Overview:

I have always been fascinated by the logic and computational tractability of transactions recorded in the books of accounting. The Lucas Pacioli‟s treatise may be beginning of bookkeeping as double entry for most of accounting academics but for people like me, it is the genesis of matrix algebra and its combinatorial journal entries encased with the seeds of quantum computing. I belong to the quantitative school of accounting research where scientific rigor of theory development prior to experimentation and empirical verifications is of prime importance, and the decisions are seen as the culmination of rigor and rationale. In the similar vain, the failure to implement optimally the strategic initiatives into operational modules have equally serious impact on the organizational results. It is at this point that management utilizes auditing as a tool for ensuring: the reliability and integrity of information, compliance with policies and procedures, the safeguarding of assets, the economical and efficient use of the economic resources, and the accomplishment of established management objectives and goals.

My research have started providing directions in the domain of information assurance reflecting incitations and author ranking by downloads as shown by the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) and can be seen at

www.ssrn.com/author=106409 .

My research interests are interdisciplinary and eclectic involving research and researchers from various domains of knowledge including Mathematics and Statistics, Management Information Systems, Strategic Management and Policy, Operations Research and Industrial Engineering. The career-wide research interests are as below:

 Investor Protection, Corporate Governance and Independence

 Enterprise Systems Impact on Firm Performance

 Continuous Auditing and Monitoring & Cost Modelling

 E-Commerce Auditing

My Research Plan for next 5 years: (contd.)

4. A General Solution of an Economic Model of Information Systems Security Returns on Investments and the Minimization of the Cost of Vulnerability Algorithm:

This project is motivated by Gordon and Loeb model (2002) explaining the certain econometric properties of return on investment made by businesses to secure information systems from various internal and external hazards. We are making reasonable progress in obtaining general solution for a decision theoretic model created by us using random walk algorithm and Hilbert Spaces. We have been able to obtain a particular solution using guessing algorithm used in the domain of Physics. The general solution involves very complex mathematical computations and we are working in that direction. Our biggest contribution in this project is expected to be a superior model to the business community to ascertain and establish how much investment is adequate to protect the individual system from the threats depending upon how much vulnerable the system is. We believe that our model will be able to provide us superior return on investment numbers at the end than provided by the existing methods. (In Progress, with Dr. Ben Chaouch, Management Science, Odette Business School, Windsor)

5. Investotr Protection & Effectiveness of Audit Committees:

Corporate governance is a monitoring mechanism to ensure managers to act in shareholders‟ best interests. Audit committees play a key role in the oversight of financial reporting. Extant studies provide evidence that high quality audit committees can enhance accounting quality. However, these studies typically focus on a particular context (the US context in most studies). There is no research on explicitly examining the difference in the effectiveness of audit committees across countries. This research issue becomes more and more practically important as economy is increasingly internationalized. For example, recently many countries decided to adopt or converge with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). When countries use the same or similar accounting standards, we will be more concerned with the enforcement of accounting standards because a weak enforcement will lead to low accounting quality even if

accounting standards themselves are good. Thus, comparing the effectiveness of audit committees across countries may provide implications for the enforcement of IFRS.

Investor protection is a country-level measure, which reflects how well investors are protected by law from expropriation by managers and controlling shareholders of firms. Investor protection differs across countries due to differences in corporate law and the enforcement of the law investigate ownership structures of companies across countries. They find that few of these firms are widely held except in countries with strong investor families or the State, who have control rights in excess of cash flow rights, typically controls protection, and these firms. Their findings provide a two-fold implication for international corporate governance research. On the one hand, firms may demand for higher quality corporate governance in weak investor protection countries than in strong investor protection countries because there are more agency problems arising from the separation of control rights and cash flow rights in weak investor protection countries. On the other hand, firm-level corporate governance quality may be lower in weak investor protection countries because controlling shareholders may seek for weak corporate governance to expropriate minority shareholders. It is not clear whether the effectiveness of audit committees is lower or higher in weak investor protection countries than in strong investor protection countries, and thus warrants more research on this issue.

Audit committee quality is usually measured by committee independence (i.e., the proportion of outside directors on the audit committee). Since outside directors are non-executive directors and not affiliated with the management, they can more effectively monitor the management. As more and more outside directors sit on audit committees, recently audit committee quality is measured as the proportion of directors with accounting expertise on the audit committee. Prior research suggests that audit committee independence is economically determined by firm characteristics in the context of a particular country. Unlike these studies, our study examines whether investor protection, a country-level institutional infrastructure, could be an economic determinant of audit committee quality in the international context.

Audit committees play an important role in overseeing, monitoring, and advising the management of an organization in implementing internal accounting control systems and preparing financial statements. Prior research provides evidence that high audit committee quality is associated with less earnings management and high accounting quality. Our study extends this research stream by examining the moderating effect of investor protection on the association between audit committee qualities and accounting quality.

(A joint Research Project with Dr. Jerry Sun (Accounting- Odette School, Windsor) submitted for funding to the SSHRC Canada for its round in 2012.)

My Research Plan for next 5 years:

1. Attitude, Intention, and Trust of Retail Investor (RI) in Online Stock Trading & Internet-based Financial Reporting & Disclosures: Limited research shows how moderators and mediators influence the relationship between attitudes and intentions in online stock trading (OLST) and internet-based financial reporting and disclosures‟ (IFRD) context; this proposal aims to present empirical evidence of the conditions in which the attitude-intentions relationship becomes stronger or weaker and explain RI‟s acceptance or rejection of technology. This study results will contribute to the profession in helping develop the investor-broker web interfaces for OLST. The significant contributions of my proposed plan to the Behavioral accounting and finance literature will be as follows:

1. This is the first study of its kind to identify whether IFRD plays the role of mediator in the relationship of attitude of adopting OLST and the intention to adopt the OLST.

2. This is also first systematic effort to see if there is any moderating role, of trust in IFRD

3. This study would explain if the perceived benefits of corporate voluntary and mandatory disclosure constructs form a new index of „perceived benefits of IFRD‟. The new index measure will result into the potential for new scholarship in behavioral accounting & finance domain;

4.. A new construct „trust in IFRD‟ is adapted from the Wang & Benbasat (2005) & Lee (2009) and measured for the first time in this study in the OLST-IFRD context.

 The stockbrokers have highly informative, secure, and user friendly websites meant to be useful for the RIs. Continuous assurance and security plays vital role in the improved reliability and the integrity of e-commerce websites and databases (Pathak 2008, 2007, 2005 & 2004). There is no empirical study explaining the association of RI‟s trust in OLST and IFRD, the „perceived intention to adopt OLST‟ (IOLST), and „perceived benefits of IFRD‟. The lack of contextualization of these constructs with reference to a retail investor and the perceived usefulness of corporate disclosures motivated this study. Several studies have revealed that OLST helps investors in reducing the transaction cost (Alina & Mahajan, 2006) and fastest in finalizing the transaction. OLST and IFRD as technological innovations have been studied from varying perspectives. I plan to study OLST and IFRD from a RI‟s behavioral prism. I plan to find the answers to the following research questions in the study:

1. Does the „perceived benefits of IFRD‟ mediate the relationship of „attitude of adopting OLST‟ and the IOLST?

2. Does the „trust in IFRD‟ moderate the impact of „trust in OLST‟ on IOLST?

3. Does the „perceived behavioral controls‟ (PERBC) mediate the relationship between the normative social pressure factors and the „intention to adopt OLST?

4. Do the perceived benefits of internet-based financial reporting & disclosures (PBFRD) act as a moderator in the relationship of PERBC with the IOLST?

5. Do the „normative social pressure factors‟ act as a potential mediator impacting the association of PERBC and IOLST?

I use the behavioral the technology acceptance models to estimate the relationships so as to identify the answers to my research objectives. This study is designed around a non-experimental field survey amongst the RIs from North America. Data analysis will be done using confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and finite mixture modeling. 1. (A Research Project to be submitted to the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada for funding in 2009-10 competition)

2.Corporate governance is a monitoring mechanism to ensure managers to act in shareholders’ best interests.

A board of directors plays a key role in the oversight of managers. Extant studies provide evidence that high quality board of directors can enhance accounting quality and firm performance (e.g., Klein 2002; Larcker, Richardson, and Tuna 2007). However, these studies typically focus on a particular context (the US context in most studies). There is no research on explicitly examining the difference in the effectiveness of board governance across countries. This research issue becomes more and more practically important as economy is increasingly internationalized. For example, recently many countries decided to adopt or converge with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). When countries use the same or similar accounting standards, we will be more concerned with the enforcement of accounting standards because a weak enforcement will lead to low accounting quality even if accounting standards themselves are good. Thus, comparing the effectiveness of board governance across countries may provide implications for the enforcement of IFRS. This study examines whether investor protection affects corporate governance of board of directors. This study is a basis of our future research that investigates the economic consequences of other corporate governance mechanisms such as executive compensation contracts, institutional shareholdings, debt covenants, government regulations, and media pressure around the World.(A joint Research Project with Dr. Jerry Sun (Accounting- Odette School, Windsor) funded under RTIF and SSHRC Standard grant scheme.)Working paper is available for comments at the Social Science Research Network at

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1520456

3. ERP systems are commonly recognized as one of the most significant organizational innovations in the Information Systems (IS) area. Despite an expected economic downturn, Gartner predicts more than 10% growth in ERP investments in the year 2008 on ground of new upgrades, extensions in CRM and security software. ERP investment has become the largest component of capital investment for most Canadian and US firms. However, while the IS researchers largely agree on viewing ERP investments as "beyond productivity paradox" (Brynolfsson and Hitt, 1998) and widely reject the claim by Carr (2003) that ERP cannot provide competitive advantage, whether and how ERP investments can be combined with firm strategies to yield performance gains and competitive advantage (CA) is still a rich open question as IS researchers are still striving to provide better measures and explanations. Barring a few examples (Dewan, Gurbaxani and Shi, 2007; Tanrivedi and Ruefli, 2004), most of the available studies on performance impact of ERP systems at the firm level do not provide empirical evidence to support their propositions regarding ERP enabled performance. In this proposal, we outline a multiphase research program to achieve the above objectives of examining some key theoretically determinants of ERP enabled firm‟s performance. In phase 1, we will investigate the impact of ERP investments on a firm‟s performance with firm boundaries as moderator using secondary data obtained from COMPUSTAT and ERP investment database vendor Harte Hanks. In phase 2, we will survey the same companies studied in phase 1 to collect primary data with the objective of finding out the impact of ERP competence on the firm‟s performance with the mediating role of firm learning. This research will extend several significant methodological and theoretical contributions such as: a) by incorporating both risk and performance persistence into the analysis, this study would provide more comprehensive understanding of the impact of ERP on firm performance. While other studies have also used risk-adjusted returns as the measure of financial performance of ERP investments (e.g., Dewan, Shi and Gurbaxani, 2006, Tanriverdi and Ruefli 2004), the use of persistence along with risk-adjusted returns as performance measure while considering firm boundaries as mediating variables will be a new effort. b) We will develop and empirically validate scales to assess the ERP competency and firm learning regarding ERP through a survey of firms identified in the first phase. This study will open several avenues for further research and empirical analysis of these two variables with respect to their impact on firm performance. A joint Research Project s with Drs. Gokul Bhandari (MIS- Odette School, Windsor) to the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada for research and development initiative (RDI) funding in 2009-10 competition) University of Windsor funded it initially under 4A funding.