Professors Kelton and Yang recognized for accounting research

September 8, 2015

Andrea Kelton, left, Ya-wen Yang

School of Business accounting faculty Andrea Kelton and Ya-wen Yang received the 2015 Accounting Information Systems Notable Contributions to the Literature Award.

The award was presented Aug. 11 during the American Accounting Association annual meeting in Chicago. The award recognizes a paper published prior to Dec. 31, 2013 ,that has had a significant impact on accounting information systems research, theory, or practice.

Kelton and Yang’s paper, “The Impact of Corporate Governance on Internet Financial Reporting,” was published in the Journal of Accounting and Public Policy in 2008. The research examined why firms make the choice to take the extra steps to engage in Internet Financial Reporting (IFR) – a voluntary disclosure.

“Firms with higher levels of IFR make more disclosures on their corporate websites, and are more transparent with their voluntary disclosures,” Kelton, an assistant professor of accounting, said. “We found that corporate governance mechanisms are associated with this choice to be more transparent.”

At the time of their research, IFR was one of the first uses of technology for this kind of voluntary disclosure. Since their paper’s publication, firms are now disclosing information using even more kinds of technology, such as video and social media.

“We started this paper when we were both graduate students sharing an office at the University of Tennessee,” added Yang, Coca-Cola Fellow and associate professor of accounting. “It’s extremely gratifying to be able to continue to develop research together as faculty members at the School of Business.”