Innovation or renovation: effective project design for accounting and MBA students

Abstract

It has long been recognized that accounting and finance students need multidisciplinary skills and most degree courses reflect this in the curriculum. In addition, the growth of business administration courses, with a high accounting and finance content, and the constant call for relevance and ‘real world’ application, has persuaded many academics that educational progress can be made by employing project-based group work to bring together diverse skills and disciplines. This paper endorses that view, but suggests that careful thought is required to match the aims of the project with the developing skills and experience of the student groups. It explores the role of project clients and student learning and also the level of faculty involvement necessary to fulfil learning objectives. These issues are explored within the context of a project on mergers and acquisitions, which combines strategy, economics, accounting and behavioural considerations and has been employed on full-time MBA courses at one UK university (disguised as ‘Utopia’ in the paper) for more than 20 years. Experience from the project suggests that renovation of old methods is often preferable to major innovations and that the involvement of outside clients needs to be thought through carefully. A semi-live close-bounded version of the project is shown to work better than an open-ended pure consultancy project.