Strategic Management and Strategic Cost Management (London)

Course Contents, Concepts and Issues:

Understanding Strategy and Strategic Relations

• Strategy: A Definition
• The ‘Strategy Process’
• Characteristics of Strategy
• Defining Strategic Management
• Understanding Strategic Decisions
• Implications of Strategic Decisions
• Levels of Strategy
• What Is A Strategic Business Unit?
• Relating Strategy to an Organisation’s:
• Mission
• Vision
• Goal
• Objective
• Strategic capability
• Strategies
• Business model
• Control
• The Corporate Strategy Model
• Strategic Position;
• What Are Strategic Choices?
• The Concept of Synergy
• The Synergistic Effect of Strategic Alliance

Cost Management and Strategy: Conceptual Framework Concepts

• The Use of Cost Management Information
• The Issue of “Costing”
• Creating Cost-Aware Organizations
• Review of Some Key Cost Concepts
• Product vs. Period Costs
• Direct and Indirect Costs
• Cost Behaviour: Fixed and Variable Costs
• Problems and Examples

Different Approaches to Costing

• Absorption (Full) vs. Variable Costing
• Under-Costing and Over-Costing: The Consequences for Profitability
• How to Refine a Costing System?
• Activity-Based Costing (ABC) and Cost-Management
• Cost Hierarchy and Cost Drivers;
• Linking Resources, Activities and Management
• Introducing Activity-Based Management (ABM)
• Linkages between ABM and ABC – Monitoring
• Value Creation
• Fixed and Flexed Budget (Static and Flexible Budget)
• Rolling Budget
• Zero Based Budgeting
• Activity Based Budgeting
• Master Budget
• From Costing to Budget: Interpreting Variances (Variance Analysis)
• Integrating Continuous Improvement into Variance Analysis
• Problems, Case Study and Exercises

Control Systems and Performance Measurement

• Financial and Non-Financial Measures of Performance
• Designing an Accounting-Based; Performance Measure
• Economic Value Added (EVA)
• Return on Investment (RIO)
• Strategic Performance Measurement: Balanced Scorecard
• New Role for Managers and Management Accountants