Researchers Win Award in Management Accounting

Janek Ratnatunga, Norman Gray and Bala K.R. (Kashi) Balachandran are the winners of the first Greatest Potential Impact on Practice Award for research in management accounting, an award given by the American Accounting Association’s Management Accounting Section and sponsored by the AICPA, the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and the Society of Management Accountants of Canada.

The award, which recognizes academic papers considered to be most likely to have a significant impact on management accounting practice, was presented in January at the AAA MAS Midyear Meeting in Florida.

Their paper, “The Capability Economic Value of Intangible and Tangible Assets (CEVITA): The Valuation and Reporting of Strategic Capabilities,” was originally published in Management Accounting Research, CIMA’s research journal, and introduces a new technique for measuring and reporting the impact of tangible and intangible asset combinations on the value creation potential, or strategic capability of a business.

Ratnatunga is the head of the School of Commerce at the University of South Australia. He has also held academic positions at the University of Melbourne, Monash University and the University of Canberra in Australia and the universities of Washington, Richmond and Rhode Island in the United States. Previously, he practiced as a chartered accountant with KPMG.

Now retired, Gray previously was the head of the Airborne Early Warning and Control Division of the Defence Materiel Organization within the Department of Defence in Australia.

Balachandran is a professor of accounting and operations management at New York University Stern School of Business. He received his bachelor of engineering in mechanical engineering from the University of Madras, India, and attended the University of California, Berkeley, for his master of science in industrial engineering and Ph.D. in operations research.