Ifigenia Georgiou, Ph.D. Curriculum Vitae CURRENT POSITION AND ROLE Assistant Professor, Cyprus International Institute of Management (CIIM), Nicosia, Cyprus (September, 2014 to date) PREVIOUS POSITION AND ROLE Lecturer, Finance and Accounting Group, Aston University, Birmingham, UK (2009-August 2014) EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND (in reverse chronological order) Teaching Qualification Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Practice in Higher Education (2012) Centre for Learning Innovation and Professional Practice Aston University (Birmingham, UK) Dissertation: Embedding Ethical Values in Business School Learning: A Literature Review (Thesis Advisor: H. Higson, Professor of Higher Education Learning and Management) Ph.D. Ph.D. in Finance (2010) Department of Public and Business Administration, School of Economics and Management, University of Cyprus Dissertation: Essays in Financial Economics: Quality, Value, Board Composition, and Executive Compensation (Thesis Advisors: A. Charitou and A.C. Soteriou, Professor of Accounting and Professor of Operations Management, respectively) M.Sc. M.Sc. in Finance (2002) Department of Public and Business Administration, School of Economics and Management, University of Cyprus Dissertation: The Effect of Online Service Quality on Internet Stock Prices (Thesis Advisors: A. Charitou and A. C. Soteriou, Professor of Accounting and Associate Professor of Operations Management, respectively) M.Sc. M.Sc. in Information Management (1999) Department of Management Science, Lancaster University (Lancaster, UK)
Dissertation: Information Warfare as a Metaphor Information Systems Security in an Organisational Context (Thesis Advisor: Brian Bloomfield, Professor of Technology and Organisation) B.Sc. B.Sc. in Management Science (1998) Department of Public and Business Administration, School of Economics and Management, University of Cyprus Dissertation: Factors Affecting the Productivity of Production and Operations Management Faculty (Thesis Advisors: A. C. Soteriou and G. Hadjinicolas, Associate Professors of Operations Management) RESEARCH INTERESTS My primary research interests are associated with corporate governance especially the composition of the board of directors and several specific organisational performance indicators such as quality management and social and environmental performance. Specifically, I am interested in investigating the interrelationship of these variables, as well as their relationship with the firm s business and financial market performance (interaction, mediation, fit). My previous work has examined the role of online quality management - as a proxy for switching costs - in explaining the financial market performance of pure B2C Internet stocks during the Internet stock bubble period based on a restatement of the Ohlson s (1995) clean surplus relation. That work involved devising an instrument for measuring the perceptions of prospective investors regarding the quality of services offered by pure online firms. My current work focuses on the strategic fit between corporate governance structure and quality management success for quality award winners and the impact of this fit on firm performance. I am particularly interested in the contingency of the efficiency of alternative governance structures on organisational strategy. In addition, I am very interested in the role of quality management as a rhetoric for organisational restructuring and change. Furthermore, I am interested in socially responsible investing from a behavioural point of view, as well as the role of the board of directors and other corporate governance parameters in equality policies in companies. Together, my previous and current work has required extensive data collection (from databases such as Compustat, Datastream, ASSETS4, KLD, and CRSP as well as hand-collected data e.g. from proxy statements) and the use of a number of diverse statistical/econometric techniques (e.g. factor analysis, log-linear and logistic regression analysis) as well as a number of statistical packages (e.g. STATA, SPSS, LISREL). In addition, due to the interdisciplinary nature of my research I had to study and draw from different literatures from the finance, accounting, operations management and organisational strategy fields. In the future, I would like to combine these acquired research skills and literatures to examine interesting questions concerning further topics on corporate governance, quality management and socially responsible investing. PAPERS Board Composition and Value: The Case of Quality Excellence (with A. Charitou and A. C. Soteriou, 2013) Revise and Resubmit. Adopting Equality Policies in US firms: Does Corporate Governance matter? (Working paper, 2013)
Favouritism in Socially Responsible Investments? An Empirical Investigation (Working paper with A. Iona, 2013) Embedding Ethical Values in Business School Learning: A Systematic Literature Review and Practical Guide (Working paper). The relevance of Quality Management Strategy for CEO Compensation: Evidence from Quality Award Winners (Working Paper with A. Charitou and A. C. Soteriou, 2013) submitted to a peer-reviewed academic Journal Web perceived service quality and the performance of pure B2C Internet firms in financial markets (Working Paper with A. Charitou and A. C. Soteriou, 2013) Web perceived service Quality of B2C pure Internet firms: Measurement and assessment (Working Paper with A. Charitou and A. C. Soteriou, 2013) CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS European Accounting Association (EAA), Annual Congress, May 2013, Paris, France. Ninth Workshop on Corporate Governance, European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM), May 2012, Brussels, Belgium. European Accounting Association (EAA), Annual Congress, May 2012, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Multinational Finance Society (MFS), Annual Conference, July 2011, Rome, Italy. British Accounting and Finance Association (BAFA) Conference, April 2011, Birmingham, UK. European Accounting Association (EAA), Annual Congress, May 2010, Istanbul, Turkey. European Accounting Association (EAA), Annual Congress, April 2008, Rotterdam, Netherlands. European Accounting Association (EAA), Annual Congress, April 2007, Lisbon, Portugal. European Accounting Association (EAA), Annual Congress, March 2006, Dublin, Ireland. European Financial Management Association (EFMA), Annual Meeting, July 2004, Basel, Switzerland. JOURNAL AND BOOK REVIEWS I have reviewed submitted papers for the following peer-reviewed academic Journals: o Journal of Applied Accounting Research o Multinational Finance Journal o Operations Management Research Book review: Financial Accounting, Reporting, and Analysis, First Edition by Jennifer Maynard (Oxford University Press, 2013). I have reviewed the whole book before publication after a request by Oxford University Press. PH.D. SUPERVISION
Nermeen Shehata (with Alan Lowe); Topic: Corporate Governance Disclosure in the Gulf Countries (Ph.D. awarded in July 2013). Moataz Elhelaly (with Alan Lowe); Topic: Related party transactions and corporate governance. Wan Ahmad (with Stuart Cooper); Topic: Mandatory carbon reporting in UK publicly listed companies. Teng Li (with Ataur Belal); Topic: Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting in Mainland China: Evidence from a Chinese State-owned Enterprise. M.SC. DISSERTATION TUTORING I have supervised at least 25 M.Sc. Dissertations (Finance and Accounting specialisations) since 2010. Topics included, but were not limited to: Corporate Governance, Board of Directors, Financial Markets, Corporate Social Responsibility Performance and Reporting, International Reporting, relationship of several organisational parameters to financial performance. Methods included both Quantitative and Qualitative research methods. In addition, I have second marked more than 35 M.Sc. dissertations. TEACHING I tend to find teaching fascinating and rewarding and I have always believed that it is the obligation of the instructor to find effective ways to make learning fascinating and rewarding for the learners. In my experience I find that a teaching approach based on the direct interaction between the instructor, the student and their classmates is much more effective than an approach that passively delivers information to students. I have also observed that even students that are unaccustomed to this method, with the right encouragement they rise to the challenge and begin to initiate interaction themselves. Moreover, this interaction approach allows the instructor to continually adjust to the needs of the students. In addition to that, I believe that - especially in our field - encouraging the students to interact with the real business world through real life examples and projects is of benefit to them. I am convinced that technology can be of much assistance here, as it allows students to interact with each other and with their instructors; I use Blackboard extensively aiming to build a community-like environment for students to interact with each other and with me through forums and other tools available. I hold a teaching qualification (Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Practice in Higher Education) from Aston University (2012). My dissertation was a systematic literature review on embedding ethical values in business school learning, where I examined the feasibility of teaching business ethics in higher education and investigated practical ways to effectively teach ethics. The findings suggest clear and applicable ways to engage students in ethics learning in the course of teaching accounting, or finance or any other business topic. Based on my teaching experience and research background my teaching interests include (but are not restricted to) Corporate Governance, Investments and Portfolio Theory and Management, Financial Management, Financial Accounting, International Accounting, Management Accounting, Corporate Finance, Corporate Social Responsibility, Quality
Management, Service Management and Operations Management. I have been teaching Financial Accounting since 2009 and International Accounting since 2010, and I have been guestlecturing for Sustainability Accounting and Accountability (Postgraduate level) since 2011 at Aston University Business School. Before that, I taught Investments and Portfolio Management (twice) at the University of Cyprus and Accounting (Postgraduate level, MBA) at the University of Nicosia; In addition, I was a teaching assistant for Management Accounting and for Business Policy (both at the University of Cyprus). MODULES/COURSES TAUGHT Financial Accounting (FB500) October 2014 CIIM Financial Accounting (BF2211) 2009-2014 Lecturer and Module Leader Aston University International Accounting (BF1169) 2010-2014 Lecturer and Module Leader Aston University This module focuses on financial accounting reporting standards (mainly IFRS). This module focuses on financial accounting reporting standards (mainly IFRS). My aim and focus is to provide the students with the ability to critically think about the standards. Emphasis is given to the Accounting Principles and critical thinking, rather than to the letter of the standards. The assessments examine the ability of the students to critically discuss the Standards. The module is addressed to second year undergraduate students. The module received an Excellent review rating by the Associate Dean of Learning and Teaching of Aston University for the last three consecutive years (2010/11, 2011/12, 2012/13). The aim of this module is to engage students in developing an understanding of the historical, cultural and institutional factors affecting the accounting systems of different countries and enable them to use theoretical frameworks such as the ones of Hofstede, Gray, and Nobes to discuss the aims and challenges of international harmonisation of financial reporting. The module is addressed to first year undergraduate International Business, Management, and Languages students. Sustainability Accounting and Accountability (BFM223) since 2011-2014 Guest Lecturer I give a three-hour guest lecture on Socially Responsible Investing. Specifically, the lecture is about the issues addressed in current research in the field of Socially Responsible Investing. For this module, I also prepare an additional, separate
Aston University Level: Postgraduate Investments and Portfolio Management 2007-2008 Lecturer and Module Leader University of Cyprus, Department of Public and Business Administration, School of Economics and Management online lecture for the online learning students. I am also involved in student assessment for the entire module. Provided undergraduate students with an in-depth insight of the fundamental principles of modern investment analysis and valuation and with the skills to conduct a sophisticated assessment of investment decisions. The primary goals of the course were both to convey the principles of investment science and emphasise material of practical value by introducing major issues that are currently of concern to all investors. Topics covered included an overview of the investment environment, financial markets and instruments, capital markets and the CAPM as well as an overview of other pricing models, market efficiency, fixed income securities, security analysis, and portfolio management. The course was addressed to both Erasmus and University of Cyprus students. The diversity of academic backgrounds of the students was an interesting challenge that was successfully met. As an instructor I had full responsibility of the planning, organisation and delivery of the course as well as of the tutoring and counselling of students. I designed and developed the course including the course outline and objectives as well as the syllabus I selected the material to be taught, I prepared and gave the lectures; prepared and graded assignments; prepared, administered and graded exams. Accounting 2008 Lecturer and Module Leader University of Nicosia (Nicosia, Cyprus) Level: Postgraduate (MBA Programme) This course was conducted in two modules, one on Financial Accounting and one on Management Accounting. The emphasis was in viewing Accounting as an information system that assists external and internal users in taking decisions concerning the organisation. The course was addressed to young as well as mature MBA students with diverse academic, professional and cultural backgrounds. This diversity was an interesting challenge that was faced by allowing each student to relate their individual interests and experience stemming from
their unique backgrounds to the issues taught in this class through individual or group projects. As an instructor I had full responsibility of the planning, organisation and delivery of the course. This included selecting the syllabus to be taught, preparing the teaching material (slides, presentations), preparing and grading the assignments and projects as well as preparing, administrating and grading the exams. Management Accounting and Costing 2007-2008 Teaching Assistant University of Cyprus, Department of Public and Business Administration, School of Economics and Management Language: Greek Business Policy Taught the tutorials which included selecting the exercises relevant to the material taught by the Lecturer in class, assigning them to class, then solving the exercises and answering students questions on the lecture as well as on the relevant exercises. In addition, the Lecturer and I jointly prepared (selected topics and questions) and graded the examinations. Graded the assignments and examinations. 2007-2008 Teaching Assistant University of Cyprus, Department of Public and Business Administration, School of Economics and Management Language: Greek STUDENT TUTORING Placement students tutoring My role as a placement tutor involves visiting students (final year, undergraduates) at their workplace and meeting with their company supervisor. I guide placement students through the academic work they undertake during their placement year. Placement students have to submit an essay where they have to examine a real problem or issue encountered at the company during their placement year using the knowledge they acquired during both their academic learning at the Business School, as well as their experience. I have been responsible for 5 students every year since 2010. Personal student tutoring
Through this role I am contributing to making students feel part of the University s academic and social community. I provide academic guidance, information and pastoral support to each one of my students throughout their studies. I listen to students' issues or concerns and then work with the students and with appropriate sources of support within the School, University or Students' Union to find a solution to their issue. I have been responsible for about 30 students per year since 2012. MEMBERSHIPS European Accounting Association (EAA) from 2006 to date Fellow of The Higher Education Academy (since 2012) Member of the Equality and Diversity Committee of Aston University (since 2010) Member of the Social Responsibility & Sustainability Research Group, Aston Business School (since 2010) Member of the Team submitting ABS for a Gender Equality award (ABS Gender Equality Trial), 2014. RESEARCH ASSISTANTSHIPS 2007-2008 University of Cyprus, Department of Architecture, School of Engineering Data collection, data input, image and database construction and organisation. 1999-2006 University of Cyprus, Department of Public and Business Administration, School of Economics and Management Worked with several members of the faculty of the Department from a variety of disciplines (Management Science/Operational Research, Operations Management, Finance, Marketing, Management and Accounting). My main responsibilities included data collection and literature reviews. OTHER ACADEMIC WORK EXPERIENCE Conference Organisation 2008 University of Cyprus Designed the Web site and provided organising assistance for the academic conference Group on Organizations and the Natural Environment (GRONEN) that was organized by the Department of
Public and Business Administration, University of Cyprus and took place in Nicosia, Cyprus in May 2008. Academic Translations 2006-2007 University of Cyprus Academic translations from English to Greek of lecture slides and case studies for the Greek speaking section of the MBA at the University of Cyprus. SKILLS Very good knowledge of databases such as Compustat, Datastream, ASSETS4, KLD, and CRSP. Very efficient in hand-collecting specialised data e.g. from proxy statements. Can use of a number of diverse statistical/econometric techniques (e.g. factor analysis, loglinear, logistic regression analysis). Very good knowledge of a number of statistical packages (e.g. STATA, SPSS, LISREL). Ability to combine different knowledge from the finance, accounting, operations management and organisational strategy fields. Ability to work under pressure. Very enthusiastic as a teacher with the ability to transfer my enthusiasm to the students. Great communication skills. LANGUAGES English (fluently) Greek (fluently native language)