The IMA Case Competition provides an opportunity for students to interpret, analyze, evaluate, synthesize and communicate a solution to a management accounting problem.

Michael Hammond, senior instructor of accounting, and the late Dr. Craig Keller, former associate professor of accounting, wrote the case study used for the 2019 competition.

The case served as a tribute to Dr. Keller’s passion of managerial accounting as he passed away just two weeks prior to the case being selected by the IMA for the 2019 IMA Student Case Competition. He was a retired member of the School of Accountancy at MSU, and most recently, he was an associate accounting professor at Woodbury University in Burbank, California.

Dr. Keller’s passion for teaching management accounting, and his wife’s love of cooking, provided the inspiration to develop the study.

“Angie’s Empanadas: Pricing Decisions for a Start-Up,” was published in the August 2018 Strategic Finance magazine. The case presented a small business owner who is considering expanding her business and needs help to evaluate the first six months of operations and determine how to reach her profit goals.

Students from around the world participated. Participating countries included: China, India, Pakistan, the United States, as well as 22 countries from the Middle East. Teams submitted videos to showcase their case analysis before presenting at the IMA’s Annual Conference and Expo (ACE).

“Given that our case may have covered approximately 40 percent of the world’s student population, I was pretty excited to represent the School of Accountancy and Missouri State University,” said Hammond.

The following national and international 2019 IMA student case competition winning universities were:

• University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Lee Business School Department of Accounting, Las Vegas, Nevada
• Christ University, Bangalore, Karnataka, India
• Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, Jiangsu province, China
• American University of the Middle East, Egalia, Kuwait

The IMA has a global network of about 100,000 members in 140 countries and 300 professional and student chapters. Hammond is a member of IMA’s Greater Ozarks Chapter.