Accounting, Finance and Economics Foundation Year

This module is designed to develop your understanding of professional practice in accounting, finance and economics. It will empower you to develop a commercial mind-set and will give you the opportunity to find out about what it means to work in accounting, finance and economics sectors. You will become more confident in generating and implementing new ideas and will begin to develop your own network of business contacts.





You will deepen your understanding of what it means to work in accounting, finance and economics through a series of lectures and seminars. You will engage with experienced professionals working in accounting, finance and economics through guest lectures and round table discussions that will enable you to deepen your understanding of what it is like to work in your chosen field.





The module centres on collaboration and teamwork, and your team will be required to secure, conduct and record an interview with an established professional and share your experience with the rest of the group (50%). You will also be required to prepare an individual reflective journal mapping your own personal development and experiences (50%). This will enable you to develop group work skills, project management skills, communication skills and reflective practice.

This module provides you with the knowledge and skills of applying a variety of practical mathematical and statistical methods that are used to analyze and interpret financial data. On the side of mathematics, you will be introduced to a range of subject specific formulas, and related operations such as factoring, grouping, and transposition. This will be used as an opportunity to review key notation and basic mathematical operations. Subsequently, linear and some important non-linear functions will be examined in the context of main theories from economics and finance. In particular, supply and demand theory and the time value of money concepts will be used as key contexts in the example of how important formulas are derived. On the side of statistics, you will be exposed to formal descriptive statistics and introduced to the key probability distribution functions such as Binomial, Poisson and Normal. You will use the named probability distribution functions to learn how to formally formulate hypotheses.

This module will to introduce you to key concepts of corporate finance, theories and practice in a business environment. The module covers core aspects ranging from organisational goals, adding value to shareholders to raising finance. Specifically, you will study financial objectives of the corporation, shareholder vs. stakeholders interests, capital structure, decision-making and, the basics of mergers and acquisitions.


Responsible financial management is at the heart of business decision making. This includes how firms raise finance and the relationship between the business and its stakeholders. This module will develop your awareness of contemporary financial issues and academic literature surrounding such issues through a research rich approach to teaching. The module explores case studies alongside interactive lectures designed to develop analytical thinking skills. In addition, this will cultivate your business curiosity regarding commercial and professional activity in accounting, finance and economics. Lectures will be supported by seminars, which enable students to examine the cases and lecture topics in greater detail.


The module will engage you with reading and analysing key stories, cases and events in the business press over the last few years, particularly in the Financial Times (which you will have a free university subscription to). In addition, the module introduces you to the Newcastle Business School Trading Room, a high tech platform specialist software that gives you access to financial and market data and, global news and insights.

This module aims to develop your curiosity and interest of ethical decision making in business, and to help you understand what ethics means from both an individual and organisational perspective. The module will enable you to develop an awareness of ethical dilemmas in business and challenge you to discuss and debate ethical decision-making as a future employer or employee.

The module further engages you in collecting, reading and reflecting on past business news, events and case studies where ethical dilemmas have been prominent, and will encourage you to use the knowledge you will gain from interactive lectures to contribute to wider discussion and critical debate about ethical issues in business. In particular, this module will support you in developing a strong commercial awareness around ethics in business today, and leave you with the skills needed to foster good ethical understanding needed throughout your degree and future.

At the end of the module, students will also be able to understand and critically discuss the concepts and topics of corporate social responsibility, as well as business’ responsibility towards sustainability and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

This module is designed to develop your understanding of the role that data and data analytics plays in organisations. The module will introduce you to various data sources. It will empower you to build an understanding of how to collect and analyse data. You will become confident in locating data, interpreting and analysing it to facilitate business decisions.

What and where?
You will consider the different forms of data and learn to recognise data, examining fields, records and tables and carry out searching, filtering and querying. You will receive an introduction to specific databases that are available in the economic arena including an initial introduction to (indicative examples) the Newcastle Business School Trading room, Eurostat, FAME (Financial Analysis Made Easy) and OSIRIS in addition to data sources (including electronic journals) available within the library at Northumbria so you can use these throughout your career. You will learn how to locate company, industry, market and country reports.

Analysing the data
You will also build simple models in Excel to facilitate the simple analysis of trading and profitability for different organisations. You will receive a basic introduction to Excel covering simple functions such as =COUNT, =MAX, =MIN, =AVERAGE etc. and build formulas to manipulate data. You will learn how to make valid comparisons and recommend appropriate business decisions.

Presenting the data
You will learn how to present to an audience in such a way that they can understand the key findings you have discovered. You will learn about different graphs/charts and how to present them appropriately.

Employment in data
This section briefly considers employment roles/tasks within the data and analytics fields e.g. being a Data Officer and how data is handled within organisations in line with data protection legislation such as GDPR.

In this module you will explore the contemporary issues that are impacting the world of Accounting, Finance and Economics today. You will be able to understand and critically apprise the issues in order to demonstrate how these contemporary issues are likely to shape the future of the Accounting, Finance and Economics landscape. For example:





Accounting


The rise of Artificial Intelligence and changing nature of the Accounting profession


Global Accounting standard harmonisation


Governance and its impact on companies






Finance


COVID-19 (Global Pandemics) and market volatility


Open Banking


Development of FinTech


Development of RegTech






Economics


Global financial crisis


China/USA trade war


Brexit for macroeconomics






You will be assessed my means of a continuous professional development (CPD) event. You will be expected to prepare a professional briefing paper and present (in your group) to a panel of academics and industry experts. In this event you will present on your chosen contemporary issue, providing a critical appraisal to demonstrate your understanding of how the issue will impact the Accounting, Finance or Economics landscape. This will involve you carrying out research on a topic and being able to find innovative and interesting ways to disseminate that research to the experts and your peers during the event.