Keeping up with Change: Issues for the Finance Professional

his MOOC identifies and explores a number of challenges to the finance professional arising from the ever changing business environment. Increasingly, financial decisions must take account of strategic consequences. 

The first module, Exploring Strategic Position, Choice and Action helps in doing that – setting a strategic context for planning for, monitoring and controlling projects and activities. An on-going set of challenges is found in the evolution of International Reporting Standards. 

The second module focuses on some recent changes in Standards, identifying the drivers for changes, and examining evolution in controversial areas such as leasing and goodwill. 

The third and final module, Corporate Governance, examines issues which are causing people to re-assess the nature, purpose and scope of corporate governance, and challenges to making governance function effectively. Key issues here are the move to include a broader range of stakeholders, the perennial challenge of agency theory issues, shareholder activism, changing Board structures, and challenges to internal control to better manage risk. 

This MOOC will be right for you if you are interested in engaging with some of the challenges facing finance professionals, even if you are not one yourself. If you are thinking about returning to study this will provide a taster of academic endeavours through reading articles, critiquing ideas, and blending theory with reality