Big Data Opportunities in Management Accounting Research

1. Big Data and Management Accounting Research Eva Labro Kenan-Flagler Business School University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Labro - Big Data and Management Accounting Research

2. Big data definition Labro - Big Data and Management Accounting Research

3. Data ≠ Information You need the right lens! BIG ≠ Labro - Big Data and Management Accounting Research

4. Firms struggle with transformation of data to information  Firms collect big data, but struggle to analyze it.  Some facts:  CGMA big data briefing (2014): survey of 2,093 CFOs in 80 countries  86% struggle to get valuable insights from big data  1 in 3 say their firms don’t have the skills to do so  Economist Intelligence Unit big data report (2011): survey of 586 senior executives  1 in 4 firms yet to tap most of their organizational data  53% says they only use ½ of their data  But 73% says data collection has increased over last year Labro - Big Data and Management Accounting Research

5. This suggests opportunities for accounting academe  Research big data practice  What do firms do?  What are determinants of adoption of big data practices?  What are outcomes?  What fails? What works?  Teach students big data best practice  Expand accounting curricula  Claim the topic  Use big data collected by firms in management accounting research studies  My focus here particularly on management accounting research  Use big data collected by firms in management accounting research studies Labro - Big Data and Management Accounting Research

6. This is a win-win: 1. for practitioners / firms  Get help with gleaning information from data they have  Accounting researchers already have the skills or should be able to learn them: 1. Variety: textual analysis (Lang & Stice-Lawrence, JAE, 2015, among many), voice (e.g. Mayew & Venkatachalam, JoF, 2012), video/face (e.g. Blankespoor, Hendricks, Miller, WP, 2015), Twitter (e.g. Blankespoor, Miller, White, TAR, 2014), LinkedIn (e.g. Barrios, WP, 2016) 2. Velocity:  High-frequency trading data (e.g. Khan & Lu, TAR, 2013)  Need to move away from static snapshot view to more dynamic view 3. Veracity: our research has been concerned with veracity of data for decades 4. Volume:  Some experience with large datasets, specific storage and analysis issues (e.g. simulation based research)  We have colleagues in other areas (e.g. marketing, computer science) to work with! Labro - Big Data and Management Accounting Research

7. This is a win-win: 2. for researchers  Data access!  Particularly hard in managerial accounting research  Match with internal (rather than external) data collected by firms (IBM “Where does big data come from”, 2012)  Can demonstrate clear benefit to firm involved  Improved variable measurement  Answer research questions that are hard to answer with firm-level data  Lower level data, links between levels in firm,…  Practically relevant research Labro - Big Data and Management Accounting Research

8. How connect researchers with skills with firms with data & questions?  One initiative Management Accounting Section at American Accounting Association is exploring with our practitioner partners (e.g. AICPA/CIMA):  MAS can provide researchers  Practitioner partners can identify firms with data & questions  Adding (management) accounting related topics to the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative platform  Other opportunities for partnering?  EAA?  Partner with professional service firms, cloud firms, data gathering firms….?  Sample size >1  Let’s talk! Would love to hear suggestions! Labro - Big Data and Management Accounting Research