PROGRAMMING AND CONTROL SYSTEMS

The course lie at the core of the master degree in accounting and finance as it aim to provide the knowledge necessary for projecting and managing planing and control systems in organisations of all size and context.
More specifically, the course aim is to strengthen the understanding of techniques and tools useful to provide managers with information capable of improving their decisions, and ultimately of conducting the business toward short, medium and long-term goals. Techniques and tools relying both on accounting data and going beyond them will be considered, connecting business performance measurements with the support of strategising.
The tools considered include: business budgeting, planning and reporting, balanced scorecard, strategy maps, business performance management. A critical approach to evaluating techniques will be encouraged as well as their application in case study settings and project works.

The active participation to the activities of the course (lectures, case discussions and project work) is aimed at obtaining the following results:

1. Knowledge and understanding
- To know the main issues in management accounting literature and practice
- To know the management control systems useful for addressing management accounting issues
- To know the specific feature of management accounting depending on the entity's characteristics, such as activity performed, size and environment;
- To understand the implications of management control systems configuration on sustainability.

2. Ability to apply knowledge
- Ability to prepare a business plan, in both the strategic and the financial part.
- Ability to identify a balanced set of measures to evaluate the performances of a specific business, including the sustainability performance.

3. Judgment skills
- To be able to evaluate the congruence of a set of management control systems with an entity's specificities

4. Communication skills
- To be able to communicate effectively the suitability of a set of Management Control Systems to face specific business situations
- To be able to present a business plan

5. Learning skills
- To be able to face complex business problems with incomplete information and time constraints
- To be able to autonomously collect information useful for writing a business plan
- to be able to collect information to address a business case both in the literature and in case repositories

Student's are expected to be familiar with the contents of the following exams: Business Administration, Accounting and Financial Statements Analysis, Cost Management.
Specifically, participants are assumed to be familiar with the following topics:
- ratio analysis
- cash flow statement analysis
- cost behaviour analysis
- contribution margin and break even analysis

- Designing a management control systems
- Profit Planning
- Business Planning
- Performance measurement:
° financial and non-financial performance measures
° lead and lag measures
° sustainability measures
- Implementing a Balanced Scorecard
- Balancing diagnostic and interactive controls
- The cost and the unexpected consequences of the control system

- K.A. Merchant, W.A. Van der Stede, L. Zoni, Sistemi di Controllo di Gestione. Misure di performance, valutazione e incentivi, Pearson

The exam will be divided into two parts, both for attending and non-attending students.

The first part consisted of in an oral exam based on lectures material and the adopted manual.

The second part consists in a project work and may involve the drafting a business plan or the writing of an essay on one of the theoretical topics covered in the program. Each student is required to agree on the content of the project work with the instructor. Further details on the technical aspects of the project work will be provided at the beginning of the course.

oral

27-30L: Excellent knowledge and understanding of the topics covered in lectures and textbooks.
22-26: Good knowledge of the topics covered in lectures and textbooks.
18-21: Sufficient but not always in-depth knowledge of the topics covered in lectures and textbooks .

The course is based on active class participation with a mix of:

- Lectures
- Case studies analysis and class discussion
- Student project

Ca’ Foscari abides by Italian Law (Law 17/1999; Law 170/2010) regarding support services and accommodation available to students with disabilities. This includes students with mobility, visual, hearing and other disabilities (Law 17/1999), and specific learning impairments (Law 170/2010). If you have a disability or impairment that requires accommodations (i.e., alternate testing, readers, note takers or interpreters) please contact ADISS - Settore Inclusione, inclusione@unive.it.