Educating Future Performance Management Leaders

By Fatima Noor

In fall 2022, I had an opportunity to participate in the Academia Mentorship Program sponsored by the Centre for Sustainability Reporting & Performance Management (CSPM), learning the intricacies of a life in academia. It all started when I expressed my interest in post-secondary teaching to Professor Tim Bauer, while highlighting my conflict about teaching as a lecturer versus a professor. Tim was quick to arrange a call for further discussion and then connected me with Professor Adam Presslee, whose area of research is performance management.

What followed was a month of weekly meetings spent discussing the life of an academic with Adam, three of my undergraduate peers also in the mentorship program, and a post-graduate student nearing the end of her PhD program.

Research

We started with reading about the numerous research areas and methodologies in accounting. Behavioural and experimental research in performance management (under the umbrella of management accounting) is something that interested me due to its scientific approach of data collection for understanding employee behaviour. We discussed how to organize an experiment to minimize data biases, and how to minimize outliers in the data resulting from participation incentives. We also learned the process of determining a research topic, writing a journal submission, having the submission edited and peer reviewed and finally published. I noted that a PhD program can take, on average, three to five years to complete, first learning the research methodologies and then conducting research.

Next, we completed a component-by-component breakdown of Adam’s own research paper on the Effects of Rewards Type on Employee Goal Setting, Goal Commitment, and Performance, which was very informative.  I learned that the novelty and significance of your research idea needs to be clearly stated in the introduction, and that the conclusion should reiterate the novelty and significance while also identifying testing constraints and future research possibilities. Additionally, our discussion of the mental accounting of utilitarian versus hedonistic rewards was enlightening, demonstrating that a simple shift in the reward type can increase an employee’s motivation to work. From a technical standpoint, I learned about the process by which research constructs are operationalized to yield accurate and reliable results in a lab setting, and how confounding variables can be eliminated. Adam used a whiteboard to illustrate the concepts of operationalization, which enhanced our learning experience.

Another component of the mentorship program was attending PhD research seminars. I attended one seminar where two students presented their individual research findings to-date, and another seminar where a student presented her Thesis Proposal to a panel of faculty and fellow post-graduate students. Attending these seminars showed me the varying intensity of a Q&A session for a findings presentation vs a proposal; it’s a lot more intense and thorough for the proposal.

Teaching

We also delved into the inner workings of a seemingly mundane document – a course syllabus – and discussed the purpose and placement of each component. Adam referred to the syllabus as the contract between a professor and the students, and this changed my entire perspective of this piece of paper. I learned that professors craft the Course Description to best represent the course learning objectives, define the objectives in the syllabus to ensure the student has full knowledge of what they will have learned by the end of the course, and also negotiate the classrooms best-suited to ensure the learning experience for students: e.g., a course requiring group work would have desks that can be moved around to allow for collaborative seating.  

Additionally, we analyzed a set of lecture slides and had an insightful discussion about the effects of various teaching styles on a student’s ability to learn/retain knowledge, participate, and feel safe in a classroom environment. For example, allowing students to make their own teams (instead of assigning teams) for a group assignment increases a student’s autonomy, responsibility, and accountability as it is up to them to perform efficiently; however, it can also lead to a lack of diversity in teams which restricts exposure of collaboration with other personalities.

Service

In the final week of the mentorship program, we were tasked with learning about collegial governance activities from other professors and lecturers at the School of Accounting and Finance (SAF).  An individual in academia has collegial governance (“service”) requirements to complete in the daily course of employment.  Service activities consist of being a member of any of the various committees in a university department (e.g., Recruiting Committee, Student Appeals Committee, etc.) that keep educational functions running smoothly.  Service also extends off-campus.  For instance, one could be organizing conferences or be a member of a committee for a regulatory body in the accounting profession.  It was very interesting to learn about the ways in which professors and lecturers contribute to the profession apart from teaching and research.

Since the pandemic moved our classes online for the better part of our university careers, I am delighted to have this memorable learning experience. As for whether I’ll pursue a PhD, I now have more clarity about the pros and cons for each alternative, but am still not convinced this is the best route for me. I’ll focus on attaining my CPA designation for now, but SAF may see me reinstating my student status some years down the line.

By Ben Van Wart

I had the pleasure of participating in the Career in Academia Mentorship program led by Adam Presslee and Wenqian Hu and hosted by the Centre for Sustainability Reporting & Performance Management (CSPM). The goal of this program was to inform us of the positives and “pains” of a career as a researcher in academia, as well as teaching as a professor at a post-secondary institution. What made this program effective, is that neither Adam nor the CSPM attempted to push us in the direction of doing a career in academia, but rather give us a crystal-clear picture of what to expect if we ever decided to pursue that career. The mentorship program was broken down into two components - research in academia and teaching - discussed below.

Research

Coming into the mentorship program, I was not familiar with research in academia. To help us understand, Adam started from the basics and taught us research methodologies that we might pursue in the future. The two methodologies that resonated with me most strongly were archival and behavioural/experimental. The archival methodology was interesting to me, as it leveraged various prior works to help determine what interesting questions can be proposed and supported under the current market situations. As a result, it requires many hours of reading, researching, and sifting through old research papers to build a strong analysis and data set for your current paper.  Behavioral/experimental takes a different approach, as it leverages current experiments to support new hypotheses. This methodology struck me as the more interesting one, as it has a strong human interaction component, and can rely heavily on understanding, analyzing, and reviewing the behaviour of humans in various situations. This is an area of interest to me as I find behaviour of people, specifically in the accounting/business setting, to be a fascinating and ever-growing issue. Even though I am uncertain of what I will be doing in the future, I now have a better understanding of the direction that I will take my research if I pursue academia.

Adam also described the key attributes that make effective research papers.  He asked us to review one of his successful papers and to dissect the attributes that led to its success. We learned that papers could achieve various levels of success, depending on the nature of the question that the paper answers.  More successful papers often answer a fresh question that has not yet been researched and have a scope that affect many people across the globe.  Research questions that don’t check these boxes are still worth pursuing, but they may not be featured in the bigger journals.           

Teaching

The mentorship program also focused on various aspects of teaching in academia. The first area of focus was understanding all the factors to consider when developing the syllabus for a particular course. At face value for a student, the only important factor we think of in a syllabus is the grade breakdown.  But Adam identified just how important everything in the syllabus is for delivering an effective course experience. We learned that the syllabus acts as a contract between the professor and the students, that it outlines what students can expect to receive from the course and vice versa.  

Every decision factored into the syllabus sets the tone for the course, such as choosing the classroom. Adam provided an example about how hosting classes in lecture style halls do not provide a strong opportunity for collaboration, whereas hosting them in a flat classroom can enhance collaboration capabilities.  I also learned how the mark breakdown can affect how students learn and progress throughout a term.  Creating “checkpoint assignments” such as cases provides an opportunity for students to assess their knowledge in a non-stressful testing environment. This also encourages academic honesty amongst students in the class, as developing a syllabus that doesn’t weigh one assessment item too heavily, and tests students on fair content, creates a culture where students don’t feel the need to be academically dishonest.

As someone who wants to teach in the future, I found this portion of the mentorship program incredibly helpful. Adam taught me how to develop a collaborative environment that makes students feel safe and encourages their learning.  Adam instilled in me lessons that I plan to leverage when I teach: e.g., including real world examples and using probing questions during my classes. These are effective ways to not only keep students engaged, but to provide a safe environment where that can participate and ask questions.

Overall, I feel very fortunate to have participated in this program. I now have a much clearer picture of what it’s like to be an accounting academic and the various ways that I can be a strong teacher in the future.  I would like to provide my sincerest thanks to Adam, Wenqian, and the CSPM for hosting this amazing program and dedicating their valuable time to helping educate people like me.

Kylie Chiu is currently working towards achieving her undergraduate degree in the Honours Accounting and Financial Management Program at the University of Waterloo. She has completed two co-op work terms, working for MNP LLP as a Staff Accountant. In the fall of 2019, Kylie met up with a friend to discuss her future career plans and the topic of being involved in Academia was brought up. She reached out to Professor Adam Presslee and was accepted as the first student to participate in the CPMRE Academia Mentorship Program, which included shadowing and learning about what it means to be an accounting academic. Throughout the year, she attended two accounting research workshops where visiting academics presented their research. Her mentorship experience also gave her a deeper understanding of teaching and other responsibilities performed by professors.

What motivated you to be the first student to participate in the CPMRE Academia Mentorship Program?

What surprised you about the life of a professor?

What benefits did you gain through this experience?

What challenges did you face in completing the experience?

What would she say to another student who is thinking of participating in the mentorship program?

By Bianca Bowen

I think that the most rewarding part of the CPMRE Mentorship Program for me was being able to understand what our professors actually do. As a student we interact with professors in the classroom (this year a virtual classroom) and maybe in our upper years we are able to assist our professors as Teaching or Research Assistants. But through this mentorship I was able to better understand what accounting academia really entails and discover if it was a career path I want to follow. During the mentorship program we explored the three aspects of a professor’s job: research, teaching and service.

Research

What I found most interesting was the research part of the job and how it provides professors with both freedoms and pressures. Freedom to manage your own work schedule, research the questions that you find interesting and decide how to answer them in your own way. Being able to create new knowledge and having your research influence others is definitely something that I think I would enjoy. On the other hand, academics don’t have a set 9-5pm, but that doesn’t mean that their jobs don’t come with the pressure to perform. Getting your research published in a highly rated research journal after sometimes spending years researching a paper seems daunting. Additionally, the path to accounting academia is long and challenging, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel when graduation day comes.

During the mentorship I was able to discuss and analyze different papers within performance management (a field I find extremely intriguing). This allowed me to think about the different research questions I would like to explore. I think a difficult part of being an academic would be choosing a specific path to research, although we did learn how finding one research hole and ‘digging really, really deep’ is important. As an academic you become an expert on a very specific aspect of your field. With so many things unexplored I think I would find it difficult to distinguish just one thing to focus on!

Teaching

As a student we all get to understand the types of teaching styles that we learn best with and know which professor’s classes we particularly enjoy. But do we stop to think about the time and effort put into writing the syllabus? Deciding how to weigh grades? Deliver the content? I think I underestimated the effort required to not only run but prepare to teach a university course. Through the mentorship I learned about how important a syllabus really is and we discussed the tips and tricks of keeping students engaged. It was fun to think about my courses from a different perspective.

Service

During this mentorship I was also able to attend Research Seminars where professors from all over the world present their ideas for papers that they are trying to publish in order to receive feedback, suggestions and advice from others in the field. When I asked how academics gained a spot to present at these sessions (how do they all know each other?) I was told about the highly anticipated yearly conferences where academics are able to network, share ideas and discover the latest research going on in the field (all at a beautiful location). Additionally, when academics have such specific niches of research, they are able to get to know others that study the same things even if they are in another country. I found it very interesting that collaborators on research could be on the other side of the world because of the close-knit community of accounting academia. These peer-to-peer feedback seminars are one type of collegiality, the third arm of a professor’s duties.

Overall, I think the CPMRE Academic Mentorship Program allowed me to explore what I would be getting into if I chose to pursue accounting academia. I enjoyed the chance to really understand what I like about performance management and discuss interesting papers with my peers and professors. Although, as of right now, I don’t believe a PhD is in my immediate future, I believe that it’s beneficial to explore all the potential paths that are available for your future before settling on where you want to go, this program definitely helped me do that.

About Bianca

Bianca Bowen is a fourth-year fellow in Accounting and Financial Management (AFM). Bianca’s experience on two international exchanges has led to her interest in the global business world and her pursuit of a minor in International Studies and Trade with a focus on the French language. She loves to read and listen to podcasts - her favourites being Ologies, Hidden Brain, and Revisionist History. Bianca aspires to achieve her CPA designation and continue to learn, travel, and have an impact in her future career.

By Imran Ali

Over the past few months I had the opportunity to be a part of the Center for Performance Management Research and Education Mentorship program. Membership in this program entailed reading a number of academic articles as a group with others in the program as well as 2 professors from the School of Accounting and Finance from the University of Waterloo, as well as attending a number of research presentations from prospective authors looking to get their papers published in top accounting journals. One of my favorite parts of this program - as trivial as it may seem - was learning to read effectively and dissect academic literature. Initially, my peers and I found the idea of reading these papers to be highly difficult and very intimidating as we had never been exposed to academic level writing before. However, through our CPMRE meetings and our group discussions we were all able to increase comfort levels with academic writing, and learn how to effectively and grasp the underlying ideas. This mentorship program gave me a deep insight into Accounting research, it also provided me with the ability to experience the process to have Academic Paper published. As someone who plans to pursue a career in Academic in the future this provided me with invaluable knowledge that will help me with my Academic career. Another aspect that I found to be particularly interesting was the Research Paper workshops. In these workshops, prospective Academics will share their research paper drafts to facilitate constructive criticism and discussion over the context of their paper for improvement. As I sat in these sessions, I was really surprised to learn that the majority of the research process is heavily reliant on team effort rather than being an exclusively individual oriented process. Throughout the many workshops my peers and I in the mentorship program had the opportunity to attend, we each got the chance to use these sessions as learning development opportunities for the future. This provided me with great insight to when I would have my turn to present my draft research paper.

After completing the CPMRE program, I believe the most important thing an incoming PhD student should learn is how to hear feedback. From my experiences in the research workshops, I have observed that despite each of the presenters being highly experienced researchers who had extensively published papers in the areas they were interested in, all of them were subject to a huge range of comments and feedback. This makes it clear to me that as a prospective PhD candidate, you should go into it with the mindset of being a committed lifelong learner. Being open-minded will allow you to accept constructive criticism, learn from it, and apply it to your work. Doing so will not only improve your work but it will also make your ideas stronger for the reader.

In conclusion, during this program I have learnt invaluable things. The program provided me with great insight in the world of Academics. It has made me realize my interest to pursue a PhD in Accounting. I will surely recommend this program to individuals who are pursuing a research program or interested to do so.

About Imran

Imran has recently completed his undergraduate degree in the Accounting and Financial Management program and is currently a Master of Accounting student. After graduation, he hopes to start a career working in audit and pursue a career in academia in the future.

By Christine Aranha

What is Academia

Academia is a community or environment that is concerned with the pursuit of research, education and scholarship. There are three specific jobs involved. Firstly, research is constantly being done at around 40% of the time. The second job involves teaching which includes teaching students, preparing for courses, working directly with PhD students and more which is also done around 40% of the time. The last job involves the service of volunteering for boards to help with decision making, helping colleagues, being involved in strategy competitions, student groups and more which takes up the remaining 20% of time. In academia, the act of service and collegiality is an important aspect.

Pros and Cons of Academia

There are several benefits of having a profession in academia such as flexibility with work hours, being able to study and look deeper into specific topics of interest, being able to develop new interests, having the ability to find solutions to unanswered questions, independence to work on your own and more. Mainly, being able to perform work that is not only meaningful but beneficial and significant. An aspect that can be least appealing in becoming an accounting academic is the freedom of having such a vast selection of topics to research. This freedom can be rather challenging to find one specific topic/idea to focus on. In an article written by Beyer et al, it is mentioned that there is importance in finding one research idea and digging the research hole deep in comparison to getting involved in a wide range of several projects and ideas. So, It is vital to gain thorough knowledge and do research on one specific topic rather than have limited knowledge in several research topics.

Areas in Research

It is important to understand what area of research you are interested in. As a graduate student in the Accounting and Financial Management program, my interest is performing research in accounting. Some specific categories of research can be in financial accounting, managerial accounting, auditing, taxation, information systems and more. There are also four specific research methodologies which can be used within each research idea according to Beyer et al. The 4 are: Archival research which is based on previous data collected, behavioural and experimental research which is creating new data through behaviours and experiments and lastly, analytical data which creates new knowledge through mathematical proofs.

What I Found Interesting and Surprising

Through this program, something I found interesting when reading research papers was being able to locate what the paper’s broad research question was. It was important to locate this question in the beginning of the report, before reading though the whole paper to decide if the article was what you were looking for. The question was often found through reading the abstract. Another thing I found interesting was that this career will provide the opportunity to be able to constantly learn new things and building on knowledge. A job in research will help make a positive impact through meaningful work in studying problems faced in the world today and finding effective solutions. This career will not only give the opportunity to do individual research but will help build skills through presentations and sharing of innovative ideas. Something I found surprising was that having a career in academia will allow the chance to work from anywhere with your own work hours. Work can be done through listening to podcasts, reading books, reading research papers and working at your own pace. That being said, the more effort that is put into work, the better results will be achieved.

Importance of Attending Relevant Research Workshops

During my experience in the program, I was able to attend a few research workshops that helped me gain insight on the presentation aspect of research. I was able to learn how academics go about composing their research papers to answer the research question. After the topic has been discussed in the introduction, it is reported what the researcher potentially thinks will be the outcome and answer to the question stated. This is followed by stating the hypothesis, followed by analysis which can be performed through initial research, historical data as well as theory and concepts. Once the experiment is done, the conclusion is written by explaining the research question and the proven answer to that question through experiments performed.

These workshops enabled me to gain knowledge in different research subjects and concepts through the presenters research question and experiments done to answer the question. I was able to gain inspiration as to what areas I could potentially do research in as a PhD student as well as learn ways on how to present effectively. When presenting research papers, I noticed that the academics used situated cognition. They tried to keep the presentation engaging and were open to answering questions at any point during their presentation. They were confident in their speech, had good eye contact and presented professionally through PowerPoints that included appropriate font types, font sizes as well as graphs/images to further the listener’s understanding of the topic.

Overall, the mentorship program gave me the opportunity to learn and understand what a career in academia looks like through discussing relevant aspects of research papers with accounting professors, relevant workshops as well as the opportunity to present a research idea and gain valuable feedback. To conclude, when considering a career in academia, it is important to reflect on this question, “Do you see yourself interested in doing research as a career and do you see it to be beneficial for you in the long run?”

About Christine

Christine Aranha is currently in her final term in the Accounting and Financial Management Program at the University of Waterloo. She has completed four co-op work terms in an accounting capacity with the goal of achieving her CPA designation after graduation. After having the opportunity of participating in the CPMRE Academia Mentorship Program and attending research workshops, Christine has gained a strong interest in potentially pursuing a career in Academia in the future. She is also passionate about music and volunteering.

Students in the 2019 Masters of Accounting (MAcc) program competed in their own version of March Madness. When not watching the basketball brackets play out, MAcc student teams each researched and wrote a three-page article describing a dimension of “Performance Management 3.0,” by aggregating research and showing examples from leading companies.

After random assignment of teams into Performance Management 3.0 brackets, a panel of SAF alumni chose the top article from each bracket as recipients of the Alumni Awards.  From these finalists – the MAcc program’s elite eight teams -  two members of the CPMRE selected one article to receive the CPMRE’s inaugural Publisher’s Prize!

Judges noted that all eight finalist articles were terrific, but the prize-winning article, “Is Cash Really King? Insights on Non-Cash Compensation in the World of Tech,“ written by SAF Masters of Accounting students Reina Dave, Andrew Giles, Annu Puri, and Ram Subbiah, stood out as the best.

 Winning team (from L to R): Master of Accounting students Andrew Giles, Ram Subbiah, Reina Dave, and Annu Puri

The team examined an important performance management issue, focused on a particular industry segment, integrated results from a survey that they administered with a thorough literature review, and identified clear implications for practice. Their article addressed the timely question of how millennial employees value and respond to the non-monetary incentives common at many tech firms. Overall, the authors found that millennial employees enjoy individual, personalized rewards that make them feel cared about, and they also highly value collective experiential rewards such as free meals with their co-workers that help build collaborative and welcoming work cultures.

Surprisingly, despite reporting valuing the availability of these rewards when selecting from among competing job offers, survey respondents also reported that they generally did not consider them to be an important factor when deciding whether to stay at an employer. This interesting insight raises questions about the effectiveness of non-monetary incentives with respect to employee retention.

Congratulations to Andrew, Annu, Ram and Reina for their outstanding article! Read their prize-winning article Is Cash Really King? (PDF).

The Centre supports learning activities that take students beyond the textbook. Students leverage these experiential education opportunities to learn about performance management capabilities and share what they have learned.

Below are examples of students' work from their learning on performance management.

An accessible version of the students' articles will be provided upon request. Please contact Alan Webb if you require an accessible version.