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Keith ROBSON

Professor

Accounting and Management Control

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Biography

Keith Robson holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and Social Studies majoring in Econometrics (Victoria University of Manchester), a Master’s Degree in Accounting and Finance (Victoria University of Manchester) and a PhD in Financial Reporting (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology). 

He has authored and co-authored three books, seven chapters in edited collections and over 35 articles in academic accounting, management and organization studies journals (Accounting, Auditing and Accountability; Accounting and Business Research, Accounting Business and Financial History; Accounting, Organizations and Society; Contemporary Accounting Research; Critical Perspectives on Accounting; Economy and Society; European Accounting Review; Human Relations, Organization; Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Science in Context).

He is an Editor (and former Editor-in-Chief) of Accounting, Organizations and Society, former associate editor of British Accounting Review, and serves on the boards of Accounting, Auditing and Accountability, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, International Journal of Auditing, Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Organizational Change, and the British Accounting Review.

His research interests include performance measures and diffusion; socio-political studies of accounting regulation; the profession, professional firms and professionalization; management control in schools; auditing methodologies. He is a member of the American Accounting Association, British Accounting and Finance Association (BAFA), European Accounting Association (EAA), and is Doctoral Alumnus of the American Accounting Association (AAA) Doctoral Consortium (as the BAA nominee), and of the European Accounting Association Doctoral Colloquium. He has held a Research Fellowship of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. Keith was a co-organizer of the Doctoral Colloquium of the European Accounting Association.  

Keith has held posts at Aberystwyth University, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), University of Manchester and Cardiff University. taught management accounting at various levels at Aberystwyth, Cardiff and Manchester. He is an Honorary Professor at Cardiff Business School. At HEC he is currently teaching cost accounting (HEC Master of Science in Management - Grande École), and theories of management control and Empirical Topics in Management Accounting (HEC doctoral program). He supervises one PhD student at HEC Paris and two at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University. 

 

Scientific articles

The Regulation of Accountancy and Accountants: Accounting for Research and Development in Four Advanced Capitalist Countries

Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 1992, vol. 5, n° 2, pp 31-54, (in coll. with H. WILLMOTT, A. G. PUXTY, D. J. COOPER)

Accounting Numbers as ‘Inscription’: Action at a Distance and the Development of Accounting

Accounting, Organizations and Society, 1992, vol. 17, n° 7, pp 685-708,

Accounting Policy Making and ‘Interests’: Accounting for Research and Development

Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 1992, vol. 4, n° 1, pp 1-27,

On the Arenas of Accounting Change: The Process of Translation

Accounting, Organizations and Society, 1991, vol. 16, pp 547-572,

Books

Chapters in edited books

Proceedings

Working papers

Scientific articles

Transforming Audit Technologies: Business Risk Audit Methodologies and the Audit Field

Accounting, Organizations and Society, 2007, vol. 32, n° 4-5, pp 409-438, (in coll. with C. HUMPHREY, C. KHALIFA, J. JONES)

Auditing firms and auditing professionals

Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 2006, vol. 24, pp 231-256, (in coll. with C. GREY, F. ANDERSON-GOUGH)

Locating the sites of professionalization

Accounting, Organizations and Society, July-August 2006, vol. 31, n° 4/5, pp 415-444, (in coll. with D. J. COOPER)

Budgetary Reform and the Structuration of Organizational Fields in Education

Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 2005, vol. 18, n° 6, pp 733-755, (in coll. with P. EDWARDS, M. EZZAMEL)

Books

Chapters in edited books

Proceedings

Working papers

Education

  • Ph.D., The University of Manchester - United Kingdom
  • M.A., The University of Manchester - United Kingdom
  • Bachelor of Arts in Econometrics, The University of Manchester - United Kingdom

Scientific Activities

Membership in Academic or Professional Organisation

  • Management Committee, Board and Doctoral Committee of the European Accounting Association
  • Member, European Accounting Association; Management Control Association

Editorial activities

  • September 2015- Editor-in-Chief, Accounting, Organizations and Society

  • Conference organisation

  • 2011-2011 Co-organizer of the first Financial Reporting as Social and Organizational Practice Workshop (with Professor Michael Power, LSE, & Professor Joni Young, University of New Mexico)
  • Co-organizer of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Tenth Interdisciplinary Perspectives On Accounting Conference (IPA), Manchester July 1994, 1997, 2000 and Cardiff 2006, 2012