Accounting & Finance Reflection on Decision Making in Business

This assignment is a reflective piece discussing key learnings from a finance course, particularly the importance of decision-making in business. The student highlights the roles of management and financial accounting, emphasizing how they support decision-making for internal and external stakeholders, respectively. The reflection covers the significance of financial statements in personal investment decisions and the application of management accounting within a business context. It stresses the importance of considering value creation for shareholders, ethical considerations, and the role of accounting information systems. The student emphasizes the impact of technology on finance, and how these aspects will be crucial in their professional life. Key references include works by McLaney & Atrill, Petty et al., and Heisinger.

Accounting & Finance
Reflection
STUDENT ID:
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The key aspect learned relates to the importance of decision making in business. In this
regards, useful tools such as management accounting and financial accounting are quite
useful. While management accounting enables decision making by managers and
management inside the company, the financial accounting enables decision making by
external users such as shareholders and creditors (McLaney & Atrill, 2017). This difference
between the two is pivotal as this would have implications in my personal and professional
life. In personal life, when making investing decisions in a stock, I would have to evaluate
the financial statements released by the company. In my capacity as a manager, I would need
to take decisions with regards to the organisation where management accounting would be
immensely helpful.
Also, it is noteworthy that the company is not only driven by profit but value creation for
shareholders. In order to enable the same sustainably., it is essential that business must
consider other stakeholders while taking strategic decisions. Further, any decisions taken with
the objective of maximising short term profits without consideration to long term profits
could prove to be disastrous especially if it is unethical or harmful for society or environment
(Petty et. al., 2016). In regards to taking decisions, accounting information systems are
crucial owing to the real time detailed information that these provide. Such technological aids
are quite helpful especially in relation to planning for the future. All these aspects would be
quite helpful in my professional life as going forward the role of technological aids would
increase only (Heisinger, 2014).
References
Heisinger, K.(2014) Essentials of Managerial Accounting 4th ed. London: Cengage Learning.
McLaney, E. & Atrill, P. (2014) Accounting and Finance: An Introduction, 7th ed. Harlow:
Pearson Education Limited
Petty, J.W., Titman, S., Keown, A.J., Martin, P., Martin J.D. and Burrow, M.(2015),
Financial Management: Principles and Applications 6th ed. Sydney: Pearson Australia