Course Description
This course provides students with an understanding of the important and interrelated business concepts of financial and non-financial corporate reporting, organizational risks, and corporate governance within a global business context. The course will prepare you to be a better user of financial and other reporting issues by deepening and broadening your ability to read and interpret financial statements, appreciate the relevancy of corporate governance and organizational risk within financial reporting, and understand the importance of international business structures and practices, and corporate taxation to how corporations operate and function in society.
The course is issue oriented with a focus on current and emerging issues in financial and management reporting across functional areas such as financial reporting, corporate governance, sustainability reporting, and international reporting/taxation. From a financial reporting perspective this involves 1) being familiar with the structure and content of annual reports, 2) understanding the governance and social environment in which financial reporting choices are made and 3) how to use accounting data to make informed decisions considering environmental, governance and social factors.
The course will first introduce risk and corporate governance frameworks relating to enterprise risk management. Next, the course will examine most significant measurement and disclosure issues that arise in the financial statements and appear regularly in the financial press, including revenue and expense reporting, intangible and investment assets, leases, corporate tax reporting and controversies, executive compensation integrating environmental, social and governance factors, employee benefits, acquisitions, and contemporary earnings management.
Finally, the course will explore governance and social aspects of contemporary reporting and regulatory issues such as SOX, international transfer pricing and tax practices within a digital environment.
Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of the course, students should be able to:
- Understand relevant concepts, frameworks, and underlying theories (i.e. Agency, Shareholder and Stakeholder Theory) for analyzing and addressing organizational risks and corporate governance issues;
- Identify different types of organizational risks including, but not limited to, strategic, operational, marketplace, financial, reporting and compliance risks;
- Understand the context of financial reporting and areas of management judgment;
- Understand and interpret key financial statement notes and accounting policy choices;
- Identify and incorporate analysis of accounting policies and judgments in assessing a company;
- Explain areas of global risks such transfer pricing, digital technologies/assets and ESG; and,
- Apply financial and nonfinancial reporting of accounting policies, disclosure and transparency, and regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act relating to areas of risks.
Elective