By Rachel Doherty
From Left to Right: Drs. Adam Presslee, Krista Fiolleau, Tyler Thomas, Adam Vitalis, Kelsey Matthews and Tim Bauer.
An experimental managerial accounting group at the University of Waterloo's School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) has reached its highest international ranking ever, placing third globally in research productivity according to the 2025 BYU Accounting Rankings — ahead of institutions including Cornell University.
Published by Brigham Young University, the BYU Accounting Rankings are a widely recognized benchmark of research productivity among accounting programs worldwide. The 2025 results reflect output over both the past six and 12 years and recognize the sustained contributions of six SAF faculty members: Drs. Tim Bauer, Krista Fiolleau, Kelsey Matthews, Adam Presslee, Tyler Thomas and Adam Vitalis.
At its core, this research is about something every organization grapples with: why people don't always behave as systems expect. Presslee explains, "Management accounting in its simplest form is about performance management — all those devices and systems that firms use to increase the likelihood that employees' behaviours and decisions are consistent with organizational strategy. Our group uses experiments to test factors that affect when and why employees perform better or worse."
The questions the group pursues are ones that surface in boardrooms and team meetings alike. Does recognizing employees publicly drive better performance than cash rewards? How does the way a goal is framed affect whether someone achieves it? What happens to knowledge sharing when employees are competing against each other? Several of the group's papers have earned international awards for their contributions to these questions, including work on when tangible rewards outperform cash incentives, how relative performance information shapes employee behaviour and what organizational structures best support creativity and collaboration.
This ranking reflects years of deliberate investment in building a world-class research community. To see our group ranked among the best globally is a proud moment for SAF and a signal of what's possible when you commit to a vision and invest in talent.
"People do not always respond to systems the way they are intended to," Matthews says. "You can have well-designed metrics, incentives or processes, but how employees interpret them, react to them and ultimately perform can vary a lot." It's that gap between intention and reality, she says, that keeps the research relevant to the real challenges organizations face — not just in theory, but in practice.
That connection to the real world has been built deliberately over time. In 2009, SAF had a single contributing author in this field and ranked 16th globally. The turning point came in 2018 with the creation of the CPA Ontario Centre for Sustainability Reporting and Performance Management (CSPM). Five of the six researchers currently contributing to the ranking were hired after 2017, and Presslee credits the group's early faculty for establishing the experimental lab and research reputation that made that growth possible.
Dr. Blake Phillips, SAF director, sees the milestone as a marker of something larger: "This ranking reflects years of deliberate investment in building a world-class research community. To see our group ranked among the best globally is a proud moment for SAF and a signal of what's possible when you commit to a vision and invest in talent."
The ranking reflects the momentum and culture of the group — there's a strong emphasis on collaboration, curiosity and asking questions that matter.
For Matthews, the recognition carries particular weight. "It's incredibly meaningful, especially being early in my academic career," she says. "The ranking reflects the momentum and culture of the group — there's a strong emphasis on collaboration, curiosity and asking questions that matter."
Thomas speaks to what draws researchers to this work in the first place. "I find it fascinating to use experimental research to understand how accounting affects managers' and employees' behaviour and provide insights about how accounting can be used to motivate actions to achieve organizational goals," he says. For Thomas, the ranking is also a reflection of the people behind it. "It has been a blessing to work with such great colleagues who strive to push each other forward to provide insightful research into the impact of accounting for both academia and practice."
The group has also trained the next generation of researchers, graduating three experimental managerial accounting PhD students in the past six years. Ala Mokhtar, now a faculty member at McMaster University, is one of them. "I learned to focus on why people would care about an answer to my research question, before taking any steps to understanding how I could answer that question," she says.
For students drawn to accounting, the path to impact doesn't have to run through a firm. The work coming out of SAF's experimental managerial accounting group is a reminder that research offers its own kind of influence — shaping how organizations motivate people, design incentives and make decisions that affect real working lives.