Department profile

To remain successful and competitive in the long term, companies should control three aspects:

• The success potentials must be identified and consistently implemented as part of strategic management
• Operative success must be planned and controlled
• A company’s liquidity must be maintained at all times

Integrated management, that is to say the area within this “triangle” of success potentials, success and liquidity, is the main focus of our work and we aim to teach and research it using both practice-oriented and theory-based approaches.

For us, management accounting is more than simply steering – and certainly much more than controlling. Instead it is about goal-oriented coordination of all decisions in a company. Our emphasis in research and teaching is on the instruments available to fulfill the coordination function and especially their effects on the behavior of a company’s decision-makers. These instruments form the basis of goal-oriented behavioral management.

The available instruments include conventional decision-oriented cost accounting, budgeting systems, KPI systems, billing systems linked to incentive systems within corporate governance, and instruments for strategy development and implementation.

Many instruments are based on distinctly quantitative, arithmetical approaches, which directly or at least indirectly result in a company’s monetary indicators. Nevertheless, our work is not limited to monetary dimensions. In fact, one of the main challenges is to develop suitable approaches to make what originally appeared to be a mere qualitative connection quantifiable. This requires establishing connections to other disciplines from both within and outside business administration.