Plenary Session 1: Sunday 3rd July 3.00pm, Room: tba

Professor Terry Shevlin

Professor of Accounting at the University of Washington

Topic: Earnings quality, information risk, and cost of capital

Powerpoint slides from Prof Shevlin's plenary are available to AFAANZ delegates on request from p.gray@business.uq.edu.au

This talk will discuss responses to the following questions

        What is earnings quality?  Conceptual definition and empirical definitions/applications.
        What is information risk?  Conceptual definition and empirical definitions/applications.
        Is information risk a priced risk factor?  Theory and evidence.

Some of the talk will discuss my recent research of these issues in my paper
"Are Dividend Changes Associated with Changes in the Pricing of Information
Risk?" with Shuping Chen and Yen Hee Tong which can be downloaded at:

 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=688596

Plenary Session 2:  Tuesday 5th July 9.00am, Room: tba

Professor Sven Modell

Professor of Accounting, Stockholm University

Topic: Performance management in the public sector: Past experiences, current practices and future challenges

This plenary address gives an overview of research and practice in the area of performance management in public sector organisations. International trends and developments emanating from New Public Management (NPM) reforms over the past twenty years are outlined and current changes in performance management practices in ‘leading’ NPM countries are discussed. Important research topics in this respect include the challenges involved in defining and measuring public sector performance, the design and implementation of models and techniques for this purpose as well as wider social and political aspects associated with these issues. Some influential theoretical approaches guiding research on these topics, including stakeholder models and institutional theories, are explored. Empirical examples illustrating the application of such approaches are drawn from different areas of public sector activity, especially health care, higher education and central government agencies. This has important implications for our understanding of how stakeholder and power relationships evolve in public sector organisations, but also how this interacts with issues of more technical concern, such as performance management systems design. Policy implications stemming from greater recognition of the resulting complexity in the development of public sector performance management are debated.

Download Sven Modell's Powerpoint Presentation

Follow these links to literature relevant to Sven's Plenary:

Modell, S., 2003, Goals versus institutions: the development of performance measurement in the Swedish university sector, Management Accounting Research 14, 333-359

Model, S., 2001, Performance measurement and institutional processes: a study of managerial responses to public sector reform, Management Accounting Research 12, 437-464.

Brignall, S., and S. Modell, 2000, An institutional perspective on performance measurement and management in the ‘new public sector’, Management Accounting Research 11, 281-306.

Modell, S., 2004, Performance measurement myths in the public sector, A research note, Financial Accountability & Management 20, 39-55.