School of Business and Economics

Academics

• Dr Ali Ataullah (Senior Lecturer in Finance)
  Economic theory of firm; Corporate diversification; Real options; Corporate payout policy; Determinants and effects of international capital flows
• Dr Rhoda Brown (Senior Lecturer in Financial Accounting)
  Performance Measurement and Management; Financial Reporting; Earnings Management
• Professor Lin Fitzgerald (Professor of Management Accounting)
  Performance measurement and cost information for decision-making in service organisations
  
• Professor William Forbes (Professor of Accounting and Finance)
  Statistical/econometric issues in valuing firms and policy issues raised by the new economy
• Professor Mark Freeman (Professor of Finance)
  Equity Premium Puzzle; Pension Fund Solvency; Environmental Valuation; Empirical Asset Pricing; Aggregate Dividend Policy
• Suzana Grubnic (Senior Lecturer in Management Accounting)
  Sustainability Accounting and Accountability; Performance Management and the Public Sector
• Dr Andrew Higson (Lecturer in Accounting)
  Financial instruments; Regulation; Fraud
• Professor Barry Howcroft (Professor in Retail Banking)
  Measurement of bank branch efficiency utilising DEA; customer retention strategies and customer service in banks and building societies; the mutuality vs. the PLC debate in building societies; and the evolution of delivery channels in banking
• Dr Laurie McAulay (Reader in Accounting and Financial Management)
  Financial expertise, management control systems and the management of IS
• Professor Noel O’Sullivan (Professor of Accounting)
  Corporate Governance; Boards of Directors; Auditing; Takeovers
  
• Dr Keith Pond (Senior Lecturer in Banking and Economics)
  Insolvency and regulation
• Dr Kai-Hong Tee (Lecturer in Finance)
  Asymmetric Risk Estimation, Efficiency of Funds’ Performance, Derivatives Securities
• Dr Andrew Vivian (Lecturer in Accounting and Financial Management)
  Asset Pricing; Corporate Finance; Financial Markets; Market Efficiency

Associate Members

• Ian Herbert (MBA, Academic Co-ordinator and Tutor; Senior Lecturer in Accounting and Financial Management)
  Financial Expertise; Knowledge management and Organisational Decision Making Ranking
• Ruth King (Programme Director BSc in Banking, Finance & Management; Lecturer in Accounting)
  Regulation; Accounting education; Financial literacy

Researchers

• Rosamund Chester Buxton (Research Associate)

Visiting Academics

• None at present

Research Themes

Research in the group focuses on three areas with considerable overlap between these areas with members contributing to more than one area as well as collaboration with colleagues in other research groups across the School:

Corporate Governance: O’Sullivan’s research focuses on various aspects of governance, including the use and usefulness of non-executive directors; takeovers, auditing as well as issues of governance in non-profit organisations.  This work complements research by Ataullah on board decision-making in the context of corporate divestures and diversification as well as the use of share options in executive compensation as well as work by Forbes on governance challenges posed by the new economy.  In addition, Higson’s work on the usefulness of corporate financial reporting and issues surrounding the expectations gap between the preparers and users of corporate financial reports and Brown’s work on financial reporting, earnings management and university central management also feeds into this strand of research.  Corporate governance research has been funded externally by the Nuffield Foundation, the British Academy and ICAS.

Management Accounting: Management accounting research in the group involves a number of threads.  Fitzgerald’s research is primarily concerned with performance management and measurement with significant expertise in both the profit and non-profit sectors.  With colleagues McAulay, Brown, Herbert and King she is currently leading a large CIMA-funded project on performance measurement in a number of large UK organisations.  The work of Grubnic on performance management in local government and the private finance initiative complements this line of enquiry.  A second strand of research in the area is the role of financial expertise, specifically in the context of organisational control.  McAulay is currently researching this in the context of short-termism.  A related issue covered by Herbert is seeking to understand the role of accounting education and employability, specifically from a university student perspective.  A third strand of management accounting research centers around sustainability with McAulay researching management accounting in the context of climate change and Grubnic in the context of sustainability.  The final strand of management accounting research is the study of Shared Service Centres.  This work is being led by Herbert, in close liaison with CIMA which is a significant sponsor of this research, and facilitates regular meetings in Loughborough and elsewhere with senior executives with an interest in this activity. Management accounting research is currently funded by CIMA and the EPSRC.

Finance: Finance research focuses largely on issues of corporate finance with Ataullah, Higson and Tippett (Emeritus) undertaking considerable work on studying real options; Ataullah exploring issues around corporate diversification and pay-out policies; Vivian researching asset pricing; and Forbes researching various aspects of behavioural finance.  In addition, Freeman’s research focuses on long-term investment issues with a particular interest in environmental valuation, pension fund solvency and asset pricing.  An additional focus of finance research relates to banks and financial services with Howcroft’s work on consumer attitudes toward risk and behaviour, bank efficiency, credit scoring, the syndicated loan market and the market discipline and structure of banks and Pond’s work on corporate insolvency and bank lending to SMEs.  Research in the area of finance is currently being externally funded by: the British Academy; Rothman ICPM and the Institute of Actuaries.

Publications

Examples of recent publications include:
A. Ataullah, A. Higson and M. Tippett, “The Distributional Properties of the Debt to Equity Ratio: Some Implications for Empirical Research”, Abacus, 43(2), 2007, pp. 111-135.

J. Boocock and M. Shariff, “Measuring the Effectiveness of Credit Guarantee Schemes: Evidence from Malaysia”, International Small Business Journal, 23(4), 2005, pp. 427-454.

G. Cook and K. Pond, “Explaining the Choice Between Alternative Insolvency Regimes for Troubled Companies in the UK and Sweden”, European Journal of Law and Economics, 22(1), 2006, pp. 21-47.

A. Ataullah, I. Davidson and M. Tippett, “A Wave Function for Stock Market Returns”, Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 388(4), 2009, pp. 455-461.

A. Ismail and I. Davidson, “The Determinants of Target Returns in European Bank Mergers”, Service Industries Journal, 27(5), 2007, pp. 617-634.

A. El-Galfy and W. Forbes, “Are Forecasts of Corporate Profits Rational? A note and further evidence”, Journal of Empirical Finance, 11(4), 2004, pp. 617-626.

L. Fitzgerald., “Performance Measurement” in Issues in Management Accounting, edited by T. Hopper, D. Northcott and R. Scapens, Essex: Pearson Education, 2007, pp. 223-244.

A. Gourlay, J. Seaton and J. Suppakitjarak, “The Determinants of Export Behaviour in UK Service Firms”, Service Industries Journal, 25(7), 2005, pp. 879-889.

P. Hamalainen, M. Hall and J Howcroft, “A Framework for Market Discipline in Bank Regulatory Design”, Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, 32(1&2), 2005, pp. 183-209.

A. Higson, Y. Shinozawa and M. Tippett, “IAS 29 and the Cost of Holding Money under Hyperinflationary Conditions”, Accounting and Business Research, 37(2), pp. 97-121.

J. Howcroft, R. Hamilton and P. Hewer,. "Customer Involvement and Interaction in Retail Banking: An Examination of Risk and Confidence in the Purchase of Financial Products", Journal of Services Marketing, 21(7), 2007, pp. 481-491.

D. Marginson and L. McAulay, Exploring the debate on short-termism: a theoretical and empirical analysis, Strategic Management Journal, 29(3), 2008, pp. 273-292.

A. Rothwell, I. Herbert and F.  Rothwell, “Self Perceived Employability: construction and initial validation of a scale for university students”, Journal of Vocational Behaviour, 73(1), 2008, pp. 1-12,

G. Saridakis, S. Sen-Gupta, P. Edwards and D. Storey, “The Impact of Enterprise Size on Employment Tribunal Incidence and Outcomes: Evidence from Britain”, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 46(3), 2008, pp. 469-499

Conference, 23rd September 2010: ‘Enterprise Activity in Turbulent Times of Crisis and Recession in Britain’

Conferences

Professor William Forbes was the Plenary speaker at the Accounting and Finance PhD Student Colloquium at Brunel University in 2008. In the same year, Prof. Forbes presented on Behavioural Finance to fund managers, analysts and risk managers at a conference organised by ‘Technical Analyst’ magazine.

Dr Andrew Higson was a plenary speaker at the introductory session of the ‘Finance and Accounting: Theory and Practice, Development and Trends’ Conference at the University of Latvia, Institutes of Finance and Accounting, Riga, Latvia, 18-19 September 2008.

Journal Editorships

Brown is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Applied Accounting Research; Fitzgerald served as Associate Editor of the British Accounting Review until January 2012; is a member of the CIMA Research and Development Panel; CIMA Research Board and the Management Board of the Performance Management Association. Forbes is on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Behavioural Finance and Qualitative Review of Finance. McAulay serves on the editorial board of Issues in Accounting Education. O’Sullivan continues as Consulting Editor of the International Journal of Management Reviews having been Associate Editor between 2005 and 2010 and is on the Executive Board of the BAFA’s Corporate Governance special interest group.

Current PhD Students

Henry Agyei-Boapeah
Corporate financing in developing countries: evidence from listed companies in Ghana

Waleed Alqasrawie
Market structure and profit determinants in the Arad Banks industry

Yizhe Dong
Bank efficiency in China

Helen Gardner
Insights from postmodern organisation theory to explore the means by which organisations construct perceptions of reality (co-supervised between Laurie McAuley and Melissa Tyler)

Jane Glover
Entrepreneurial qualities required by dairy farmers in order to adapt to the ever changing external environment (co-supervised between Graham Boocock and Peter Ackers)

Aloysius Igboekwu
Modelling earning momentum

Rasha Kassem
Auditing Management's Motives behind Fraud

Rima Kordogly
The valuation role of earnings and book value (a study across European Banks)

Joseph Lanham
Strategic management accounting, performance and control: strategic appraisal tools & strategy in the profit/not for profit sector

Farangiz Rahimova
Forecasting, modelling & managing credit risk in sterling Eurobond markets

Tony Stevenson (part time)
Credit access and start up failure amongst UK SMEs and German counter parts

Yan Sun
What is the behaviour pattern of online banking customers in UK?

Charles Thornton (part time)
An analysis of the value of comparing the differing resources involved in diversification in UK banking

Elizabeth Warren (part time)
Regulation and accounting in the UK electricity industry

Linna Ye
Developing balanced scorecard

Recent PhD Graduates

Paul Hamalainen (graduated Jul 07)
Development and Relevance of Financial Regulation in Transitional Economies. Paul was a member of staff with us throughout his PhD but has now left the University)

Yen Hao Chen (graduated Jul 08)
Knowledge Conversion Processes and Leadership: An exploratory study of Taiwanese Managers

Thinking of doing an MRes or PhD?

Doctoral students join a lively and supportive community of research students, becoming an integral part of the School’s research culture. As a research student, you will be encouraged to attend conferences to present your work and develop joint publications with your supervisors. These activities are partially supported by a dedicated fund, open to all research students on a one-year basis.

We welcome approaches from suitably qualified graduates, particularly those with a relevant Masters degree and sufficient funding, who may wish to undertake research projects in the specialist areas of the group, leading to a PhD. For students interested in further information on potential PhD projects and supervisors, please look carefully through our webpages.

For an online application form click here
and for full details of the Business School PhD programme click here

For those interested finding out about our MRes in Business and Management, which is a 12-month full-time programme, please click here.