MSc in Economics and Business Administration - Accounting, Strategy and Control

By working with measurements of cost, performance and risk, you will learn to identify strategic challenges within organisations, and to design the proper course of action and incentive structures to respond to them. This understanding of numbers and their organisational role will facilitate the implementation of company strategy and value creation.

Making strategies operational

The focus of the concentration is on driving the company towards its goals by making its strategy operational. There is a big difference between making a strategy and making it happen. Often this process is made difficult by vaguely defined goals or differences in perception of the strategy throughout the organisation.  You will learn how to deal with these challenges by interpreting the strategy, breaking it down into smaller parts and making the goals concrete and measurable. This will enable you to create a uniform and tangible understanding of the strategy, from  board level, down through management to the individual employee.

Tools for decision making

Knowing the effectiveness and the limitations of measurements is an important part in achieving this end. By using theories and models in management accounting, you will be able to measure everything from transaction cost and company value, to customer and employee satisfaction. You will learn about  the strengths and weaknesses of these tools, and how they can create a foundation for decision making. The knowledge you gain from this will give you deep insight into the inner workings of the organisation, and allow you to understand how value is created in the company, and at what cost.

Cost and performance management

Accounting is the number one business language, and it creates the foundation for discussions of a company’s financial performance, but also of the non-financial dimensions of performance, such as  customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and competence development,  all playing a major role in the creation of value in the organisation.

Working with measurement and evaluation systems, the provision of incentives and adjustments of behavior hold the potential for controlling cost and performance at all levels in the organisation, and ensure value creation. By developing and analysing such performance and risk measurement systems, you create transparency in the company, and this allows you to identify potential strategic as well as operational problems as they arise within the company. This could for example be a sudden increase in expenses, reduced quality, high employee turnover or continuous difficulties in reaching strategic goals. To deal with these problems, you will learn how to design and implement incentive systems through which you can coordinate and motivate departments, teams or individuals to change their behavior and correct the situation.