Queen's University Management School

An independent report by academics from Queen’s University Management School has been published by the Charity Commission and Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator. The report Charity Reporting and Accounting: Taking Stock and Future Reform was launched at a major event at the prestigious Church House Conference Centre, Westminster, London on the 4th December. The launch of the report was part of a ‘Roadmap’ event hosted by the Charity Commission to guide the development of future Charity Statements of Recommended Practice (SORP), which provide accounting and reporting recommendations for the charity sector. The event was attended by about 200 key individuals connected to the UK charity sector including representatives of charities, preparers and auditors of accounts, regulators and the Accounting Standards Board. The research will also be headlined in a series of events throughout the British Isles at the beginning of 2010 (in Cardiff, Sheffield, Belfast, Edinburgh and Dublin).  

The report synthesises the views of over 1,000 participants who took part in a programme of roundtable events across the UK and of an extensive consultation with funders, financial supporters, those who prepare accounts and their advisers, as well as charities themselves. It represents a summary of the largest consultation ever undertaken on a UK accounting standard or pronouncement.

Key findings of the report included: - Overall, funders are seen as the key or primary stakeholders for all charities – regardless of their size, jurisdiction and even the nature of their activities;

- A universal consensus that trustees need to be more balanced in their reporting – and tell of both successes and failures;

- A need to re-engineer the SORP from the perspective of small charities first, with add-ons for larger or more complex charities; and

- SORP is universally supported as essential to high quality reporting by, and for, the sector. Jane Ryder, Chief Executive of the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, said: 'OSCR is encouraged to see the universal support for the Charities SORP as evidenced by the research. This forms a sound basis for the further development of charity accounting requirements in light of the current consultation by the Accounting Standard Board.' 

The authors of the report are Dr. Ciaran Connolly, Senior Lecturer in Accounting, Professor Noel Hyndman, Professor of Management Accounting and Danielle McMahon, Teaching Fellow in Accounting. All are members of the Governance, Performance Measurement and Accounting in Not-for-profit Organisations research cluster at Queen’s University Management School. 

The report is available for download here:
http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/Library/publications/pdfs/rs21text.pdf

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Professor Istemi Demirag, Professor of Accounting in Queen’s University Management School, has been invited to contribute to the Early Career Academics’ Research Development Programme in conjunction with the European Accounting Association (EAA) Annual Conference in 2010.  EAA is the main Accounting Association for all the accountants in Europe and is one of the most prestigious one in the world.  Professor Demirag has been invited to contribute along with five other distinguished international professors.  The other professors include:

Professor Rashad Abdel –Khalik, University of Illinois, USA; Professor Sidney Gray, the University of Sydney, Australia; Professor Stephen Zeff, Rice University, USA; Professor Christopher Humphrey, Professor Pamela Stapleton, and Professor Andrew Stark, University of Manchester.

The programme will be held in Istanbul during 16-18 May 2010 in conjunction with the EAA 2010 Annual Congress to be held 19-21 May 2010 in Istanbul.

The programme is aimed primarily at building the research skills and capacity of the young Turkish accounting scholars and also of the young scholars from the South Eastern European Countries.  The objective of the programme is to provide doctoral students and junior accounting faculty with information to help develop successful academic careers.

Professor Demirag’s role will include providing advice on developing a research portfolio, balancing teaching and research, and building an effective network.

In accepting the invitation to contribute Professor Demirag said “I am delighted to be invited by the European Accounting Association to be involved in such a programme with leading distinguished accounting professors around the globe and to contribute to such an important programme for accounting academics from Eastern Europe and Turkey.  This event will certainly help to further enhance the international academic reputation of Queen’s University Belfast and help to strengthen international collaborations.”

16 December 2009

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ICAP Prize: LR:  Professor John Turner presented to Rachel McKillop

QUMS Prize: LR: Professort John Turner presented to James Waterworth

Biznet Solutions Prize (2007-08): LR: Shauna Kelman presented to Paul McKeever

Biznet Solutions Prize (2008-09): LR: Jason Murray presented by Shauna Kelman

Chartered Management Institute Prize: LR: Kevin Shine and Matthew Ridout presented by
Stanley Wallace

Ulster Bank Prize: LR: Trevor Abbott presented by Martin Murphy, Dr Frances Hill

Queen's University Management School PG Prize Giving Ceremony Prize Winners,
Sponsors and Academic Staff

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Over 1,000 delegates at a business summit in India are set to benefit from advice on entrepreneurial motivation from a Queen's academic who has been recognised as one the world' top global entrepreneurship educators.

David Gibson, a Senior NICENT (Northern Ireland Centre for Entrepreneurship) Teaching Fellow based in Queen's University Management School will represent Europe when he shares his business knowledge at the 3rd International Entrepreneurship Summit on Saturday (December 19).

The event at the Indian Institute of Management in Kolkata, one of Asia's finest business schools, will be attended by top entrepreneurs and academics from around the world.

West Bengal has not seen the increase in entrepreneurial activities seen in some other Indian states and the conference is bringing together experts from across the globe to speak on what entrepreneurship means to them and what their students aspire to.

The invite to speak at the conference is a unique opportunity to highlight the entrepreneurial spirit of Queen's University and form new links. It follows previous visits by Queen's delegations to India.

David is recognised as a trail-blazer for entrepreneurial education.  Among his achievements is developing an enterprise for life education model which is embedded across the entire curriculum at Queen's. It has also been adopted by universities in India, China, Canada, Sri Lanka and throughout the UK and was recognised as a best practice model by the EEC.

He is also the only recipient of a National Teaching Fellowship Award for enterprise education by the Higher Education Academy in the UK and is the author of a leading book on enterprise competencies called The EFactor, which is now used in over 100 universities, including Cambridge, where it is a core text.

David said: "This is a real opportunity to build on strategic academic and business relationships.

The Indian business and education sectors are intrigued by what we are doing and are very keen to increase their links with Queen's and Northern Ireland.

Collaborations can have a real impact on education as transnational education links can benefit both economies and could lead to spin-out companies.

Some universities in India are already using the Queen's enterprise for life education model and we want to build on that. Kolkata is not as strong commercially as other areas in India and they want to learn from institutions like ours about how we are reaching out to students and staff to change people’s mindsets.

I’ll be speaking about how important is to have entrepreneurial motivation in order to create high growth businesses but also for people who don’t necessarily want to start their own businesses to have an entrepreneurial mindset and to be able to think innovatively within their workplace.

Queen's University is seen as cutting-edge, especially after winning the Times Higher Entrepreneurial University of the Year title and we are keen to build on our successes."

In January David will travel to Nashville, Tennessee, to the United States Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) conference where he will pitch for the title of Global Entrepreneurship Educator. He was recently named one of three finalists in the competition.

Queen's has strong links with India and last week installed International statesman His Excellency Kamalesh Sharma, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth as its ninth Chancellor.

In November a senior delegation led by the Vice-Chancellor Professor Peter Gregson visited India to strengthen existing links and develop new partnerships which would be of mutual benefit to the Indian economy and education sector and those of Northern Ireland. 

During the trip, some of Ireland's most distinguished poets joined together with their Indian counterparts to celebrate a week long festival of languages and culture in New Delhi, Hyderabad and Kolkata.

During the ten-day visit, Queen's also opened an office situated at Bengal Engineering and Science University in Kolkata. The opening of the office gives the go-ahead to a further three year programme of collaborative research as part of the Eastern India Water Research Institute (EIWRI).

Also launched during the visit was the Queen's India Schools Partnership (QUISP) which will see small clusters of schools in India developing partnerships with Queen's and its partner schools in Northern Ireland.

14 December 2009

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Findings from the largest ever study of the sustainability of car manufacturing of 17 of the world’s leading car companies have just been published by Queen’s university Management School in cooperation with Euromed Management School (Marseille/France) and the Institute for Futures Studies and Technology Assessment (Berlin/Germany).
 
Key findings from the study entitled Sustainable Value in Automobile Manufacturing highlight: 

• How Asian car manufacturers are outperforming their North American, and many of their European competitors, in using their economic, environmental and social resources more efficiently
• How General Motors’ poor financial performance is accompanied by the worst sustainability performance recorded.
• Leading manufacturers including Porsche, KIA or Chinese manufacturers are still not producing sufficient sustainability performance data.

It provides a full account of the societal impacts of car production, including issues such as the volume of greenhouse gas emissions from production facilities and the number of work accidents recorded by a company. It also looks at how efficiently car manufacturers used key natural resources compared with their industry peers and how much profit or loss was generated with these resources.
 
The ratio of sustainable value to sales is calculated in the report so that different companies can be directly compared irrespective of their size. Sustainable value includes not just the use of economic capital but also environmental and social resources. It is the first value-based method for assessing corporate sustainability performance.
 
In the report Asian car manufacturers including Toyota, Hyundai, Nissan, Honda, and to a lesser extent, Suzuki have all out-performed their North American competitors. In stark contract to the Asian manufacturers, both North American carmakers Ford and General Motors (GM) lie well into negative territory, with GM showing the most striking downside trend.
 
There is a mixed picture among European manufacturers. While BMW tops the ranking of all 17 manufacturers in most of the years assessed, other European carmakers PSA (Peugeot, Citroën), Renault, Volkswagen and DaimlerChrysler/Daimler AG only occasionally keep pace with the industry leaders. FIAT Auto consistently falls behind throughout the entire review period.
  
The study also shows the improvement potential that a car giant like General Motors has in  how it could improve its long-term performance. GM achieved a sustainable value of minus €9.87 billion, in comparison with BMW, which having used all the resources considered necessary to create value doubled its sustainable value to €2.8 billion from 1999 to 2007.
 
The study also showed that accessing sustainability data for the whole sector remains a problem. While Tata could be assessed for the first time in 2007 – and narrowly beats the benchmark in this year – other car manufacturers such as Porsche, KIA or Chinese manufacturers do still not provide sufficient data. Likewise, Daihatsu could not be included in the assessment in the year 2007 due to its insufficient sustainability reporting.
 
Both study and extensive information on the Sustainable Value approach are available at www.sustainablevalue.com.

This study is part of the research conducted by the Management and Sustainability Research Group at Queen’s University Management School (www.qums.net).

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