Global businesses often wrestle with operational inefficiencies and overlook critical touchpoints that can turn those challenges into opportunities. Expanding management accounting operations is one such avenue for improving business efficiency – not just with a finance-oriented approach but through a leadership lens.
Designed by Robert Bloomfield, the Nicholas H. Noyes Professor of Management at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, the Management Accounting for Leaders certificate program aims to change the perception and application of accounting by bridging theoretical knowledge with tangible, actionable insights. Bloomfield hopes “to endow students with a superpower to deliberate and find ways to improve accountability systems.”
The program offers practical tools to identify, analyze and rectify inefficiencies that are pervasive in modern businesses. Central to this unique approach are the “deliberation guides” – theoretical constructs and hands-on tools designed to help accounting professionals and senior leaders improve their businesses and honor accountability as a core value.
Bloomfield explains, “for every module in each of these six courses, there is a deliberation guide that they can download and take back to their team and walk through the steps to make improvements.”
Through case studies, the coursework exemplifies strategies for enhancing performance metrics such as profitability, efficiency and employee motivation while fulfilling stakeholder demands. Courses include:
- Improving Governance
- Improving Margins
- Improving Capacity Investment and Consumption
- Improving Coordination and Efficiency
- Improving Direction, Motivation, and Society
- Accountability in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
The program takes a broad view in the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” course that explores artificial intelligence, managing remote workers and navigating new business opportunities as they present further accounting possibilities.
Designed for leaders at all levels, from CEOs to new managers, the program offers insights not just for accountants or financial experts, but for anyone looking to enhance their organization’s operational efficiency.
“The program uses a general framework that applies to any type of organization and accountability for any type of performance. It’s incredibly versatile,” Bloomfield said.
Bloomfield emphasizes that his approach offers a unified framework for problems that allows leaders to address a wide range of issues.
“Management accounting was originally developed for addressing concerns about financial performance, entirely for the benefit of investors. That’s not enough for leaders, who must now address concerns about social, environmental and even moral performance, for the benefit of communities, employees and countless other stakeholders,” Bloomfield said. “This program helps leaders address any concern for any stakeholder as Cornell supports ‘… any person … any study.’”
Enroll in the Management Accounting for Leaders certificate program and unlock a framework for improving accountability and operational efficiency in any business.
