28030 - Economics and Business Organization T

Learning outcomes

The course illustrates basic concepts of financial accounting and management accounting. It provides the notions to understand the main characteristics of companies, their financial conditions and the tools that they use to process timely and relevant information to be used in planning, controlling, motivating, and decision making. Upon completion of this course students will be able to: a) sift through data and pick out the information that is important to making good decisions; b) analyze complex business challenges.

Course contents

A)    Company overview a.       Business economics and management. b.      Organizations as open systems c.       Conceptual models for assessing companies competitive analysis d.      The role of information for decision making e.       Controlling companies economic outcomes and performance B)    Balance sheet: a.       Assessing and measuring economic issues within a company: balance sheet structure b.      The effect of decisions on balance sheet c.       Commercial transactions: their definition and their impact on balance sheet d.      Introduction to financial and accounting principles. e.       Costs and earnings measurement: the profit and loss account and its structure f.       Different structures and uses of balance sheet and profit and loss account. The legal framework C)    Analyzing costs to support decision making a.       Different kinds of information provided within management accounting: how to use these information to take decisions b.      Relations between decisions and different types of costs c.       Relations between costs and activities: variable costs, fixed costs, break-even point d.      Direct costs, indirect costs and allocation problems. Systems for determining product costs. D)    Short term decisions

a.       Differential costs and revenues

b.      Different kinds of costs for different decision-making problems.

c.       Choosing between alternatives: full costs and differential costs

d.      Making a decision among different alternatives

e.       Assessing future costs and sunk costs

E)    Long term decisions: choosing between investments

a.       The concept of investment and different kinds of investments

b.      Capitalization and discounting back: elements of financial mathematics.

c.       Determining the value of an investment: the Net Present Value.

d.      Investment valuation: steps of the decision procedure.

e.       Basic concepts to evaluate an investment: the expected return rate, the economic life of a project, the relevant cash flows.

f.       Problems in assessing cash flows.

g.      Other methods to gain investment valuation: internal return rate, average pay-back time, the average accounting profit.

h.      Investment valuation within the firm schedule.

Readings/Bibliography

R.N. Anthony, D.M. Macrì, L.K. Pearlman, Il Bilancio. Strumento di analisi per la gestione (4° edizione), McGraw-Hill, Milano 2004. (escluso cap. 9)

R.N. Anthony, D.F. Hawkins, D.M. Macrì, K.A. Merchant, Sistemi di controllo di gestione: analisi economiche per le decisioni aziendali (3° edizione), McGraw-Hill, Milano 2004. (capp. 1, 2, 3, 4, 14, 15, 16).

Teaching methods

Frontal lessons through slides. Course's slides will not to be available to students

Assessment methods

A written examination will be held at the end of course. This final exam encompasses two/three numeric exercises and some multiple choices covering the entire program.

Exam dates will be fixed according to the faculty calendar and they will be communicated to students through the Almaesami service (http://almaesami.unibo.it). Registration for participating to a written exam can be finalized exclusively  through the Almesami service.

Teaching tools

Slides, teaching notes and other documentation will be provided by the teacher along the course

Office hours

See the website of Mariolina Longo