Management Accounting for Sustainable Business Development (GRAB006)

In today’s sustainable development goals oriented yet competitive and constantly changing environment, financially resilient companies are are better equipped for long term sustainable business growth and maximization of company value. The ability of a company to earn profit and grow without constant external support, earn enough cash and liquidity for uninterrupted business operations, have capability to invest and to repay its present and future obligations are the key aspects factors contributing this resilience and value maximization. Moreover, relevant and timely financial information and its efficient use for decision-making are the crucial aspects for company’s financial sustainability and sound business development. The course is designed to provide students with the knowledge of the key sustainable-finance and accounting related concepts and to equip them with skills needed to measure, assess, and control costs and profitability of products, processes and activities, plan and assess sustainability-related and other investments, evaluate business performance and make strategic and other relevant management decisions towards sustainable business growth and company’s value maximization.

• To be able to explain the concepts and the key elements of financial sustainability, sustainable business growth and their interrelationship with sustainable business development.
• To be able to specify the content and characteristics of financial information and its needs for decision making, explain its accumulation and reporting trends in the EU and corporate transparency, as well as the relevance of information for value creation and sustainable business development.
• To be able to identify classify and analyse costs, make indirect cost allolation decisions, differentiate and apply various costing and pricing methods to assess company’s performance in competitive environment.
•  To be able to analyse cost behaviour, perform cost-volume-profit analysis, utilize costs and revenues for making relevant management decisions towards sustainable business growth and company’s value maximization
• To be able to identify the key areas of ESG related investments, to differentiate capital budgeting criteria and techniques for ESG investments, estimate their net investment and cash flows and perform capital budgeting acceptance analysis.
• To be able to explain the link between strategies, plans and budgets; design tools for budgeting and other financial planning to facilitate financial sustainability and resilience; identify business risks and design their management tools.
• To be able to explain how companies measure and manage their performance; differentiate business performance measurement models and tools; identify issues and solutions related to ESG performance measurement and management, define critical success factors, design a scorecard and suggest relevant KPIs;
• To learn with teams, be able to cooperate with team members; to assume leadership while evaluating and solving complex ideas and cases.