School of Accounting and Finance Research Day

Promoting a research culture has been a guiding aim in the School of Accounting and Finance. To this end, Research Days are regularly held wherein postgraduate students and research active staff are provided the opportunity to report on their projects and share experiences.

The program is also valuable to presenters as they receive constructive feedback to clarify current issues and /or pursue new approaches. On 21 November, the School held its second Research Day for the year. Presentations were made by PhD student Dimuthu Ekanayake, DBA student Paramin Khositkulporn and staff, Dr Chitra DeSilva, Abdi Hassan, Helen Yang and Dr Rafael Paguio. Professor Beverly Jackling, Head of the School’s Financial Education Research Unit (third from right), presided over the proceedings.

Following tradition, an external guest speaker was invited to deliver the main presentation. Greg Stoner, Senior Lecturer in Accounting and Information Systems, Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, Scotland (third from left) presented on Technology in Accounting Education. Greg called for systematically embedding Information technology in the Accounting curriculum. To pursue this, Greg proposed a holistic approach by incorporating perspectives from the Accounting discipline, desired education outcomes and practical industry requirements.

PG student presents on China Journal of Accounting Research invitation

Yongiang Li’s presents at the China Journal of Accounting Research symposium

Yongqiang Li, an APAI PhD student from Victoria Law School, was invited to China by the China Journal of Accounting Research to present a paper titled “Larger Boards Lead to Better Performance in Small Firms”, coauthored with Professor Anona Armstrong and Professor Andrew Clarke.

The paper was well received by the journal, and will appear in the forthcoming issue of CJAR. Yongqiang was fully funded by the CJAR to attend the conference in Sun Yat-sen University from 16th – 17th November, 2012. About 150 scholars from different countries/regions attended the Symposium. The conference provides state of the art of research on China-focused accounting, finance, auditing and corporate governance-related issues.

China Journal of Accounting Research (CJAR) was founded by Sun Yat-sen University, China and City University of Hong Kong in 2008. Published by LexisNexis (2008-10) and Elsevier (from 2011), CJAR aims to publish theoretical and empirical research that uses contemporary research methodology to investigate issues about accounting, finance, auditing and corporate governance in China and other markets.

Researchers from the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China have been making contributions to CJAR by actively participating in conferences organized by the Journal and by submitting their papers to the Journal. Currently, Professor Wei Minghai from Sun Yat-sen University, China and Professor Jeong-bon Kim from City University of Hong Kong are serving as co-editors of CJAR.

2013 VU Researcher Development Grant Scheme

Congratulations to the following faculty staff, who were all awarded 2013 VU Researcher Development Grants:

• Dr Torgier Watne & Assoc. Prof. Anne-Marie Hede:
  Agents of change: An investigation of how young consumers learn and pass on information about alcohol.
  The proposed study will investigate how young consumers learn, teach and develop identities around alcohol consumption by exploring ‘consumer socialisation agency’ amongst peer groups. The aim of this study is to develop a typology of alcohol identities in young consumers by investigating identity development through a social media simulation. The project proposes a bottom-up approach to social marketing centered on understanding how young consumers learn from each other with regard to alcohol and its consumption. The outcome will allow social marketers to develop campaigns that offer young consumers better behavioural alternatives.
• Dr Kamrul Ahsan & Prof Pauline Stanton
  Green practices and e-procurement: Reducing carbon footprint in public hospital procurement.Cutting operational costs, improving efficiency, and protecting environmental resources are growing concerns among government and business organisations. It is therefore essential to identify the interface issues of green and e-procurement i.e. e-green procurement, and the impact on reducing carbon footprint in the health care supply chain. With this aim, our research focuses on the Australian Government Health Purchasing regulatory bodies to analyse current practices and existing barriers of implementing green procurement and e-procurement in hospitals. Our research also identifies availability of common green practices and e-procurement processes and if together they can help to minimise the impact of carbon footprint. The study involves content analysis of policies and reports; case studies and structured interviews. Research findings will improve sustainable hospital purchasing practices and strategies, and create a model for other public sector organisations.
• Dr Gayathri Mekala & Dr Roger Jones (CSES), with Dr D Hatton Macdonald:
  Urban green infrastructure – An institutional analysis.
  While the significance and value of urban green infrastructure has been proven time and again, the questions as to why it is not a priority for urban planners and how it can be funded for healthy sustainable cities remains. The current research will do an institutional analysis of the urban green infrastructure in Melbourne West (case study area) and develop a framework which will present the different stakeholders, the distribution of governance responsibilities related to the green infrastructure and their performance. The results would provide the basis for a project proposal involving the key stakeholders identified.
• Dr Roger Bodman & Prof Roger Jones (CSES), with Dr B O’Neill & Prof P Friedlingstein: 
  Exploring science-policy links for the new generation of climate change scenarios.New scenarios developed by an international consortium for climate change research and IPCC assessments are being used to link earth systems and integrated assessment models. Although these new scenarios are appropriate for scientific research, their wider application to policy remains unclear. For many purposes, direct translation from science to policy is infeasible.
  We will use our simple, probabilistic Earth system model to explore the links between this scenario framework and policy needs. Collaboration with international modelling groups and attendance at expert meetings will result in high profile publications. ARC research proposals developed with international partners will move this agenda forward.
• Dr Riccardo Natoli & Prof Terrence Hallahan, with Dr K Ohtsuka:
  Identifying a financial literacy risk profile in the CALD communities – A case study of the Vietnamese community.

The Australian Competitive Research Symposium

On Friday 28 September, VU held a heat for the inaugural Australian Competitive Research Symposium.

The VU heat involved 9 of our VU researchers delivering short, 5 minute presentations of a research project with the aid of 3 slides, in a similar but expanded fashion to the 3 minute thesis competition run nationally for PhD students.

There were 3 discipline groupings in which participants competed and the winners of each received $2,000 towards their research. The winners were:

Discipline Grouping 1: Science

Dr Patrick-Jean Guay, ISI

Discipline Grouping 2: Health

Dr Fiona Ling, ISEAL

Discipline Grouping 3: Arts, Education and Business

Megan Bowman, Victoria Law School

The 3 winners will go on to compete alongside other internal heat winners from Edith Cowan University, the University of Ballarat and Australian Catholic University in the national competition in November.

Prizes of $5,000, $2,000 and $1,000 will be awarded to the first, second and third places of each discipline grouping in the national final and the overall winner will receive an additional $15,000!

We would like to thank those of you who came along and supported our researchers at the VU event, and congratulate our winners and wish them luck in the national finals. We’d also like to thank our judges, Professor Warren Payne, Professor Helen Borland, and Professor Tom Healy.

For further details, please contact Dr Melanie McGuire in VU's Office for Research.

Faculty Researchers Look Into Sustainability

Researchers discussing sustainability research

Researchers from across the Faculty whose primary research area is sustainability met on Friday August 3 to talk about their work, share ideas, and to consider what makes our sustainability research 'distinctive'. Convenor Dr Colin Higgins (School of Management and Information Systems) said it was staggering how much good quality work was going on, the sophisticated nature of both qualititative theorising and statistical analysis, and also how much crossover there was in terms of climate change, water, reporting and evaluation, and evaluation of public policy.

Associate Dean (Research and Research Training) Professor Anne-Marie Hede has been keen to make sustainability a part of the Faculty's research strengths for some time. She said it was important the Faculty looked to leverage the university's distinctive specialisations and the Collaborative Reserch Network in a way that strengthened our prospects for the next ERA round.

Several of the researchers identified opportunities for collaboration and made plans to meet together again. Dr Higgins said 'Decision-Making' appeared to be something that cut across all of our work - and was a valuable way to start working towards some kind of distinctive profile. The group will meet again later in the year.

Accounting researcher wins AFAANZ grant

A School of Accounting and Finance postgraduate and her mentors have been awarded a 2011-2012 Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand Research Fund grant.

Dr Maria Prokofieva, Professor Beverley Jackling and Dr Riccardo Natoli have received a $6000 grant under the AFAANZ scheme. The grant will help Dr Prokofieva, an emerging researcher, develop her academic profile through cooperative work with Professor Jackling and Dr Natoli, established researchers in their field.

Dr Prokofieva said she was thrilled to receive the grant and looked forward to working with her two mentor researchers on a one-year project.

"Beverley and Riccardo are very good researchers, I have worked with them on another project, and that was very useful and instructive," Dr Prokofieva said.

"I hope that I can learn more on how to do qualitative research as well as how to manage grant projects in general."

The three researchers will investigate the impact of negative experiences on accounting students who withdraw from study.

"Our study will analyse telephone survey data of 200 undergraduate accounting students who withdrew from their studies in 2011. We will look at reasons for departing, with particular reference to demographic factors and pathways into higher education," Dr Prokofieva said.

"The research outcomes from this study will identify activities that ‘attach’ students to the university community and help to align tertiary courses with student expectations."

Dr Prokofieva completed her doctorate in 2004 and has four years' industry experience. Her research interests include accounting education, use of IT in education, and business information systems.

VU Connects with Local Community

Bill Forrest, Director of Advocacy,
Wyndham City Council

VU is committed to fostering connections with the local community, including local councils. An example of this was a recent visit to the School of Accounting and Finance by Mr. Bill Forrest, Director of Advocacy at Wyndham City Council. Dr. Nick Sciulli, Head of the School of Accounting & Finance’s Research Discipline group on Governance and Accountability, hosted the visit. He said its aim was to explore the potential for collaborative, mutually beneficial research projects between the council and interested academics in the School.

Mr. Forrest's position is a new one at the council, and reports directly to the CEO. A core strategic goal of the role is to influence public policy and resource allocation decisions by State and Federal Governments and other key stakeholders. Given that Wyndham City is located in one of the highest growth regions in Australia, several submissions have already been made to State and Federal Governments on issues such as a sustainable population strategy, environmental design, public health and transport challenges.

Several possible research proposals were explored in the meeting with Mr Forrest. The School has agreed to commence an exploratory project investigating the motivations for, and drivers of, advocacy strategies in local councils. As well as resulting in original published academic research, Dr Sciulli said the project would provide local councils with useful data that they could use to benchmark and evaluate their own advocacy strategies.

VU Staff are avid Conversationalists

The Conversation is an independent source of information, analysis and commentary from the university and research sector. It aims to provide a fact-based and editorially-independent forum, free of commercial or political bias. The Conversation has been widely reported in Australia and abroad, including articles in The Guardian, NYT, Harvard's Nieman Media Lab, Slashdot, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Times Higher Education Supplement. Read our staff contributions over at The Conversation

Management speak holds clues to deception

The language used by company CEOs and top-level management – particularly the tone and choice of words in financial reports – holds clues to possible deceptive conduct, according to research.

In a paper just published by the Journal of Business Ethics, Professor Russell Craig, Head of Victoria University's School of Accounting and Finance, and his colleagues Tony Mortensen (University of Canterbury) and Shefali Iyer (Deloitte, NZ), argue that reports and letters written by fraudulent company bosses contain distinctive linguistic tendencies. Read the rest of 'Management speak holds clues to deception' at the VU website

CSES research in the news

Research from The Centre for Strategic Economic Studies (CSES) has had some excellent media coverage recently. Senior Research Fellow Joanne Pyke has had her research publicised in the LH Martin Institute Newsletter. Her PhD thesis explores why women continue to be a minority in senior academic roles in Australian universities despite more than 25 years of equal opportunity policies and legislation. Read more on Women, choice and promotion: why women are still a minority in the professoriate.

A report by Sally Weller, Peter Sheehan and John Tomaney prepared for Regional Development Victoria, has found the government has exaggerated the Latrobe Valley's ability to cope with the impact of the tax. Read media coverage on the the report in the Latrobe Valley Express and The Australian online.

In an interview published in The Age newspaper Professor Bruce Rasmussen said Victorian industries had some capacity to meet China’s enormous demand for clean technology, as well as food supply as immediate opportunities. Read 'New polish on the factory floor' in The Age Online.