Accounting for better business and society
The Accounting group at Cambridge Judge focuses on the creation, dissemination, attestation, interpretation, use, and governance of financial and environmental, social, and governance information. We explore how business managers utilise information to make strategic decisions and how public companies report financial and non-financial information to key stakeholders. The Accounting group studies accounting as a public policy matter that is crucial for society as well as business.
Key research and teaching areas
Our key research and teaching areas include:
- Financial reporting standard setting
- International financial reporting
- Strategic management decisions
- Performance management
- Target setting
- Management control
- Corporate and university governance
- Executive compensation and incentives
- Insider trading
- Audit and earnings quality
- Sell side analysts
- Early-stage entity accounting
- Accounting for financial institutions
- Environmental, societal, and governance reporting
- Fair value accounting
- Disinformation
Research centres
Group members have leading roles in the following research centres:
- Cambridge Endowment for Research in Finance (CERF)
- Cambridge Centre for Finance (CCFin)
- Centre for Financial Reporting & Accountability (CFRA)
- Wo+Men’s Leadership Centre
Teaching
Faculty members of the Accounting subject group teach on the Cambridge Executive Master of Accounting (MAcc), as well other masters and executive education programmes.
Members
Meet our members including faculty, research and teaching staff, PhD students, and honorary appointees.
Subject group head
Rafael Rogo
Professor of Accounting
PhD (Northwestern University)
Publishing output
Editorial boards
Accounting group faculty have served on the Editorial Boards of many prestigious journals including:
- The Accounting Review
- Contemporary Accounting Research
- Journal of International Accounting Research
- Accounting Horizons
- Journal of Management Accounting Research
- Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics
- Journal of Financial Reporting
Selected publications
Industry and policy engagement
Accounting group faculty work with a wide-spectrum of businesses and agencies, including the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), the UK Endorsement Board (UKEB), Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority (ARGA), and the Accounting Standards Board (ASB).
Recent engagement examples include:
- Professors Alan Jagolinzer and Rafael Rogo, and Dr Jenny Chu contributed through the Executive Master of Accounting and Centre for Financial Reporting and Accountability to the organisation of yearly conferences engaging multiple practitioners. Topics of recent conferences include “Global Climate-related Financial Reporting”, which helped catalyse the development of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), and the Cambridge Disinformation Summit.
- Researchers from the Accounting group collaborated with the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and the British Antarctic Survey on environmental accounting.
- Former Academic Director of the Wo+Men’s Leadership Centre, Dr Jenny Chu, won a research contract to conduct diversity and inclusion research in the investment management industry, sponsored by Invesco.
- Dr Marion Boisseau-Sierra is in conversation with the UK Statistics Authority to discuss building a data quality index.
History
Accounting studies at the University of Cambridge date back to the 1930s. Sir Richard Stone, first Professor in Accounting, is the accounting field’s only researcher to have been awarded a Nobel Prize.
Accounting in Cambridge has always been seen as a social good, we believe that constructing sound accounting standards and advocating for proper financial rules and compliance is a public policy initiative, not simply a matter of business and finance. This vision of accounting is deeply rooted in the Accounting group’s history.
For more information regarding the History of Accounting Research in Cambridge, please refer to the paper written in 2017 by Professor Geoff Meeks.
"Theories Came and Went, Good Data Endured: Accounting at Cambridge”
Podcasts
Business information risks and responsibilities
Episode 2 (Michaelmas term 2023)
This second episode looks at business information risks and responsibilities: the threats that arise from different types of information and how companies can prevent or handle them. A potential threat companies face arises from accounting information if this information is mis-represented, as has been the case in numerous accounting fraud cases such as the recent scandals around the German payment processor Wirecard, or the UK bakery chain Patisserie Valerie. Potential threats also arise from disinformation and, in particular, disinformation campaigns that target companies’ reputation or market position.
Episode presented by Dr Sarah Kroechert, Assistant Professor in Accounting at Cambridge Judge Business School.
With guest speaker Alan Jagolinzer, Professor of Financial Accounting at Cambridge Judge Business School, and Cambridge MBA students Kristen Chang, Eli Auerbach, Zach Marks and Calvin Liew.
Research seminars
Upcoming seminars
There are no upcoming research seminars. Please check back again later.
Past seminars
2025
Join our Accounting seminar with Dr Spyros Gkikopoulos, Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester.
Media coverage
Explore recent media coverage of research by members of the Accounting group:
YouTube | 19 October 2022
Southbank Investment Research – Will fair value accounting boost crypto?
James Early talks with Alan Jagolinzer, Professor of Financial Accounting and Head of the Accounting Faculty Subject Group at Cambridge Judge Business School, about a new potential “fair value” rule, the state of play of crypto accounting, and whether it’s enough to drive crypto prices higher.
Financial Times | 20 July 2022
Mergers destroy value. Without reform, nothing will change
Geoff Meeks, Emeritus Professor of Financial Accounting at Cambridge Judge Business School, and J Gay Meeks, Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge Centre of Development Studies, write about mergers and acquisitions.
It’s an often-quoted statistic that roughly 70 per cent of mergers fail. Yet despite the weight of evidence, vast and ever-increasing sums are spent on mergers and acquisitions — around $5tn globally in 2021 — and on some measures the number of deals has seen a forty-fold increase in forty years, the article says.
The Wall Street Journal | 29 June 2022
CEO stock sales raise questions about insider trading
A study by Alan Jagolinzer, Professor of Financial Accountings at Cambridge Judge Business School, is mentioned in this analysis of preset trading plans by company insiders, showing that executives benefit when sales happen quickly after the plans’ adoption.
Bloomberg Tax | 31 May 2022
EY consulting split aims to free firm from ethics crackdown
Tighter ethics regulations are holding back the growth of Ernst & Young’s lucrative consulting business, a key reason firm leaders are considering whether to separate its global audit and advisory practices. The global accounting network is now discussing whether to spin off its global auditing business.
Bloomberg Tax | 25 March 2022
SEC climate plan leaves open path to use global green standards
Alan Jagolinzer, Professor of Financial Accounting and Director of the Centre for Financial Reporting & Accountability (CFRA) at Cambridge Judge Business School, said demand for more in-depth reporting standards will mount along with the risks of climate change, and with it the need for a separate entity to set those reporting standards.
Business Because | 15 January 2022
Five emerging jobs in the cannabis industry
A case study looking at accounting practices in the marijuana industry co-authored by Alan Jagolinzer, Professor of Financial Accounting at Cambridge Judge Business School, featured in Business Because article. The case study looked at accounting practices in the marijuana industry, and was co-authored with cannabis investor White Sheep Corp.