Teaching an integrated accounting and finance course in the MBA curriculum.

Teal, Mary D. ; Krishnan, V. Sivarama

INTRODUCTION

Traditionally academia has encouraged specialization, perhaps with the goal of developing in-depth knowledge and expertise in specified disciplines. This has been true in business schools as well as in other areas. This functional or discipline based specialization has led to curriculums that are dominated by or comprised almost entirely of courses designed on functional lines. Thus, the typical business curriculum included discipline based or functional courses taught by instructors who are specialists in one field (Richards-Wilson, 2002).

While these courses provided discipline-wise learning, they often lacked interdisciplinary insights and perspectives that are needed for real life business decision making. While business schools can be said to be aware of their market and the needs of their stakeholders, curricular changes have lagged behind the changing needs of businesses. This was especially true until the late 1980s. However, since the oft-cited Porter-McKibbin work (Porter and McKibbin (1988)) that provided a trenchant critique of what is wrong with business education in general and MBA programs in particular, business schools have attempted to address the perceived short-comings of their curriculums.

Even with this, there are many critics (e,g, Mintzberg, 2004) who see the changes as not enough or not the right kind. One of the widely recommended changes was the need for more courses that offer cross-disciplinary and integrated content combining more than one functional discipline.

This study describes the unique and challenging experience of teaching an integrated, cross-disciplinary course combining accounting and finance, as part of one such transformation that took place in a regional state university in the southwest United States. The course is part of an innovative MBA program that is comprised entirely of cross-disciplinary, team-taught courses. A key innovation is that all the courses are offered through a class-room-plus-online hybrid format, where a quarter of the instruction and faculty-student interaction takes place online. This hybrid approach, as far as we know, is not part of the other integrated courses that have been the subject of extant literature. The approach has also enabled efficient use of faculty resources as well as student time spent in the classroom.

BACKGROUND OF THIS STUDY

The Need for Change

Business schools and MBA programs have seen tremendous growth since the 1950s. This growth was primarily driven by the need for managers in growing American businesses. The business curriculums of the fifties were criticized for lacking in academic rigor (Wharton, 1991). These criticisms were addressed by business schools and curriculums were redesigned and more academically qualified faculty members were recruited. Curriculums have also seen changes over time while attempting to match the needs of the prospective employers of business graduates.

The changes, however, were lagging and less responsive to the business needs and over time they became less dynamic than required. Next, the 1980s brought a different kind of criticism of MBA programs. This was a time of increasing foreign competition, especially from many successful Japanese companies. American MBA programs were criticized for being too quantitatively oriented and for being partly responsible for the competitive decline of American corporations. This period also saw rapid changes in businesses induced by technology and globalization with a resultant breaking down of the barriers of functional departmentalization (Elliott & Goodwin, 1994).

Porter and McKibbin (1988) called for a new set of skills involving, among other things, breadth of knowledge, internationalization, "soft" skills, and integration of disciplines. This was the background that caused the Wharton School to drastically change its MBA curriculum in 1991. The new curriculum (Wharton, 1991) was built on cross-functional, inter-disciplinary core courses.

The change in Wharton's program was followed by similar changes in several other programs. Criticisms of the MBA curriculums, though, have continued and the quest for change appears to be constant (Segev, Raveh, & Farjoun, 1999). Kedia and Harveston (1998) argue that globalization and the threat of increased foreign competition have caused a change in the type of managers needed by American businesses and therefore business schools need to change their programs to match these needs. The authors also see the competition from the "corporate universities" as a potential threat to traditional university based MBA programs. RichardsWilson (2002) suggests that globalization, technology, and competition--forces that drive businesses to constantly innovate--are also the drivers that put pressure on business schools to change their programs. She reviews extant research on program improvement and recommends a stakeholder-needs driven approach.

Blass and Weight (2005) review the criticisms of MBA programs and what they consider potentially fatal issues that could lead to the demise of the MBA as a leading educational program. Among the major issues identified by them is the gap between the needs of businesses and what is provided in a typical MBA program. Segev and Raveh (1999) use a strategic group framework to study the structures of the top twenty-five MBA programs in the U.S. and the changes that are taking place. The authors suggest that the top business schools are affected by the rankings published by Business Week or the US News and World Report. Their analysis, however, showed that redesigning the program structure, by itself, did not lead to a better ranking.

Integrated Courses as Curricular Innovation

The University of Central Oklahoma (UCO) based in Edmond, Oklahoma in its response to the changing needs of its stakeholders, redesigned its MBA program in 2006. The new program includes several unique features and comprises seven integrated, cross-disciplinary five credit hour courses as follows:

Leading in a Globally Competitive Environment

Human Capital Management

Accounting and Finance

Prices, Profits and the Market Economy

Managing Business Processes with Information Technology

Quantitative Modeling

Strategic Integration

Each of these courses is taught by a team of two instructors who are specialized in different disciplines. An innovative feature included in all the courses is that they are hybrid courses with 4 hours of face-to-face (classroom) interaction and 1-hour of course content delivered through online, e-learning medium.

The Accounting and Finance course and the Quantitative Modeling course, have been modified since the initial program restructuring in 2006. The Accounting content was originally coupled with Business Communication and Finance was initially combined with Quantitative Modeling. As part of the continuous improvement process and based on the feedback from the faculty and students, the courses were redesigned and Finance and Accounting were combined into one integrated course. The first redesigned Accounting and Finance course was offered in the spring of 2009.

Integration and Team Teaching

Combining topics that are traditionally taught in a stand-alone functional course into an integrated, cross-disciplinary course would be a novel and most likely challenging task for most. The challenge is even greater when integration is combined, as is the case most of the time, with team teaching and sharing the classroom and other resources and tasks with another colleague with a different academic specialization and expertise. Obviously, this requires a lot of planning, coordination and willingness to see the other person's viewpoints and perspectives at every stage of the course design, preparation, classroom delivery and execution. Ford (2007) describes his experience of teaching legal studies integrated into the human capital management course at UCO. Helms, Alvis, and Willis (2005) describe their experience with a course that combined accounting with manufacturing strategy. They suggest that integration and team teaching, while challenging, offers a number of benefits including cross-disciplinary learning and multiple viewpoints and perspectives in the learning process.

Helms, Alvis, and Willis (2005) citing earlier work describe three approaches to the actual classroom teaching process. The interactive approach involves both instructors sharing the podium simultaneously and at all times. This approach would require both instructors to be well versed in both disciplines and lecture or at least comment on all or most of the topics that are discussed in class. In the participant-observer approach the two professors, while always present in class, take turns and lecture independently and may offer comments on each other's lectures and discussions. The third approach, labeled rotational approach, involves very little classroom interaction between the two instructors. Each teaches separately, most likely on separate days, and are not required to be present while the other is teaching, Obviously, this involves a lower level of cross-disciplinary learning but also requires less resource commitments on the part of the instructors.

For this course, the authors of this study adopted the approach that lies somewhere between the fully interactive approach and the participant-observer approach. Each instructor lectured or presented their respective topics using assigned time slots, but the other instructor is always present and is free to offer comments and viewpoints that may be relevant from her (his) disciplinary perspective. This approach seems to be working well so far. In fact, instructors work to transition between approaches as the relevant coursework allows.

Course Design

Substantial planning and preparation goes into the design and delivery of any course. This task becomes more challenging in an integrated, cross-disciplinary course where one has to share time and other course resources with a colleague who possibly has a different perspective. In order to make integration and team teaching work, the team members have to be willing to adjust, be agreeable to possessing less control and be prepared to compromise. In short, this process is equivalent to working as an efficient and an effective team. Moreover, this will not happen without some conscious and concerted effort on the part of the respective instructors involved. According to Ford (2008), this is not an isolated observation. That is, courses modeled in this manner require specialized attention in key areas in order to realize success.

The first step in the design of the integrated Accounting and Finance course was a preliminary brain storming meeting between the course instructors in early fall of 2008, months before the first day of the semester. It was necessary to distinguish and to address both the faceto-face and the online facets of the course. The meeting culminated with a tentative design plan that included a skeleton of a typical class session with its related online content and an exchange of a proposed topic coverage listing presented by each instructor.

Also, at this time, each instructor attended and completed phases of a technology course offered for the development of the online course content modules. During this period, it was determined that each in class session would be linked to a corresponding online category. The intent was to create an environment that duplicated the in class format while providing supplemental information and additional assignments. To promote uniformity for all integrated MBA courses, additional MBA faculty meetings were conducted to establish a standardized set of online categories and features.

Meanwhile, the respective department members were kept in the loop as the broad outline of the Accounting and Finance course was developed. In summary, all course resources, including class time and online content, were to be shared more or less equally between the two disciplines.

Course Content

The finance instructor started with the following list of topics to be covered:

* Introduction to Financial Markets, Interest Rates

* Financial Statements

* Financial Analysis

* Time Value of Money

* Asset Valuation (Bonds and Stocks)

* Risk, Return, and Cost of Capital

* Capital Budgeting and Investment Decisions

* Financing Decisions and Capital Structure

* Dividend Policy

* Short-term Financial Management

* Introduction to International Finance

While the accounting instructor proposed the following topics:

* Financial and Managerial Accounting

* Basic Concepts

* Business Organizations

* Planning, predicting and recording performance

* Using analytical review for internal purposes

* Using relevant information for internal purposes

* Using financial statement analysis

* External financial reporting

As noted in Ford (2008), it is essential to observe that the fundamental discipline material can and should remain intact in an integrated course. However, there may be other topics between the disciplines that overlap. For example, several of the aforementioned topics financial statements, financial analysis, bond valuation, time value of money, and capital budgeting--were included in both topic lists. At that point, it was determined that topic duplication would not occur unless it highlighted distinctive aspects or linked the subject matter of the two disciplines. As a result, the first two duplicated topics, financial statements and financial analysis, were designated to be covered by the accounting instructor. And, bond valuation, time value of money and capital budgeting were assigned to the finance instructor. These topics tended to be the areas that received numerous comments and discussion from both instructors during the associated class session.

The course also incorporated a progressive group project assignment that is accomplished in phases concurrently with the related course work. The objective of the project is to enable students to apply the tools and the skills learned in the course to a practical real life problem. The assignment is a research project that involves the study and analysis of a company of the student's choice within a predetermined industry. The student is required to review and to comment on various aspects of the company including the company's capital structure, dividend policy, investment decisions and general performance. The student is challenged to obtain as much information as possible about their project company. This assignment allows students to gain ready experience by using their emergent skills.

Course Delivery

Instructors made a decision that each class session would be designed to be shared using a two-third to one-third time split. Specifically, the two-thirds time allotment is initially given to the topic of Accounting for the first half of a semester. This arrangement provides an opportunity to establish a pertinent and fundamental foundation in Financial Accounting. This serves as a basis for enhanced understanding of crucial elements in the Finance section. All along, integration is continually applied as interrelated topics arise.

During the second half of a semester, the time arrangement is reversed and Finance is given the two-thirds allocation. It is at this point that the Accounting section engages students in the Managerial Accounting facet during the one-third time distribution. However, throughout this period, a variation of hybrid approaches continues. For instance, there is at least one class where instructors join in an interactive case and provide concurrent instruction. There is also an occasion when each instructor assumes an entire class session in order to focus on specific course content that necessitates a little more time and consideration.

The course delivery also included significant online content and this enabled a more efficient utilization of the class time. This online area included a component for each class session. The online content was organized in session folders. These particular sections provided assignment details, session notes and materials, and an overview summary of each session. In essence, the online material in this area could be used for advance preparation, for reinforcement purposes or in order to supplement for a missed class period. Other incorporated online aspects consisted of elements such as quizzes, films and videos, discussion forums, chat sessions, and resource web links.

Integration--Challenges and Opportunities

Integrated courses have a propensity to offer added challenges which typically lend to corresponding opportunities. Ford (2007) cites integration challenges in the form of administrative, logistical and practical types. We use this section to note our main challenges in these areas.

Among our specific challenges is the fact that the students included a number of non-business majors who had no prior courses in either accounting or finance. This issue provided an occasion to offer a leveling quiz. This leveling quiz is administered prior to the first class session in order to assist students in building a preliminary course foundation. The quiz content included both accounting and finance topics. It gathers pertinent student background information and presents a representative combination of questions that address both disciplines. This quiz is also administered at the end of the course for assessment purposes. To date, the data has shown that almost all students performed better on the second quiz, and the majority performed substantially better than their initial quiz attempt. Furthermore, it is also assumed that students have no prior knowledge or experience with these topics.

An optimal course addition would be the adoption of a single textbook. Since there is no existing text that meets this criterion, this presents a unique opportunity for the market. It has been suggested that publishers can parse chapters from existing books and join them into one text. This proposal still essentially results in two books that reference each topic separately. The ideal composition would be a merged document with the two disciplines interwoven as applicable. Despite this absence, there is ongoing work with the existing content to foster a dynamic correlation.

Another matter is the effective coordinated delivery of discipline topics. This involves the joint combination of subject matter using team centered approaches. In this case, it is pertinent to review and employ demonstrated team teaching techniques. This includes team teaching methods like the Lecture-In-Disguise. Barkai (1989) introduced this method as one that uses simulation to present course materials. This method replaces the traditional lecture and can be as simplistic as a conversation between instructors. Another distinctive approach involves an adaptive crosscourse collaboration effort (Hamilton, 2000).

The Hamilton method involves cooperative group projects. Here, the writing assignment involves the linking of two separate disciplines. The associated group is suggested to be comprised of at least one student from each discipline who is familiar with the subject matter. Basically, in this specific instance, the finance student would explain the finance concept while the other students perform the related work under the finance student's guidance. This process would likewise be reversed and turn to the accounting student(s) in that particular area.

Finally, each instructor would evaluate the work and provide feedback in their related subject matter. This is somewhat similar to the final course project that is currently assigned in the integrated course. The current group project advances applied skills in highly integrated topics such as cash flows, ratio analysis and financial statement analysis and calls for functional integration. The use of such approaches requires cooperative teaching styles and a meeting of personalities between instructors.

A unique challenge is created when two distinct teaching styles are present in one course. Here, each instructor's customary teaching method is subjected to observation and adaptation based on the presence of an additional instructor. As Ford (2007) suggests, this interdisciplinary approach may not suit every instructor, because major adjustments may be necessary. The necessity for modification is driven by the prevailing objective to achieve coordination in the classroom. In part, this stems from the integrated course's added component of another instructor's viewpoint.

This additive has a tendency to stimulate new ideas and new perspectives. However, this interaction is to be expected given that two disciplines can treat the same concept differently. That is, there are varying alternative theories and diverse approaches that now have the opportunity to surface. Moreover, these concepts could be purely debatable and demonstrated as such. These types of applied demonstrations assist in connecting the referenced gaps that MBA programs have been urged to close as students prepare for employment. Overall, in order to leave the student with a foundation, one vital condition when introducing and discussing concepts in these settings is the clear articulation of the supporting or basic principles (Ford, 2007).

These experiences also support an instructor's ability to gain knowledge in another discipline. When team-teaching, it is essential for instructors to embrace all the aspects of integration including the unexpected. With this type of shared exposure, individual teaching styles can operate to complement each other. For instance, an instructor may discover new techniques while modifying or eliminating other techniques. This is a form of self-evaluation not found in a solo classroom- that supports instructor accountability and improvement. Finally, the different methods can also benefit and serve the students' varied learning styles (Ford, 2007).

When two personalities meet, it is important for each instructor to become familiar with the other instructor's personality in order to establish an essential working relationship. It is crucial to foster consecrated efforts that facilitate and prompt agreement between instructors. This is integrated communication to the extent that one instructor can answer on behalf of the other. Students should not view a difference when approaching one professor in lieu of another. One effective way to accomplish this advantage is by sharing with or copying, in the case of email, the other professor on all correspondence with students. This way, there is no discrepancy about an instructor's standpoint and an answer can be readily duplicated or offered by either instructor without a doubt. This process should be likened to having one instructor. According to Ford (2007), this uniform front is built both inside and outside of the classroom.

CONCLUSION

Business schools face continuous pressure and constant demand for improving and updating curriculums to meet the changing needs of businesses that employ business graduates. One innovation that is becoming more common is integration of course content. This study describes a unique teaching experience that involved the designing of and delivering of an integrated accounting and finance course. The course is part of an innovative MBA program that is comprised entirely of cross-disciplinary, integrated courses that are taught by teams of two instructors with different academic backgrounds. An additional innovative component is that part of the course content is delivered online.

The Accounting and Finance course integrated the two disciplines as seamlessly as possible. The two instructors shared classroom resources productively and used a participant-observer approach where they were always present in the classroom and participated in the discussions whenever their expertise allowed. This approach enabled the students to appreciate the linkages across the disciplines as well as the different perspectives that might be called for when making decisions.

This format is recommended for programs or classes where resources, such as classrooms, are scarce or limited. Furthermore, if a streamlined MBA model is desired, degree candidates can benefit from this consolidated credit hour approach. There are also added opportunities to capitalize on the diversified uses of technology and its related tools in an academic setting. In addition, instructors have an occasion to expand and to enhance their discipline knowledge and their teaching experience. This is an inventive method that may become the new face of today's MBA program in order to assist graduates as they face an ever evolving climate.

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About the Authors:

Mary D. Teal graduated from the University of Central Oklahoma with a Bachelor's of Science in Accounting and a Master's of Business Administration. She received her Juris Doctorate from Oklahoma City University. She has vast experience in Law, Corporate Accounting, Oil and Gas Accounting, Technology and Entrepreneurship. She currently serves as an Assistant Professor in the Accounting Department at the University of Central Oklahoma. Her research interests include the development of innovative teaching techniques in accounting.

V. Sivarama Krishnan is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Central Oklahoma. He received his Ph.D from Texas Tech University and has published a number of articles in the areas of corporate finance, international finance, banking and personal finance.

Mary D. Teal

V. Sivarama Krishnan

University of Central Oklahoma