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.

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

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

Students 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

ATTENDING STUDENTS

Preparing for the exam:
- Lecture notes
- Cases and readings suggested during classes

Integrative readings and basic bibliography (latest edition):
- K.A. Merchant, W.A. Van der Stede, L. Zoni (2014), Sistemi di Controllo di Gestione. Misure di performance, valutazione e incentivi, Pearson
- Horngren C.T., Sunden G.L. et alii, Programmazione e controllo, Pearson
- Simons R., Sistemi di controllo e misure di performance, Egea
- C. Parolini, Business planning. Dall'idea al progetto imprenditoriale, Pearson

NON-ATTENDING STUDENTS
- K.A. Merchant, W.A. Van der Stede, L. Zoni (2014), Sistemi di Controllo di Gestione. Misure di performance, valutazione e incentivi, Pearson

ATTENDING STUDENTS
Class participation 30%
Project Work 40%
Individual discussion 30%
Individual discussion is about contents covered during the lessons.

NON-ATTENDING STUDENTS
Oral exam and two individual short essays (students are invited to contact the teacher to get information)

The course is based on active class participation with a mix of:
- lectures
- team preparation and presentation of short essays
- case studies analysis and class discussion
- student project

oral