Accounting Group

Management and Accounting in Historical Perspectives Group

This research area draws on historical interest with administrative studies (broadly defined) on many
levels.

First, it looks at management studies, questioning the field’s lack of interest in history (including its own history) while investigating reasons for and consequences of this attitude. A superficial view of the history of thoughts ignores centuries of literature in continental Europe before the business school colonization following WWII. The lack of interest towards history of practices, in whatever happened before the 1900 outside the U.S., is linked to the North American domination in the field.
Second, it looks at accounting history by using a more structured historical approach inside accounting compared to what happens in the management field. Like the management field, it shares a U.S.-Centreed view of accounting history; therefore, a call for a more pluralist attitude towards historiographies and accounting practices is requested.
Third, it looks at business history in critical ways: for example, the lack of interest in what happened before the Industrial Revolution and the Managerial Revolution.
Historical approach is considered with a global history view–avoiding the presentism and west-centric view of the mainstream in management, accounting, and business historiographies. Archival work with robust management lenses is used in various space and time contexts. Management in protoindustrial settings, long-term longitudinal analysis, industrial heritage, and history of public administrations are examples of this approach.

Organizational and strategic aspects of accounting

This stream of research focuses on understanding how accounting operates in particular organizational settings. It is an interdisciplinary field of study, including research in management and financial accounting among private, public, and not-for-profit organizations. The main research topics comprise, but are not limited to, the development of a performance management system, the impact of technologies on metrics development (business analytics, big data, artificial intelligence), the consequences of public sector reform on accountability and service delivery, price modeling, product and client profitability, the strategic planning of non-financial information, and risk management.

Regulation, financial reporting, and auditing

The work in the areas of regulation, financial reporting, and auditing remains at the cutting edge of research and contributes substantially to practice. The aim is to investigate changes in reporting regulations, capital market implications, and transformations of auditing and risk regulation regimes. Attention is paid to accounting standards issued by the international accounting standard setters on accounting, auditing, and assurance; ethics; and non-financial matters in private organizations, including SMEs (Small Medium Enterprises), and in the public sector. The research focuses on regulatory frameworks of business valuation and mergers and acquisitions. Audit and assurance practices are evolving due to the use of data analytics and the possibilities offered by new technologies and big data. In financial reporting, firms are under increasing pressure from regulators who aspire to improve audit quality. For these reasons, research in this area investigates new forms of external reporting that provide assurance via non-financial information.

Environmental, social, and governance Management and Measurement Group
Substantial attention is being given to how environmental, social, and governance-related aspects are mainstreamed into the management, measurement, and reporting practices of organizations and their impact.

Linking environmental, social, and governance-based performance measures to external reporting poses questions about how management and accounting practice should adapt or develop to contend with changing expectations.

The group considers carbon and other climate-related measurements and risks, including implications for management, financial accounting, and corporate governance, as well as developments in natural capital, intellectual capital, and other externalities. Research within this stream analyzes the impacts (behavioral, market, etc.) of emerging forms of corporate reporting and other disclosures (GRI - Global Reporting Initiative, IR - International Relations, SDGs – Social Development Goals).

The relationship between international and national regulation and the behavior of businesses, social enterprises, and public sector organizations are other topics of investigation. Given the complexity of personal and organizational ethical behavior, accounting ethics is at the Centre of our reflections in this field of research.