Accounting & Finance

Head of Section: Professor David Marginson

Telephone: +44 (0)29 2087 5481

Fax: +44 (0)29 2087 4419

Email: MarginsonDE@cardiff.ac.uk

Research

The Accounting and Finance Section at Cardiff Business School has an established and expanding worldwide reputation for conducting high quality theoretical and empirical research in accounting and finance and related fields.

The Section is home to a number of internationally recognised scholars and an environment where staff and students are encouraged to achieve their full potential as researchers. Section members contributed to the excellent rating achieved by Cardiff Business School in the Research the Research Assessment Exercise of 2008. Three members of staff (Professors Mahmoud Ezzamel, Stephen Walker and John Richard Edwards) were ranked in the top 10 European authors in leading accounting journals in 2006.

The Accounting and Finance Section’s research areas are broad and encompass: accounting history, corporate finance, corporate governance, financial markets, financial reporting, interdisciplinary perspectives on accounting, management accounting and control, and accounting in China. For information on the specific research contributions and expertise of the Section, please see staff members’ individual webpages.

Reflecting members’ research interests, the Section has several research groups and units:

• Accounting and Business History Research Unit
• Chinese Accounting, Finance and Business Research Unit
• Finance Research Group 
• Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Accounting Research Group

The Section is keen to receive applications from high calibre PhD candidates who may be interested in the research activities of these research groups.

Supporting the various research endeavours, the Section subscribes to a number of leading financial databases. These include Compustat, CRSP, Datastream, LSPD, WRDS, Thomson One Banker and Thomson Research.

Dissemination

Members of the Section have published papers in World elite journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Administrative Science Quarterly, The Journal of Finance, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking and Strategic Management Journal. The research output of the Section includes prize-winning papers published in Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal; Accounting and Business Research; Accounting, Business & Financial History; European Finance Management; and British Accounting Review.

The Section’s range of output extends across a number of major journals, including: Abacus, Behavioural Research in Accounting, British Journal of Management, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, European Accounting Review, Human Relations, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Management Studies, Management Accounting Research, Organization, Organization Studies, Southern Economic Journal and many more.

In recent years Section members have held primary editorial appointments with Accounting and Business Research; British Accounting Review; Accounting, Business & Financial History and Accounting Historians Journal. Others are associate editors of Journal of Banking & Finance, Journal of Corporate Finance and European Financial Management or guest editors of special themed issues of journals.

Cardiff Accounting and Finance faculty also sit on the editorial boards of a number of highly ranked journals. These include:

• Abacus
• Accounting & Business Research
• Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
• Accounting History Review
• Accounting Historians Journal
• Accounting, Organizations and Society
• British Accounting Review
• European Accounting Review
• International Journal of Auditing
• Journal of International Accounting Research
• Journal of Business Finance and Accounting
• Organization

The Section hosts a number of important conferences. Examples include the Accounting and Business History Conference in September and the International Symposia on Accounting and Management jointly organised with Peking University and Chengchi University.

The 8th Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Accounting Conference was held in Cardiff in July 2006. A one-day Conference on Managerial Compensation was held in Cardiff on 3 September 2010 and included Professor David Yermack (Stern School of Business) and Lord Myners as keynote speakers.

The 10th Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Accounting Conference is scheduled to be held in Cardiff in July 2012. The Section also produces an Accounting and Finance Working Paper Series and has a Seminar programme. Finance members hold regular workshops throughout the academic year.

Recent Distinctions, Awards and Grants

Professor Mahmoud Ezzamel won the Horglass Award in 2009 for outstanding contribution to accounting history research.

Professor Ezzamel delivered the prestigious Nan Qian Lecture at Xiamen University, China, October 2009.

Professor Mahmoud Ezzamel was a member of the Accounting and Finance Panel for the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise.

Stephen Walker was President of the Academy of Accounting Historians in 2007 and received the Academy of Accounting Historians’ Hourglass Award in 2005 for his book Towards the 'Great Desideratum'. The Unification of the Accountancy Bodies in England 1870-1880.

John Richard Edwards was the recipient of the same award in 1994 in recognition of his 'outstanding contribution to the accounting history literature’.

The success of the Accounting and Finance Section is also reflected in the research grants its members have been awarded. These include:

• CIMA 2006 £40,543 Creating and popularizing a global management account idea: The case of the balanced scoreboard, M. Ezzamel (with D. Cooper and S. Qu)
• ESRC 2006 £79,109 Learning from complexity: enabling governance frameworks, M. Goergen (with A. Al-Hawamdeh, I. Chiu, C. Malling and E. Mitleton-Kelly)
• ESRC 2005 £112,590 Risk audit methodologies. Knowledge practices and organisational legitimation, K. Robson
• ESRC 2004 £44,254 Exclusion and identity. A comparative study of accountants in the late nineteenth century, S.P.Walker and J.R. Edwards
• ICAS 2003 £16,770 The impact of political ideology on accounting regulation in China, M. Ezzamel and J. Xiao.

External Links

These include:

• A member of ICAEW Council
• A member of ACCA’s Public Sector Financial Reporting Group
• The Secretary of the British Accounting and Finance Association's Special Interest Group in Public Services Accounting
• Consultancy for the Audit Commission
• A board member of the Chinese Auditing Association
• A member of the Research Committee of the ACCA.
• A member of the research board of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants.
• The Chair of the British Accounting and Finance Association's South West Area Group.
• Research Associate of the European Corporate Governance Institute.
• A member of the ICAEW's Corporate Governance Committee.