New brown-bag series prepares VCU doctoral students for academic stage
By Megan Nash
In a bid to build both confidence and academic readiness, the VCU School of Business’ Department of Accounting has introduced a new “brown-bag” presentation series for its Ph.D. candidates.
Designed for third-year students, the format gives them a chance to share early-stage research in an informal setting, providing space for constructive feedback before they head to national conferences.
“We created this brown-bag format to allow them to present in a friendly environment that is intended to help them build up their confidence, so they present well on the national stage,” said Alisa Brink, Ph.D., department chair, KPMG Teaching Excellence professor and Ph.D. faculty advisor.
“Our Ph.D. students’ growth over their first two years has been significant,” Brink added. “It is a proud moment for the faculty involved to see their progress.”
In many ways, the brown-bag sessions go beyond presentation skills. For these students, it’s a step toward uncovering the pivotal idea—their “big potato”—that will shape the impact of their research.
The three students who participated—Ming, Ben and Wenhao—are now refining their dissertations, with tenure-track positions on the horizon.
Let’s meet the candidates.
Ming Li
Hometown: Beijing, China
Ph.D. Focus/Research Area:
Financial reporting, corporate disclosures and ESG (environmental, social and governance).
Title of Paper:
Goodwill Allocation Disclosures and the Timeliness of Goodwill Impairments
Research Summary:
My research focuses on the gray area of goodwill allocation in mergers and acquisitions. Companies are not required to disclose how they calculate or allocate goodwill, allowing management discretion that can obscure important information. Our research looks to uncover patterns in goodwill allocation and how it related to the value of the acquired company and its future performance.
What was your motivation to pursue a Ph.D. in accounting?
During my time as a tutor in the master’s program at Baruch College, I enjoyed interacting with students and helping them succeed. As a first-generation student, my professors played a significant role in broadening my horizons. Pursuing a Ph.D. felt like a way to give back, by helping future students imagine themselves in larger roles. I’ve always been drawn to intellectual challenges, and a Ph.D. allows me to explore those in depth.
How did you develop an interest in this specific area of accounting research?
My advisor, Dr. Thomas Hansen, introduced me to this topic. As we discussed it, I realized the importance of greater transparency in financial disclosures to provide more accurate guidance to investors and creditors. By studying how management may use discretion to misrepresent the value of an acquisition, we hope to reveal the implications for investors and other financial statement users.
How do you see your research making an impact in the business world?
If successful, our research could help shape new accounting standards regarding how goodwill is treated. By providing more accurate information to investors and auditors, we could reduce auditing costs and improve the valuation of companies. This would result in more truthful financial reporting, benefitting the business world by increasing transparency and trust.
How have you handled setbacks or unexpected results?
We’ve encountered some challenges, particularly with the sample size, which is smaller than we’d like. However, we remain committed to presenting the results as they are. It’s essential to be honest with the data, even if the findings aren’t what we initially expected. This doesn’t radically change the direction of my dissertation, but it’s a reminder that not all managements are willing to provide detailed information on voluntary disclosures like goodwill.
Have you found your “big potato” yet, or how do you plan to uncover it?
Since our research is ongoing, we haven’t uncovered final results yet, but I’m confident we’re on the right track. We’re still digging for that big discovery, and I’m optimistic about what we’ll find as we continue.
Ben Chapin
Hometown: Richmond, VA
Ph.D. Focus/Research Area:
Managerial accounting, with a focus on experimental methods and behavioral topics.
Title of Paper:
The Emotional Responses to Feedback from Artificial Intelligence in an Incentivized Creative Task
Research summary:
My research looks at human-artificial intelligence (AI) interaction and how feedback impacts the emotions of recipients. Feedback plays a critical role in accounting controls and organization performance, influencing both effort and outcomes. I’m interested in how these AI interactions affect people in practical accounting settings.
What was your motivation to pursue a Ph.D. in accounting?
I’ve spent years in corporate accounting without needing a CPA, but I wanted to keep learning. The professors at VCU encouraged me to consider the Ph.D. track. My goal was to explore research beyond textbooks–to dive into what’s at the cutting edge of accounting. I left behind my practice to fully embrace this shift, just like many accounting researchers, each with their own reasons.
What excites you most about your research?
I’m fascinated by how technology, especially AI, affects the creative process. While most discussions about AI focus on mundane tasks, its real disruption lies in creativity. In fields like show business and innovation, this change is immediate. As a classical musician, I know firsthand how feedback impacts creative performance, and the idea of receiving it from AI unsettles me. This intersection of technology and human reaction is what drives my current research, especially as it allows me to explore performance measures and how people respond to incentivized systems.
What personal or professional growth have you experienced through this research project?
This research is in its early stages, but the Ph.D. program has already changed how I think, write and approach problems. In corporate life, much of my work was hands-on, interacting with people and processes. Now, it’s more about thought and ideation, which can be messy. You generate countless ideas, most of them bad, but the key is learning to recognize when to let an idea go. The program encourages us to make a mistake as part of the process, and while it’s sometimes painful, it’s an essential part of growth.
If your research could solve on big problem in accounting, what would it be?
Accounting tends to overlook emotion, focusing solely on hard data. But the way people feel and react to feedback can be just as important as the numbers. We need to consider the human side–how emotion and behavior influence organizational decisions. AI’s role in this interaction is timely, but it’s the behavioral aspects that truly interest me.
Have you found your “big potato” yet, or how do you plan to uncover it?
The largest ideas are often hidden, only revealed after digging deep. I’ve found that my research started as a small idea, but it has grown to be just as significant as the AI component. Sometimes, you don’t realize the value of an idea until you’ve gone through the process. The key is to keep exploring and be open to discovering something bigger along the way.
Wenhao Zhu
Hometown: Shanghai, China
Ph.D. Focus/Research Area: Accounting
Title of Paper: A Novel Use of Contract in Participative Budgeting
Research Summary:
Firms are always fretting about employees’ unethical behavior in the workplace. Participative budgeting is a setting conducive to this type of behavior. I propose a way firms utilize their disadvantaged, yet still valuable information, to minimize their loss from employee’s dishonest budget reporting.
What was your motivation to pursue a Ph.D. in accounting?
The primary reason is that I like both research and teaching. I suppose getting a Ph.D. is the only way through which I can do both for a living. Other benefits include flexible working hours and job stability. Overall, a good long-term investment, if you have the tenacity to go through the whole journey.
What was the “aha” moment that inspired you to explore your research topic?
We were reading these research papers in one of our accounting seminars. One of the papers talked about employee’s dishonest budget reporting. It discusses something that firms can do to limit its loss. I was like, wait a minute, I have a better idea. Why don’t firms do this and this? They can do so much better. So now I am going to see whether these “this and this” in my mind can really work. I will find out in my experiment.
What’s been the most challenging aspect of being a Ph.D. student and/or taking on a robust research project?
As a Ph.D. student, you have to do a lot of reading and writing, especially in the early stage of your candidacy. I am a slow reader, and the language barrier certainly does not help. I guess I just ended up spending more time on everything than a typical graduate student whose first language is English. Also, you need to know more than accounting–you kind of need to be a know-it-all. Doing research is even more difficult. You need to have an idea first, which can be tough. It takes time and needs luck. After you have one, you need to carefully deal with it. This process is tough too. I guess it is just overall difficult to do robust research.
Why should people outside of accounting care about the research you’re doing?
They should not care. If they are outside of accounting, they should focus on their own specialty.
Have you found your “big potato?” If so, what was that discovery moment like?
I identified a few potatoes so far. The size of these potatoes is unknown until you cook your potatoes, and the panelists will tell you how they taste. Now, I do not know. The only thing I can do is to pick the estimated biggest potato I can find, then season it using all the food processing techniques I have learnt, and finally serve my potatoes to the judges. You will have a general, expected idea on the taste of your potatoes, but you are probably biased.
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