Details

Instructor: Andrea Tenucci, a.tenucci [at] santannapisa.it
Other Lecturers: Lino Cinquini, l.cinquini [at] santannapisa.it
Cristina Campanale, c.campanale [at] santannapisa.it
Sara Giovanna Mauro, g.mauro [at] santannapisa.it

Class hours: 36, 6 ECTS

Contents

The course Cost and Performance Management will provide students the knowledge and tools for providing relevant information for operational and strategic decision making and the understanding of the functioning of a business. To this aim, management accounting and performance management concepts will be explained.
The first part of the course will develop the management accounting topics introduced in the course "Financial Metrics". The content of this part will include the most relevant techniques of product costing and service costing in a business, the profitability of product and services and will discuss the importance and impact of cost management on strategic decisions. 
A second part of the course with deal with the fundamental concepts and tools of budgeting and performance evaluation. The content of this part will include an introduction to performance measurement in a business, the process of performance evaluation and the most relevant performance evaluation tools.

Objectives

By the end of the course the students should be able to: i) design a costing system and calculate the cost of a product or service; ii) develop proposals to increase the profitability of products and services, improve internal processes and increase the profitability of the business; iii) understand the overall performance of a business and develop proposal for performance improvement; iv) develop their capability to critically discuss a business strategy; v) develop their capacity to work in team.

List of topics:

• Cost-Volume-Profit Analysis
• Cost allocation
• Activity-based Costing & Management
• Introduction to Budgeting
• Strategic Cost Management
• Performance Measurement Systems

Pre-requirements

The preliminary taking or attendance of the course "Financial Metrics" is strongly recommended.

Teaching Methods

Lectures are of four types: i) traditional lectures, where the lecturer presents topics ii) tutorials,where students can verify, supported by lecturer, their understanding of topics through exercises iii) case studies development and presentations, where students are required to present and discuss business cases, and short written assignments, where students are required to demonstrate their capability of argumentation and critical discussion of some of the topics of the course iv)learning from the experience of managers. Managers will be invited to share their experience of working in a company.

Evaluation method

50% of the final score will be assigned by individual and group assignments during the course.
The remaining 50% of the final score will be based on the written exam at the end of the course. A sufficient grade (18/30) is at minimum needed in the written exam to pass.
An additional adjustment (max + 1 point) of the final score will be possible considering individual behavior in classroom & participation at discretion of the lecturer.

Teaching material

• Garrison, Noreen and Brewer, 2012, Managerial accounting, 14th edition, McGraw-Hill [Chapters 1, 2, 3, App. 4B, 5, 7 and 11].
• Shank and Govindarajan, 1993, Strategic Cost Management: The New Tool for Competitive Advantage, The Free Press [Chapter 4].

Additional readings and materials will be assigned during the course.