article to develop your writing and research skills. Then you will work together in a team, innovate and be curious as well as practice your written and oral communication skills to produce a poster. And finally, you will to unleash your critical thinking and research skills when you engage with the research essay as the last part of the Learning Portfolio. The module content (through lectures, seminars, readings and your own independent study) will help you develop your Commercial Awareness together with critical thinking. In the seminars you will be using and developing your Oral Communication and Critical Thinking skills and they will also provide a venue for Innovation and Curiosity and Teamwork-Collaboration. Designing and presenting your Poster will give you a change to develop your Personal Brand.
This module builds upon a basic understanding of management, and in particular of environmental influences on the way in which organizations function and are managed. It provides a more advanced understanding of the international context which helps to shape the strategies and operations of organizations, and explores some of the current issues and challenges facing organizations within the international business environment. In particular, the module focuses on international political economy, covering the major economic systems in the world, and tracing the historical evolution of the global order. It also explores the implications of globalisation for the various functional dimensions of the organization.
Module Aims
1. To provide an understanding of the international business environment.
2. Through discussion and debate, to develop reasoning skills applicable to the analysis of the international business environment and the current issues and challenges facing organizations operating within it.
Module Outcomes
1. After completing this module students will be able to understand the historical evolution of the international business environment.
2. After completing this module students will be able to understand the political, economic, socio-cultural and technological dimensions that shape the international business environment.
3. After completing this module students will be able to understand a range of contemporary issues and challenges facing organizations operating within the international business environment.
To help students understand and measure various types of risks in the financial market and how they affect the value of portfolios; to provide an introduction to the features and applications of important financial derivatives that can be used in risk management; and to discuss and analyse cases of how risk management is conducted in the real world.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of the module, students will be able to:
-Identify exposure to different types of risk
-Understand and be able to apply Value-at-Risk (VaR)
-Use derivatives to hedge equity, bond, interest-rate and currency risk
-Quantify the impact of market movements on portfolio value
Skills for Your Professional Life (Transferable Skills)
Upon successful completion of the module, students should be able to:
* Be able to price a bank loan given a customer's credit information and market parameters
* Be able to comment on the role and impact of the Basel accords in the development of banking regulation around the globe
* Be able to interpret what a credit rating means
* Improve research skills through the use of the Google Scholar search platform
* Develop critical thinking through the use of recent article journals
* Evaluate learning outcomes on case studies, i.e. Long Term Capital Management, Pine Street Capital, among others
In their final year, students undertake an individual, independent and self-directed research project under the supervision of a member of staff. Students will be provided with a list of suitable topics and be allocated a supervisor accordingly. In the Autumn term, students will attend a series of lectures designed to equip them with the tools to undertake the project. At the end of the Autumn term, students are expected to produce a first draft, outlining the structure of their dissertation, that will be marked. The final submission of the complete dissertation is at the end of the Spring term. By the end of this module, students will have developed their research skills, competencies and knowledge, which will enable them to engage in situations simulating real-life professional tasks and assignments. The project provides the opportunity to final year students to reflect on the application of finance theories and to develop a critical understanding of the contemporary issues in the finance area.
Module Aims
• To enable students to synthesise, integrate, and apply previously acquired knowledge;
• To develop students' critical and analytical skills;
• To encourage the acquisition of autonomous study skills in the learning process, as a vital foundation for subsequent academic study, employment, professional and personal development, and participation in society.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of the research project a student should demonstrate knowledge and skills as follows:
• A capacity to synthesise, integrate, and apply previously acquired knowledge;
• An ability to locate, manipulate, and analyse numerical (including financial) data, critically evaluate arguments and empirical evidence, and develop an argument (in writing) and present ideas in a coherent and effective manner;
• An ability to work autonomously, and design a realistic and effective personal plan to achieve a final outcome.
Skills for Your Professional Life (Transferable Skills)
After completing this research project, students have developed and improved the following employability-related skills:
• Improve your academic skills, such as literacy, numeracy, and ICT skills;
• Develop your research skills through independent data collection and analysis, and the use of econometrics and statistics;
• Further your problem solving skills by setting a research question and independently devising a research plan to tackle it;
• Enhance your written and oral communication skills through the development of an independent piece of research project and the oral presentation of your work;
• Improve your professional working skills, such as adaptability, flexibility, and adoption of new techniques;
• Broaden your personal development planning through target setting and action planning.
This module seeks to bring together the knowledge and understanding you have gained during the Business Management, Management and Marketing, and Business Management and/with Modern Languages degree courses. It will enable you to apply and integrate your research skills by critically investigating a contemporary issue in business, management or marketing.
Module Aims
This Final Year Project module aims to enable you to develop a deep understanding of a business, marketing, or management issue of interest. It will rely on the knowledge and skills imparted in core and compulsory modules and reinforce the research-led environment that is a hallmark of Essex graduates. The Final Year Project provides the opportunity for you as a final year student to analyse a range of literature, documentary evidence and/or other available primary source material, to demonstrate a critical understanding of the issues facing businesses and society in the world today.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this module, you should be able to:
1. identify, plan, organise and pursue a research-based project or study.
2. demonstrate the capacity to exercise a range of research and transferable skills and methods in order to produce a research-led report.
3. analyse and reflect critically on theories and/or conceptual/analytical frameworks in addressing real-life management, marketing or business problems.
4. demonstrate a series of transferable skills including those related to accessing documentary evidence, academic research evidence and data from primary sources
5. demonstrate an ability to synthesise and critique knowledge from a variety of sources.
6. communicate effectively findings and analysis, and generate appropriate recommendations.
Skills for Your Professional Life (Transferable Skills)
On completion of this module, you should have enhanced the following key professional and transferable skills:
1. Written Communication – through the preparation of a final report
2. Research Skills – through the retrieval, evaluation and synthesis of published academic research and commercial and professional literature
3. Critical Thinking – through the evaluation and critique of published academic, commercial and professional literature
4. Digital and Technical Fluency – through the use of internet and electronic database searches to obtain published academic research and commercial and professional literature; or through research into on-line communities, for example
5. Innovation and Curiosity – through the development of a research question and awareness of the academic process
6. Data and Analytics – through the evaluation of published research
7. Personal Brand – through the development of all these skills to enhance your curriculum vitae
8. Commercial Awareness – through the evaluation and critique of professional and commercial literature