• Make and assess calculations on the basis of 'opportunity costs';
• Distinguish between various categories of control;
• Describe and explain the how and why of cost allocation;
• Apply responsibility accounting, budgeting and transfer pricing to real-life cases and to reflect on such application;
• Describe, design and evaluate modern forms of performance management (balanced scorecards);
• Describe, explain, and critically reflect on the association between management accounting, organizational economics and other scientific disciplines.
   

Management accounting serves decision making in organisations. It offers 'ex ante' information that supports decisions, for example in the context of a make-or-buy decision or an investment. Moreover, management accounting is functional in the control of organisations, particularly in management control. Management control aims to influence individual managers and other organisational members. An important device for management control is responsibility accounting: managers are held accountable by their superiors by means of accounting information. Budgets and transfer prices are of particular importance in this respect. More recently, in many organisations responsibility accounting has evolved into performance management, drawing on both financials as well as non-financials (performance indicators). To a large extent, management accounting has been informed by organisational economics. The association between management accounting and organisational economics will be extensively discussed, but also the association with other scientific disciplines, like psychology and sociology.