Happy New Year!
I hope everyone is keeping warm this time of the year. Spring will be coming soon enough and I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at our annual conference taking place in Saskatoon June 4 to 6. The organizers have been going all out to make this a spectacular conference with an exciting program. This year’s theme is Risky Business: Accounting in Times of Uncertainty. The conference will highlight some important questions for the future of the profession. For example, what role can accountants play to support decision makers in times of uncertainty? Or can new technologies and data analytic techniques allow us to measure uncertainties that we could not before? The professional development day on June 4 will also look at how we can prepare future generations of accounting practitioners. I want to encourage you to register early to take advantage of the special room rates we have negotiated with the conference hotel, the Delta Bessborough Hotel.
On the research front, please keep in mind the upcoming Accounting Perspectives special issue which will deal with blockchain and cryptoassets and the role accountants can play. The deadline for receiving submissions is on April 30, 2020.
As I mentioned in my speech at our past conference, we are pursuing efforts to engage all accounting faculty throughout Canada and looking at the value the association can bring to our diverse community. Our conference includes a full professional development day and has an even split between research and education sessions. I have pledged to continue supporting the education community and Kim Trottier (kim_trottier@sfu.ca), our membership committee chair, has spearheaded this endeavor of inclusivity together with Hanen Khemakhem (khemakhem.hanen@uqam.ca), our education chair. If you wish to help and support them, please feel free to reach them directly.
I must finish this address on a sad note by noting the passing of our long-esteemed colleague, Jerry Feltham. Jerry made a huge contribution to the CAAA as past editor of CAR, among other things. As mentioned by Gord Richardson, he was the “finest Canadian accounting academic this country has ever produced.”
Michael Favere-Marchesi
President, Canadian Academic Accounting Association (2019-2020)
Dear Colleagues:
As you can imagine, we have been very busy at the CAAA in the last few weeks. We have had several meetings of the Conference Committee and the Executive Committee, and held a special meeting of the Board of Directors to assess the situation with regards to our annual conference scheduled June 4 to 6. While we have not yet made a formal announcement, I want to ask for your patience a while longer as we are in negotiation with the hotel in Saskatoon to explore all options. I will get back to you shortly as these deliberations should conclude in the next few days.
In the meantime, we are suspending registration to the conference. However, I can guarantee you that, if the conference does not proceed, those who have already registered will receive a full refund of their registration fee.
We have been proactive in the matter and, even if we cannot hold an in-person conference, we have been actively engaged in exploring the possibility to deliver online activities to benefit all our members. Please keep the conference dates on your calendar open as most of these online activities, including the 44th Annual General Meeting of the Members of the CAAA, would take place during the days originally set aside.
I want to acknowledge the amazing work and dedication of our staff and all our volunteers in helping the association serve our membership in new and creative ways. As accounting researchers and educators, our work will be one of the languages in which this global challenge is parsed, explained, and confronted. Our research and teaching will be part of the solution. It is more important now than ever that the CAAA be a place where we can collaborate, question each other, share ideas, and be challenged to be better. I hope that you are all staying healthy and safe in these difficult times.
Michael Favere-Marchesi
President, Canadian Academic Accounting Association (2019-2020)
Update on 2020 CAAA Annual Conference
April 7, 2020
Dear Colleagues:
I promised to get back to you with further news. After many deliberations with all the parties involved, I must sadly inform you that we have decided to not hold our annual CAAA conference that was scheduled to take place in Saskatoon on June 4 to 6.
This was a difficult decision as so much effort had been expanded to make this a memorable conference, but we had to bow in front of the mounting and justified restrictions to fight off the spread of COVID-19, both in terms of travel and gatherings. While we will certainly miss the wonderful network opportunities that are dear to all who attend the in-person conference and the opportunity to interact spontaneously in research and education sessions, in roundtable discussions and other activities that we have come to cherish, we are actively engaged in exploring the possibility to deliver online activities that will benefit all our members. Our conference committee is investigating the elements of our conference that could be provided online, and shortly we will have more precise details on what we will be offering. I ask that you please keep the conference dates on your calendar open as most of these online activities will take place during those days that we had all originally set aside.
The 44th Annual General Meeting of Members of the CAAA will take place online on Friday, June 5th (time to be announced later). I want to strongly encourage everyone to attend because, among other things, a nomination slate of new candidates for various positions as approved by the Board of Directors will be presented to the membership for a vote. Your participation to the meeting and in this vote will ensure the smooth continuity of our association.
Thank you to all who have devoted countless hours to investigate the ways we will continue to provide benefits to our membership, as we all stand united in the face of this crisis.
Michael Favere-Marchesi
President, Canadian Academic Accounting Association (2019-2020)
May 15, 2020
Dear Colleagues:
Our conference chairs and education chair have been hard at work in the last few weeks to bring you a virtual conference to take place June 4 and 5, as well as a preconference webinar on June 3. By now, you will have received an invitation to register for the conference. The registration fees have been waived for members this year thanks to the generous support of our sponsors. I want to encourage all of you to register and participate in all the activities we have planned for you. This will be a new experience for all of us, and, while we won’t be able to shake hands, we will still be a thriving community as we have always been.
I want to remind you to attend the 44th annual general meeting taking place on Friday, June 5th at noon (CST). The meeting will take place in lieu of our traditional lunch. We look forward to have all of you participate in the election process. At the end of this meeting, I will transition to being Past-President and Samuel Sponem will take over the presidency. I must say that being President during these challenging times has been quite an adventure but, surrounded by all our volunteers and staff, we have stayed the course with tenacity and purpose, and I am very proud and thankful for the devotion of everyone involved in making the CAAA an exemplary organization to which we should all be proud to belong.
Michael Favere-Marchesi
President, Canadian Academic Accounting Association (2019-2020)
Summer 2020
Dear CAAA Members,
It is a great privilege to serve you as President of the CAAA this year.
I did not have the chance to greet you in person at our virtual conference. However, I was able to measure its success; almost 400 people participated in the different sessions, more than at most of our usual conferences.
A Conference in a New Format
We offered a full professional development day and research program online, plus the craft of accounting research workshop. The format allowed for exchange and collaboration, which many of you have continued after the conference. In this period of physical distance, I am pleased that the CAAA can contribute to providing the collaborative spaces we still need so much.
I thank the conference co-chairs Devan Mescall and Ganesh Vaidyanathan, the education committee chair Hanen Khemakhem, and all members of this committee, and the CAAA staff, for the incredible work to make this happen. We will use the knowledge gained from these efforts in the years to come, as we look for better ways to serve our members.
A Lively Association
The events of the past few months should not eclipse this year’s work by the Board of Directors, in particular the renewal of our publishing agreement with Wiley for the journals Contemporary Accounting Research and Accounting Perspectives, and the renewal of our funding agreement with CPA Canada. We thank Michael Favere-Marchesi for guiding the association in a collegial manner, with intelligence and serenity, in an uncertain context.
Our two journals are a major asset. Among the achievements during the mandate of Pascale Lapointe-Antunes and Mike Welker, we note:
- The renewal of the mandate, the increase in the impact factor, and the promotion in ABDC rankings for Accounting Perspectives,
- A reduction in pending articles and a record number of submissions for Contemporary Accounting Research.
Welcome to Leslie Berger and Alan Webb, who have taken over as Editors in Chief of the journals. Leslie is particularly active in developing calls for submissions for special thematic issues of Accounting Perspectives (the first one on “Literature Reviews on Emerging Topics in Accounting Research”). Alan is preparing the CAR conference and doctoral consortium to be held in October. A record number of submissions was received.
The association wants to honour individuals who have made significant contributions to the development of the Canadian accounting profession or have made contributions to the development of accounting in practice, through professional associations, regulatory bodies, or in academia. It is for this purpose that Canada’s Accounting Hall of Fame (CAHF) was created. Thank you to Alister K. Mason, who has accepted the role of director. He was the first CAAA president from accounting practice, in 1981-1982. In addition to recognizing individual contributions, the CAHF will provide a biographical history that highlighs the importance of accounting in the development of Canadian society.
Despite recent events, the association is not threatened in the short term. However, we must ensure that its operating model is sustainable in the long term.
Our Five-Year Strategic Review
One of my key responsibilities this year will be our strategic review, which takes place every five years. The last one formalized key elements of our strategy, including:
- the vision (excellence in accounting research and education),
- the mission (developing a community that advances accounting knowledge in the public interest),
- and the values of the association (collegiality, diversity, integrity, independence, relevance and innovation).
From this basis, our new reflections will be guided by three questions: How can we take care of our members and potential members?How can we help our members to take care of their students?How can we, individually, and collectively as an academic community, contribute responsibly to society?
Regarding the first question, the CAAA must recognize research and linguistic diversity, while developing a sense of community and interaction from coast to coast. In this time of uncertainty, we need each other. We must also continue our efforts to serve faculty with a particular focus on teaching. Alan Richardson noted almost 20 years ago the difficulties that the CAAA has always experienced in this area[1]. The current digital revolution, which is changing the training needs for accountants and the competency map of CPA Canada, as well as the services now offered by the association (Accounting Perspectives, the existence of a case bank, professional development days, publishers' webinars) make the association attractive for teaching-focused faculty, to whom we must make our activities better known. We will also have to ensure that with recent events, the economic and organizational model of our conferences is sustainable, since some now wonder about the sustainability of face-to-face conferences[2].
Our students are affected by this crisis too. Distance learning is a revolution for us and for them. It involves unprecedented risks regarding their mental health and their academic achievement. We must help them to deal with the current upheavals and support them to cope with the changes in the profession. In this regard, the education workshops on data analytics and mental health organized during the professional development day were particularly useful (both are available to CAAA members as video recordings here.
The opportunity to attend online allowed new colleagues to benefit from it. As for doctoral students in accounting (and professors just starting their careers), it is a difficult time. We must think about the services that we can especially provide them.
Finally, as academics in accounting and as an academic community, we must ask ourselves how we can contribute to society. We must help organizations to get through the current economic, social, and climate crises and conduct relevant research to help the profession navigate this difficult phase. These crises should also question our research objects and methods. What is accounting value? How do we account for social and environmental externalities? What are the sustainable models of organization? These are questions we should ask ourselves more often.
Working groups are being set up to reflect and consult on these issues, and propose measures to be implemented in the coming years. I will keep you informed over the next few months of our progress.
Here are the tasks that await us. The challenge is great, the uncertainties high, but I’m fortunate to work with a board of directors that is both competent and representative of the diversity of the members of the association. I hope I can count on you too. The CAAA is a member-based organization and I strongly encourage you to engage with and volunteer with CAAA.
Esteemed members, and colleagues, be assured of my commitment to the association during the coming year.
Samuel Sponem, HEC Montréal
CAAA President 2020-2021
[1] Richardson, A. J. (2001). Origins of the Canadian Academic Accounting Association. A history to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of incorporation. In J. E. Boritz (Ed.), The Canadian Academic Accounting Association: 25 years of progress. Canadian Academic Accounting Association.
October 2020
Dear CAAA Members,
The Fall usually brings many of us back to campus where new students and colleagues await us. This year is special. We have to do everything remotely. Unfortunately, most of us have not been able to get back to our offices and classrooms.
In these troubled times, the CAAA staff and board of directors are mobilized to continue to serve you in the best possible way.
After having organized a free virtual version of the CAAA conference in 2020, we are also offering all our members the opportunity to attend the conference of our journal Contemporary Accounting Research on November 5 and 6, 2020, free of charge. You have received an email to register and you can do so until October 16 (subject to availability). For the first time, in addition to the regular program, sessions to discuss papers from a practice perspective will be held with CPA Canada. I would like to thank Alan Webb, the editor in chief, and his co-editors, for providing us with an unprecedented program and allowing CAAA members to attend one of North America's most popular accounting conferences.
As you know, for the past few years, the Accounting Perspectives journal has issued several calls for papers. You have until January 31, 2021, to submit your articles for the Special Issue of Literature Reviews on Emerging Topics in Accounting Research (/journals-and-research/accounting-perspectives-ap/). Literature reviews are important for our master's and doctoral students. They help to structure knowledge in our research fields, and are a good way for scholars to publish a relevant and often well-cited piece. I therefore invite you to submit articles. Stay tuned; more calls are being prepared for the next few months.
Finally, as I told you in my first letter, the Board of Directors is involved in our five-year strategic review. In connection with the 3 questions raised in my previous message (How can we take care of our members and potential members? How can we help our members to take care of their students? How can we, individually, and collectively as an academic community, contribute responsibly to society?), four working groups were formed. They deal with 1/ the future of conferences; 2/ career support and development for junior scholars and students; 3/ CAAA offerings for education-oriented members; and 4/ research diversity and inclusivity. Consultations with some members have already been carried out. Work and consultations on these topics will continue in the coming weeks in order to formalize our strategic plan in 2021.
CAAA relies on the involvement of its members: your participation in our committees, working groups, Board, and conferences. Our membership fees are fundamental to offering these services, our journals, video workshops, and classroom-ready teaching notes. We regularly solicit nominations for positions on the Board, committees, and for recipients of the CAAA Awards; the deadline for these is in February 2021. You also have until November 13 to nominate peers to the Canadian Accounting Hall of Fame or participate in the Board of Electors (/fr/trcc/le-temple-de-la-renomm%C3%A9e-comptable-du-canada/). Self-nominations are encouraged in some instances - click the link above to find out more.
If you have any questions or remarks, please do not hesitate to contact me (samuel.sponem@hec.ca).
I wish you an excellent end of the fall session.
Samuel Sponem, HEC Montréal
CAAA President 2020-2021