Using cases to teach accounting concepts for engineering managers

Abstract

Basic financial accounting literacy is becoming essential in the professional life of engineers and engineering managers. Finding a way to include it in a meaningful way is a challenge in most curricula. Most texts in engineering economics offer little coverage. What is offered tends to focus on the mechanics of accounting transactions and financial ratio computations. Conceptual foundations are mostly omitted. As a richer alternative, accounting courses themselves usually consume a whole semester and spend a great deal of the course time and effort on fine points potentially of interest to budding accountants. A middle ground that emphasizes essential concepts and their logical underpinnings is needed. These concepts include accrual accounting, cash flow, value, capitalizing and expensing costs among others. A thorough list is developed in a prior ASEE paper, Graduate Engineering Economics for Engineering Managers 1 That paper provides a list of topics that should be included and makes suggestions for embedding them in a graduate course. The purpose of this paper is to develop specific learning objectives and describe a set of teaching materials and cases which have been successfully used to accomplish them. The presentation will emphasize the use of these cases and provide guidance in maximizing their learning effectiveness for an engineering management audience.