Academy Fellow

Stephen Taylor is UTS Distinguished Professor of Accounting in the Business School at the University of Technology Sydney, which he joined in July 2008. In May 2017 he was appointed as a member of the Australian Accounting Standards Board. During 2016-17, Stephen served as the inaugural Australian Business Deans’ Council Research Scholar. Prior to this appointment Stephen served as Associate Dean-Research in the UTS Business School from 2009-2015, during which time UTS Business School research grew to be ranked equal third in Australia, and well ahead of any non-Group of Eight University business school. From 2012-2015, Stephen also served as the Chair of the Business Academic Research Directors’ Network (BARDsNet), which represents the research interests of the Australian Business Dean’s Council. Immediately prior to joining UTS he was Professor of Accounting at the Australian School of Business, UNSW, where he also served as Acting Associate Dean (Research) in 2005-2006. He has a PhD from UNSW (Australian Graduate School of Management).

He was first appointed to a Chair of Accounting at the University of Sydney in 1995, where he also served as Academic Director of the Accounting Foundation. In 2001 and 2002 he served as head of the School of Accounting at the University of Technology Sydney. Stephen has also been a Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan (Ross Business School) in 1993-4 and 1999-2000. Stephen was closely involved in establishing the research program of the Capital Markets Co-Operative Research Centre (CMCRC) from 2002 through 2008, and lead a program of research directed towards the identification and measurement of accounting manipulation and ultimately, fraudulent financial reporting. This program received significant financial support from Ernst and Young. More recently he was one of the key researchers in the development of the Centre for International Finance and Regulation, which was launched in 2011 with million of federal and NSW government support.

Apart from his four years as Chair of BARDsNet, Stephen currently has a number of significant leadership and governance roles beyond those within UTS. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the CMCRC, Chair of the Audit Committee and also serves as a board representative on the Research and Education committee. He is also a director (and Deputy Chair) of SIRCA Ltd and its subsidiary Rozetta, and is the Chair of the Audit and Risk Management Committee. Stephen was also a member of the CIFR Advisory Council (2011-2014) and also the Research Committee. He has served for a number of years as an Academic Advisor to Plato Funds Management, a boutique quantitative funds manager with over billion in funds under management.

Stephen’s research is at the intersection of financial reporting, auditing and finance. He is especially interested in how audit quality varies and the implications for the quality of financial reporting and, more generally, corporate governance. His research has been published in leading international journals, including the Journal of Accounting and Economics, Review of Accounting Studies, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Banking and Finance, and Journal of Corporate Finance. He has twice received the best paper prize from the Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand. Stephen is currently a Co-Editor of the International Journal of Accounting. From 2012-2015 he was an Associate Editor (i.e., full editorial decision making) of Accounting Horizons, published by the American Accounting Association. He is a member of several editorial boards including Contemporary Accounting Research, Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory, Accounting and Finance and Australian Journal of Management. He serves as an ad-hoc referee for The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Review of Accounting Studies and Accounting, Organizations and Society.

Stephen’s teaching and research is in the area of financial reporting and valuation. He has wide experience teaching at both the undergraduate and MBA levels, especially in the areas of accounting-based valuation models, investment analysis and financial reporting. He has been a presenter in many executive education courses and has provided expert advice to a wide range of private and public sector organizations, including the role of expert witness, in Australia and overseas. He also co-ordinated the research program established by ASIC to undertake a statutory review of the Enhanced (Continuous) Disclosure Regime.

Apart from his involvement with the Capital Markets CRC, Stephen has received many large ARC Grants (Discovery and Linkage). Most recently (for the period 2018-2-2020), Stephen is the team leader on a project funded by the Australian Research Council (DP), which will carefully examined the increasing use of “non-GAAP” metrics in performance reporting by Australian firms, and their role as internal measures of performance as eveidenced by their use to determine executive bonuses. He also currently serves the ARC as an expert assessor for International Linkage, Federation Fellowship and Discovery applications, as well as having been an ERA peer reviewer. In 2007 Stephen was appointed to the Research Quality Framework assessment panel for Business and Economics, and in 2015 was a member of the Research Evaluation Committee (Economics and Business) for the 2015 ERA assessment exercise. He will serve again in this role in 2018. In late 2008 Stephen served as the Don Trow Visiting Fellow at Victoria University, Wellington.

Australian Business Deans’ Council Research Scholar 2016-2017

Member, Australian Accounting Standards Board 2017-2019

FCA MAICD

1. The Rise and Rise of Non-GAAP Disclosure: A Survey of Australian Practice and its Implications, with Jeff Coulton, Andrea Ribeiro and Yaowen Shan, Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, November 2016.
2. Design Principles for Executive Compensation: An Accounting Perspective, Abacus (2016), 52, 748-755.
3. The Role of ‘Other Information’ in Analysts’ Forecasts in Understanding Stock Return Volatility, with Yaowen Shan and Terry Walter, Review of Accounting Studies (2014) 19, 1346-1392.
4. The Informativeness of Dividends and Associated Tax Credits, with J. Coulton and C. Ruddock, Journal of Business Finance and Accounting (2014) 41, 1309-1336.
5. Earnings Conservatism and Non – Audit Services: Is Auditor Independence Impaired, with Caitlin Ruddock and Sarah Taylor, Contemporary Accounting Research (2006) 23, 701-746.