MSc in Accounting

Dan Thornton holds the Chartered Accountants of Ontario Professorship at Queen’s University. He is currently a voting member of the Accounting Standards Oversight Council and the Canadian Performance Reporting Board, and is an Associate Fellow of CIRANO (The Center for Inter-university Research and Analysis on Organizations) in Montreal. He has served as a full-time Professional Accounting Fellow at the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, an associate editor of The Accounting Review, an associate editor of Contemporary Accounting Research, and a voting member of the Canadian Accounting Standards Board. He has received both the Distinguished Contribution to Accounting Thought Award and the Outstanding Educator Award from the Canadian Academic Accounting Association. A Fellow of the Institutes of Chartered Accountants of Ontario and Alberta, Thornton has provided extensive expert accounting testimony to various courts and to the Senate of Canada and is frequently quoted in the financial press.

Terry Wang’s research interests revolve around the roles and responsibilities of securities analysts in the financial markets. Her current projects examine the judgment and decision making processes of securities analysts and the economic consequences of securities analysts’ outputs. While employing archival methods, her research draws on both economic and behavioral theories.

Michael Welker’s research examines firm’s disclosure practices and international accounting issues. He is currently working on projects related to accounting conservatism, accounting fraud, the impact of the lack of uniform accounting standards internationally on analysts and firms, and the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on markets’ perceptions of firms’ disclosures. Professor Welker is an Associate Editor of both academic journals published by the Canadian Academic Accounting Association, Accounting Perspectives and Contemporary Accounting Research. He is also a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of International Accounting Research, and has served in the past on the Editorial Board of The Accounting Review.

Serena Wu's research mainly lies in the areas of executive compensation, corporate governance, behavioral finance, and international accounting. She applies empirical methods to study financial accounting topics. Recently she is studying how the board of directors affect the use of private information to compensate the CEO, and how board performance is affected by measures beyond the board structure. She is also working on cognitive biases of financial analysts and the costs/benefits of IFRS convergence.

Auditing and Managerial Accounting Behavioral Group

Clinton Free's research is focused on management accounting and supply chain management. His research is primarily based on field-based qualitative research methods as well as the use of surveys. He is currently engaged in research relating to the evolving nature of accountability in contemporary Western societies, financial management reforms in the Canadian public sector and performance measurement in the health-care sector. A member of Microsoft's Business Intelligence Vision Team, he also has a strong interest in the impact of accounting techniques on individuals and organizations as well as the legal environment of accounting.

Pam Murphy's research interests centre around the social psychological aspects of auditing, particularly when economic and psychological forces are at odds. She is currently examining fraudulent financial reporting and the fraud triangle, which draws from and contributes to both management accounting and auditing. Pam has used experimental / behavioral research methodologies along with archival research methods.

Steve Salterio's research draws on cognitive psychology and organizational behaviour theories to examine judgments made by auditors, managers and board members. He examines auditor-client management negotiations over financial reporting, corporate governance relationships including financial reporting oversight and new performance measurement systems that may inform managers’ and board members’ judgments. His work combines field-based interview research, experimental laboratory research and theoretically informed survey research.

Teri Shearer's research draws on post structuralist philosophy and social theory to examine the roles of accounting systems and practices in the constitution of the social world. She examines how accounting functions as a linguistic system that profoundly influences the way in which organizations and individuals are understood. Her recent work has focused on ethics and accountability, and the challenges to these concepts posed by expanding global trade.