Australian-British team-teaching

Professor Dr. Keith Cleland (Australia) ran again two seminars on financial management together with his colleague Paul Davis (UK) in Kyiv and Odessa. For both of them this was the second time in 2006 that they came to Ukraine to conduct this session for Ukrainian IBR MBA students.

Students were highly impressed how this joint Australian - British approach to financial planning, financial accounting and managerial accounting impacted on their own companies. The two weeks were facilitated by Mrs Anna Demidyuk, a graduate of the IBR MBA programme who implemented successfully all principles in her own business.

Professor Cleland's approach to financial management has very practical implications for the real business. The bottom line was to equip students to design a real time controlling system that would allow the business to control net profit. "Reading traditional financial statements is like reading newspapers that were printed three months ago", explains Professor Cleland with a big smile on his face. "Our task as academics is to assist students in designing management information systems that would allow them to analyse the company's profitability as of today. Once we are able to do that an information system becomes like a control panel in a car where the driver usually keeps watching the speedometer. The driver is interested in real time speed in order to avoid unpleasant encounters with the police. He is not interested in reading on the speedometer how fast he went several months ago."