Cost management has been tied in the past to the concepts of scorekeeping, attention directing, and problem solving, but the expectations of accountants in today's world have changed dramatically, extending well beyond these concepts. This paper presents a different way to view cost management. It is not a planning or decision-making focus, but instead a focus on helping the organization be successful, through the implementation of an effective competitive strategy. Strategy is implemented by the appropriate use of cost management methods. The ''why strategy?'' question is answered by a review of survey findings, a discussion of the potential errors in nonstrategic decision making, and a review of changes at the Institute of Management Accountants that reflect a greater emphasis on strategy, including a new definition of management accounting which focuses on strategy. The paper shows the strategybased content flowcharts for each of the three courses: management accounting, cost accounting, and advanced management accounting.
Professional organizations, accrediting bodies, and accounting educators have defined the competencies that accounting students need for entry-level success in public accounting. However, definitions of the competencies required by all accounting students for long-term career requirements are lacking, as is an understanding of how to develop these competencies within the accounting curriculum. In 2010 the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) and the Management Accounting Section (MAS) of the American Accounting Association (AAA) formed a Task Force to address these issues and make curriculum recommendations for all accounting majors. This paper is a report of that Task Force. It is responsive to the recent call to ''connect the accounting body of knowledge to a map of competencies'' and to create ''curricular models for the future'' (Pathways Commission 2012, 37, 75), and it includes a literature review that spans the scope and focus of accounting education, the value proposition for accounting (i.e., specification as to how accountants today, working in a variety of settings, add organizational value), and the importance of competency integration. This review leads to four recommendations. First, accounting education should be oriented toward longterm career demands. Second, the focus of accounting education should include organizational settings beyond the current focus on public accounting/auditing. Third, educational objectives should reflect how accountants add organizational value. Fourth, these objectives should be developed as integrated competencies. These recommen
The paper follows up on Lawson et al. (2014), which reported on the work of a joint task force sponsored by the Management Accounting Section (MAS) of the American Accounting Association (AAA) and the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) charged with the responsibility of developing curricular recommendations for accounting education. The current paper extends the discussion by examining possibilities for integrating foundational competencies and broad management competencies into the accounting curriculum, and for integrating across various accounting competencies. The paper provides a detailed example to illustrate its recommendations. The paper also discusses two implementation challenges related to curriculum integration and offers some thoughts for productively responding to them. Finally, the paper includes three appendices that contain an additional example and list additional resources for instructors to support curricular-integration initiatives in accounting.
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