Haas Professors Organize First Fraud Conference Held by B-School, Oct. 24-25

Malfeasance of all kinds will be the subject of the Haas School's 2013 Fraud and Misconduct Conference, the first event of its type ever organized by a business school, from Oct. 24 to Oct. 25 at the Claremont Hotel Club & Spa in Berkeley. The event was the brainchild of Assistant Professor Jo-Ellen Pozner.

“People who come will get a very clear picture of what state-of-the-art research is telling us across multiple disciplines about wrongdoing of all sorts, whether in corporations, in the nonprofit world, or even in the Catholic Church,” says Jo-Ellen Pozner, an assistant professor in the Haas Management of Organizations Group.

Professors Ernesto dal Bo, Patricia Dechow, Adair Morse, and Richard Sloan organized the conference with Pozner.

Mike Wilkins, founding and managing partner of Point Richmond, Calif.-based Kingsford Capital Management, will give the keynote address during lunch on the second day. Wilkins specializes in short selling the stock of companies that are overvalued or show symptoms of fraud.

In addition, about 40 scholars will present papers drawn from a wide variety of disciplines, including organizational behavior, finance, accounting, economics, sociology and law. The 12 papers being presented include :

  • “Do private equity funds game returns?”
  • "Cleaning house: The impact of information technology monitoring on employee theft and productivity."
  • "Losing the faith: stakeholder reactions to misconduct in the Catholic Church." 
  • "Managerial ability and financial reporting discretion." 

The conference offers Haas an opportunity to create a center of scholarship around misconduct and fraud, Pozner says. “It’s also a way for us to showcase the terrific scholars we have here and expose our students to new ideas that they wouldn’t have access to otherwise,” she adds.

The conference is open to faculty, staff, and students. General registration is $150 and $75 for Haas faculty.

The event is sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Financial Reporting and Management, the California Management Review, the Haas School's Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership, and the Berkeley Center for Political Economy.

 

To register, visit groups.haas.berkeley.edu/accounting/fraudconference/registration.html.

Prof. Jo-Ellen Pozner
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