Annual Report Non-financial Information and Meeting with the MBA Director

Last Tuesday we had Corporate Financial Accounting and we were asked to identify and prepare all the non-financial information that can be found in the annual report of a publicly listed organization. We had been given this assignment before and we had submitted to the MBA manager but we received new information from Prof. Owolabi concerning the assignment and we knew we had to make what we did before better. In the past, we had been taught only about financial statements so this assignment was a bit strange to us. We found out that there is actually more non-financial information than financial information in an annual report. The financial statements are Statement of Financial Position also known as Balance Sheet, Statement of Profit or Loss, Statement of Cashflows, and Statement of Changes in Equity. Now we learnt that the non-financial information are Company Profile, Performance Indicators, Notice of Annual General Meeting, Chairmans’s Statement, Director’s Report, Corporate Governance Report and Independent Auditor’s Report.

To carry out the assignment, each group was separated into breakout zoom rooms. In my group, there are 9 of us and we divided the non-financial statements amongst ourselves. Division of labour is extremely important in group work. It makes the work easier and it gets done faster. But it can also make the work take longer in some cases as it can be difficult to get everyone to agree on something. In addition, I have noticed that in a group, some people will contribute more than others. We started our individual tasks immediately. Prof. Owolabi dropped in from time to time to monitor our progress and give us information on what he expected from us and this helped to stay focused. We were asked to finish and submit it at the end of the class but despite our best efforts we still could not finish at the end of the class. We submitted a few minutes after the submission time and I am glad the assignment was accepted.

We had a Zoom meeting with the MBA director on Wednesday and it was just an interactive session where he wanted us to give him feedback on our experience of the MBA program so far. From the feedback, it was clear the program had been really stressful for everyone. A lot of us felt that the workload was too much for someone doing a modular MBA. And the whole program was beginning to seem like a full-time MBA program because we always have several assignments to do at any given point in time. One of us did not want to speak at all because she believed it was pointless since she had been told by the previous MBA cohort that they went through the same process, complained and nothing happened. The MBA director listened attentively and responded to everyone’s concerns and he let us know that the program curriculum is fixed and there is nothing much he can do about it. He asked us to try and adjust our lifestyles to fit the program and to try and do some more tutorials.