1. General Information

The course can be selected to complete the unit “ACM09: Advanced Accounting on specific topics I”, “ACM12: Advanced Accounting on specific topics II”, or ACM15 “Electives on Accounting I”. 6 Credit points will be awarded for passing the course. To achieve these points, the students have to attend the lectures and apply what they have learnt by writing a short seminar paper (12 pages). No further examinations are required. Classes will be held in the summer semester.

Class dates in the upcoming summer semester:

Contact: Claudia Mai and Carl Wolff MSc

You can apply here until April 30, 2025.

2. Learning objectives

The unit aims at conveying the following skills and competencies:

• Enhance and supplement the students’ know-how of financial and non-financial accounting issues,
• Advance an integrated way of thinking by connecting different topics, and
• Enhance communication skills in English, both in oral discussion and by writing a paper.

3. Contents of the course

The course focusses on Sustainability. It explores the regulatory framework for sustainability reporting and assesses its impact on a business’ value chain. Starting with an overview of the regulatory framework the course will cover a) the materiality assessment, b) the impact on strategy setting, c) the impact on business planning, d) the impact on the Management Information System (MIS) and e) the impact on the work of Executive (Vorstand) and Oversight (Aufsichtsrat) Team. For each of these topics an overview will be given and the interdependencies between them will be highlighted. Each topic will be covered in a lecture and the contents will be illustrated by a continuous case study throughout the semester. The following figure shows the organization of the course.

4. Seminar paper

To pass the course students need to write a seminar paper of 12 pages. Several topics will be offered, which are all comprehensive topics. They include contents from different lectures dealt with during the course, so that the students need to combine the different issues and understand the interdependencies. Attendance of the classes will be necessary in order to write a good paper. The deadline for the paper submission is 19 October 2025. Thus, students can use the period between the semesters to compose their work, allowing them a high degree of flexibility. However, students should be aware that in this case, enrollment at the examination office is necessary for the mid-semester examination period of the winter semester 2025/26. Alternatively, paper submission is also possible with a deadline on 17 August 2025. In this case, students need to enroll at the examination office within the seminar registration period of the summer semester 2025. Their results are then part of this semester and will be published in September 2025. In addition to being the requirement to earn the credit points for this course the paper provides students with a good opportunity to practice and advance professional writing in English, a skill that can be useful both for their short-term (master’s thesis, dissertation...) and long-term (working in an international environment) future.

5. Course documents

The necessary documents will be available on Learnweb.