75437 - Management Accounting in Public and Non Profit Sector

Learning outcomes

This course will provide students with some frameworks and ways of thinking about how public sector organizations and nonprofit organizations should implement management control systems in their contexts. 

Students who complete the course successfully will know about:

• The differences amongst private sector and nonprofit/public sector organizations' key success factors, why they vary among different types organizations, and how they influences decision making processes and, thus, management control systems.
• Ways that organizations can account for their costs and how the cost accounting effort can help nonprofit/publics sector organizations' decision making processes.
• How the concept of profit centers can be used in a nonprofit/public sector context.
• Why some decisions in nonprofit/public sector organizations must be viewed in terms of a capital investment decision, and how to undertake the appropriate analyses.
• How the technique of variance analysis can improve one's understanding to improve corrective actions.
• How to measure and manage performance in nonprofit/public sector organizations.

Course contents

The course will meet for 10 sessions in the second half of first semester of academic year 2018/19 (November and December 2018) according to the detailed program below (specific days, time and venue are published within the e-learning platform by first lecture):   

Class #1
Introduction to course and to each other
Read: Chapters 1 and 2
Content of the class: Brief discussion of Chapters 1 and 2.  

All remaining classes (except "fundamentals") are devoted to case analysis and discussion and follow the schedule below:
Preliminary discussion of case (30 minutes)
Team meetings for the case (45 minutes)
Break (15 minutes)
Discuss case (90 minutes)

Class #2
Cost Accounting and Pricing I (fundamentals)
Goal of the class: To discuss and train on fundamentals of full cost accounting (tutorial).
Read: Chapter 7 (through p. 191 - up to The Stage 2 process)
Content of the class: Be prepared to actively participate in solving the problems presented by the teacher; “light discussion” of Harbor City Community Center case with the aim to introduce the concepts of full cost accounting and also to clarify expectations for what good preparation and discussion mean.

Class #3
Cost Accounting and Pricing II: Cost Allocation Using Activity-Based Costing
Read: Chapter 7 (p. 191 to end) 
Prepare: Neighborhood Servings

Class #4
Cost Behavior (fundamentals)
Goal of the class: To discuss and train on cost behavior.
Read: Chapter 8 (up to page 227 - The Outsourcing Decision)
Content of the class: Be prepared to actively participate in solving the problems presented by the teacher

Class #5
Cost Behavior
Read: Chapter 8 (up to page 227 - The Outsourcing Decision)
Prepare: Abbington Youth Center

Class #6
The Management Control Structure and the Concept of Profit Centers
Read: Chapter 4
Prepare: Milan Sanitation Department

Class #7
The Management Control Process I: Programming
Read: Chapter 5
Prepare: Dovetown Parking Authority

Class #8
The Management Control Process II: Budgeting and Measuring Financial Performance
Read: Chapter 10
Prepare: Town of Bellington

Class #9
The Management Control Process III: Reporting on Non-Financial Performance
Read: Chapter 9 
Prepare: Carleton Fire Department

Class #10
Managing Outsourcing I: Assessing and Managing Outsourcing Risk
Read: Chapter 8 (page 227 to end)
Prepare: Cittá di Forenna
Read: Chapter 11
Prepare: Omega Research Institute

Readings/Bibliography

The course materials consist of a book and an “E-Packet.” The E-Packet contains the cases that will be used for class discussions.

Book. Padovani E., Young D. W., Managing Local Governments. Designing Management Control Systems that Deliver Value. London: Routledge, 2011. In conventional bookstore of the town center of Forlì, this book is not available, must be booked at least one month in advance and its price is higher than online purchase. It is warmly suggested to purchase your book online (e.g. on  Amazon Italia  or  Amazon UK  or directly from the publisher Routledge) 

E-Packet. The E-Packet should be ordered from The Crimson Press Curriculum Center (in the U.S). You should send an E-mail to CrimsonCenter@TheCrimsonGroup.org. The center will send you an invoice via PayPal, which you may pay with a credit card. Once you have paid, the center will send you the E-Packet as a PDF file, which you may download (and print, if you wish).

PLEASE NOTE! You must have your book for class #1, therefore it is warmly suggested to proceed to buy our book by the end of August 2018.

Teaching methods

The course will use a combination of readings, interactive lectures, and case discussions.  Almost all classes are conducted according to the case method of instruction.  Cases bring a small chunk of the real world into the classroom setting, where students can examine it, determine what problems exist, discuss optional approaches to dealing with them, and assess the consequences of alternative courses of action. 

This is not a course where a professor lectures and students write down what he/she says.  Almost all classes require the students to read and analyze a case study in advance, and then to contribute in a significant way to the class discussion of the case. As a result, most of the learning comes from students' analyses of the cases and the discussion of those analyses during the class sessions.   For many students this will be a major change from their previous educational experiences.  Students are asked to prepare in advance all cases by allocating 2-3 hours of their time.

Assessment methods

Grading will be based on a combination of two written case analyses and classroom contributions to case discussions. The first written analysis will be done by teams. The second will be an individual effort. In both instances, there should be no collaboration of any sort, either with students in the course this year (other than team members for the first memo) or with people not in the course, including former students. The grading percentages are as follows:

- Class contribution (40%)

- Team case analysis (20%)

- Individual case analysis - final written exam (40%).

Please read carefully the instructions about how we consider a good class contribution and how to write a good team/individual case analyses (written analyses or "memo").

At the end of the course, each student can ask for an individual interview that will be used to integrate his/her class contribution assessment.

In case of non-attending students, class contribution will be replaced by an interview and the team case analysis by a second individual case analysis; therefore, non-attending students will need to send two individual cases analyses (on any of the cases within the e-Packet) 20 days before they decide to have their interview.

Office hours

See the website of Emanuele Padovani