Accounting and Finance MSc
16 Months Full-Time | January Start

Financial Planning and Control module consolidates current advances in theory and research into the field of management accounting. It will develop your analytical and interpretative skills concerning the practical concepts of financial planning and control and problem structuring, financial information and the practical issues surrounding the role of management accounting within an organisational context, critical examination of the role of accounting in the areas of managerial decision making, strategic cost management approaches, planning, control (including budgeting), transfer pricing, divisional performance measurement and behavioural implications.

Corporate Reporting and Analysis module focuses on corporate reports and financial statement analysis. To achieve the module goals and learning objectives, this module will comprise topics, such as a consideration of corporate reports use and usefulness, the regulation of corporate reporting, form and content of financial reports, and a critical understanding of the conceptual framework of the IASB. This module will facilitate a critical review and discussion of financial statement characteristics and International Accounting Standards. Furthermore, the module will introduce students to different financial analysis techniques that facilitate the critical assessment and interpretation of accounts and corporate financial performance. This module will also discuss the development of Integrated Reporting and its future. Additionally, the module will help you to identify and evaluate different types of Impression Management in corporate reports. Finally, the module will introduce and incorporate the contemporary topics in accounting, such as big data, digitalisation, automation, and other technologies that shape the future of accounting profession.

You will be able to develop your knowledge and critical appreciation of Audit, Corporate Governance, and Ethics. This module will combine theoretical and practical knowledge of the audit process, fraud detection and professional ethics and engage with academic research about audit and its role in society. It will enable you to gain knowledge of the principles of the auditing profession using international standards on auditing and to examine the practice of auditing and the underlying concepts, including the need for an independent audit and the development of the role of internal and external auditors in the business society; audit risk and assurance; and audit evidence. It will also connect to the international aspects of corporate governance, including audit committees, corporate governance models and theories, and the role of corporate governance in recent corporate scandals.

In this module you will learn about a comprehensive range of research methods and business analytics techniques. This will equip you with the knowledge and practical skills necessary for you to conduct research at Masters’ level and prepare you to complete a Master’s Dissertation, Consultancy Project or Management Enquiry. By the end of the module you will know how to apply both quantitative and qualitative data collection and business analysis techniques. In quantitative techniques you will learn about sampling, questionnaire design, statistical inference, and hypothesis testing while qualitative techniques covered will include methods such as interviewing and focus groups. Analysis methods such as content analysis and thematic analysis will also be covered. In addition, you will gain some understanding of research philosophy (positivism and interpretivism) and research ethics and you will be able to write a research proposal to bring these ideas together.
Furthermore, this module will provide clear, critical, and analysis of data, you will also be able to consider the use of analytics implementation skills, where you will be introduced to analytics software such as SPSS. SPSS statistics analysis is one of the powerful solutions that is designed to help businesses and researchers to solve problems by various methods (geospatial analysis, predictive analytics and hypothesis testing).

Studying away from your home country can differ due to cultural and language differences in teaching and assessment practices. This

module is designed to support your transition to postgraduate level study in the use and practice of subject specific skills around assessments

and teaching provision in your chosen subject. The overall aim of this module is to further develop your abilities to read and study effectively

for academic purposes; to develop your skills in analysing and using source material in seminars and academic writing and to develop your

use and application of language and communications skills suitable for a postgraduate level of study.

The topics you will cover on the module include:

• Understanding postgraduate assignment briefs.

• Developing advanced academic writing skills, including citation, paraphrasing, and summarising.

• Practising advanced ‘critical reading’ and ‘critical writing’

• Planning and structuring postgraduate level academic assignments (e.g. essays, reports and presentations).

• Avoiding academic misconduct and gaining credit by using academic sources and referencing effectively.

• Speaking in postgraduate seminar presentations.

• Presenting your ideas

• Giving discipline-related postgraduate level academic presentations, experiencing peer observation, and receiving formative feedback.

• Postgraduate level speed reading techniques.

• Developing self-reflection skills.

The module introduces you to core concepts regarding the objective of finance, how capital is first raised and then deployed into wealth creating operations and then how wealth is then returned to the providers of capital in an optimal way. At the end of the module you should be able to demonstrate in-depth knowledge of the fundamentals of corporate finance and develop the skills and ability to analyse corporate finance decisions in both quantitative and qualitative terms. You will also undertake an individual research project looking into capital market efficiency.

In this module you will gain a fundamental understanding of the concepts and theories operating within international financial markets, the financial institutions/participants that comprise the market and its regulation. Your learning will begin a the macro level, examining the financial system as a whole, the different institutions that comprise it, their roles within it and how they are regulated (with specific reference to banking). You will learn about market dynamics – what drives markets and finally what drives the markets for specific instruments, namely money market instruments, equities and fixed income. To apply the knowledge acquired in this module, you will be using financial information and data. You will also use basic financial arithmetic and statistics through Microsoft Excel.

This option is offered as an alternative to the NBS Masters’ Dissertation on all 1-year MSc programmes and in the second semester of year 2 on the 2-year programme variants with Study Abroad and with Advanced Practice (if the students select an Internship in semester 1), again as a Dissertation alternative. It is also offered as alternative to the Management Investigation on the MBA.

On this consultancy based module you will enhance your individual effectiveness and employability skills by locating the learning and development in an organisational context. In doing so, you will promote personal and group development, commercial awareness, and a range of inter-personal, intellectual and practical skills and knowledge centred on and demonstrated through a group negotiated real-time work-based project.

The content of the management report will be unique. The nature and scope of the area of your investigation will be defined and agreed in collaboration with the organisation and the University supervisor. The syllabus will include:

• Conducting research in organisations.
• Identifying researchable questions.
• Consultancy and project management skills.
• Research methods and doing a literature review
• Presentation, communication and report writing skills.
• Analysing findings.
• Writing recommendations and action plans.
• Reflecting on work based experiential learning.

In undertaking this project based module, you will critically reflect and evaluate upon organisational practices and their relation with academic theory, and in doing so, provide practical and actionable recommendations through an investigative management report.

The assessment for your module consists of a Group Consultancy Report (7,000 words) and Final Client Presentation, weighted at 60%, alongside an Individual Assignment comprising a Literature Review (4000 words) and a Reflective Learning Statement (2,000 words), weighted at 40%.

In this module you will gain an understanding of the academic skills that are required to produce a Masters Dissertation. By the end of the module you will have written a 15000 word Masters dissertation. The areas included are:

• Justification for the choice of topic
• Appropriate understanding, awareness and critical analysis of existing and up to date literature evidenced by a comprehensive and well-referenced literature review with an extensive reference list
• Selection, justification and application of an appropriately rigorous methodology - including limitations of the approach selected
• Clear statement of the findings of the research
• Critical analysis of the findings
• Explicit links between the analysis and the conclusions supported by critical argument
• Evidence of original work or thought for example in the form or context of the data collected, analytical process or application of findings

The Masters’ Management Enquiry module is a student-led individual project that enables you to undertake a significant piece of assessed

work commensurate with a capstone module and is offered as an alternative to the Masters’ Dissertation and Masters’ Consultancy Project.

The module aims to provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate an authentic engagement with managers and/or professionals in your

discipline (this enquiry has to be discipline specific), and to integrate the knowledge you have developed during your programme to explore

the theory in practice. The learning on this module is experiential and problem based, where the focus is upon you discovering, probing and

questioning key practice-based issues. Through the module you will be offered the opportunity to develop and enhance key transferable

employability skills including; time management, project management, communication (written, aural and verbal), negotiation, persuasion and

influence, discovery, initiative, problem-solving and analysis.


The module has five thematic areas; explore, review, engage, reflect and connect. These form the key elements of the assessed submission

which is a single 15,000 word report.


Part A (35%, 5,000-5,500 words)

Explore: Interviewing a manager and/or professional in your discipline. In this interview you will either explore a key issue which you feel the

discipline is facing or, alternatively, explore with the manager or professional the key issues that they feel they are facing in practice. It is

expected that you will apply non-verbatim documented conversation and provide evidence of the key ideas emerging within the submitted

enquiry report (e.g. within the appendices).

Review: Critically examining the academic and practitioner literature to support the exploration, displaying an ability to critically assess and

appraise the knowledge of your discipline related to a specific key issue arising from your exploration.


Part B (65%, 9,500-10,000 words)

Engage: Displaying an authentic engagement with the discipline problem/issue identified in Part A, by collecting/generating and analysing

further live data (beyond the initial interview) regarding the discipline problem/issue. This live data may be primary data (e.g. further interviews

with, or questionnaire to, managers and/or professionals in practice) or secondary data (e.g. industry data). Application of appropriate,

ethically-considered, research methods and appropriate qualitative or quantitative data analysis.

Reflect and Connect: Demonstrating an ability to critically evaluate and reflect on the issues arising from the Management Enquiry.

Demonstrating how you have connected and fed-back to the participants of the Enquiry (usually the manager and/or participants) your key

findings to provide clear prioritised, well-justified, practical and actionable recommendations for change/enhancement/improvement to existing

practice to show how the recommendations would potentially affect workplace professional decision making.