Brendan O'Dwyer

Brendan O’Dwyer is Professor in Accounting at the Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS). Brendan joined the faculty at Manchester in September 2016. Brendan was previously Head of the Accounting division (2007 to 2010) and Dean of Research (from 2011 to 2014) at the University of Amsterdam Business School. He is a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Ireland and a Visiting Professor at the University of Sydney Business School. Brendan researches in the areas of non-financial reporting, non-financial assurance, corporate and NGO accountability; sustainability reporting and assurance, CSR advocacy organisations, risk management and control in health-care organisations, and the regulation of professions. His work is highly cited and has won several awards and honours. It has been published in leading international journals such as: Accounting and Business Research; Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal; Accounting, Organizations and Society; the British Accounting Review; Contemporary Accounting Research, and the European Accounting Review. He is an Associate Editor of Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal and sits on the editorial boards of Accounting, Organizations and Society; Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory; Behavioral Research in Accounting; the British Accounting Review; the European Accounting Review, the International Journal of Qualitative Research in Management; the Australian Accounting Review; the International Journal of Auditing; and Social and Environmental Accountability Journal. He is currently co-editing special issues of Accounting, Organizations & Society and Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory. Brendan is a supervising researcher on the AMBS Alliance funded cross-disciplinary research project examining the shifting jurisdictional authority of accounting and finance professionals and professional practice.

Brendan’s expertise lies in case-based research and he has supervised a number of award-winning PhD theses using this method. He is a prize-winning educator having taught undergraduate, post-graduate (MSc and MBA) and executive education courses in areas such as Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting, Financial Statement Analysis, Advanced Auditing Theory and Practice, Social and Institutional Perspectives on Accounting and Accountability, Sustainability Accounting and Accountability, and Research Methods and Methodology. Brendan has also designed and directed MSc in Accountancy programmes at Dublin City University Business School and the Smurfit Graduate School of Business, University College Dublin. The second edition of his co-edited textbook entitled ‘Sustainability Accounting and Accountability’ was published in 2014 and is widely used in university post-graduate accounting rogrammes worldwide. In 2016, he won the lecturer of the year award on the University of Amsterdam Business School MSc in Accountancy and Control programme.

Brendan is actively involved in external engagement, particularly with professional accounting bodies. He is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) Strategic Sustainability Committee which advises on the Institute’s future strategy for sustainability. He is also a member of the ICAEW Chartered Accountant Livery Company PhD Fellowships evaluation panel. Brendan has published several practitioner-focused monographs commissioned by professional accounting bodies on topics such as sustainability reporting, accounting and accountability in NGOs, and the relevance of academic research for the accounting profession. He has made numerous invited keynote presentations at accounting practitioner conferences in The Netherlands and Australia. He chaired the judging panel for the ACCA’s Irish Environmental Reporting Awards scheme and was the ACCA’s Irish representative on the European Sustainability Reporting Awards scheme judging panel. In 2016, Brendan was an invited speaker on the topic of Integrated Reporting at the annual meeting of the Unilever CFO alumni group in Rotterdam. He also worked with the Society of Investment Analysts in Ireland (SIAI) to develop and direct the first Irish Investment Management Certificate programmes for investment analysts. Since 2008 he has co-chaired and organised the academic track at the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) conferences held in Amsterdam.