2016 Inaugural Professorial Lecture - Professor Grant Samkin
15 Nov 2016 5:15 PM
"Moving beyond the green and purple: People I’ve known and places we’re going"
Accounting Professor Grant Samkin insists that “nobody ever wrote a TV show about accountants”, because it’s “too boring”. But he does an excellent job of disproving that staid image of the profession through his own diverse body of research.
Although he entered the profession almost by accident, Professor Samkin has been a chartered accountant for the past 26 years, and an academic for the past 17.
A major theme of his research is non-financial, narrative reporting – how commercial and public organisations use annual reports to not only report on their financial performance to shareholders, but also as a public relations tool to present themselves in the best possible light and respond to media criticism.
“It’s very interesting to examine the stories that organisations tell about themselves, because you get a much better sense of what they’re about than you do through the financial back-end numbers,” says Professor Samkin.
He is currently developing a new accounting framework that will help external stakeholders measure a company’s performance against biodiversity and natural capital targets.
OPUS Bar/cafe open from 4.30pm
Tickets: Free and open to the general public. Parking is free after 4.30pm in the University’s Gate 1 & Gate 2B carparks.