James L. Kroeker is the Chief Accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission. In this capacity, Mr. Kroeker serves as the principal advisor to the Commission on accounting and auditing matters.

Since joining the Commission as Deputy Chief Accountant in February 2007, Mr. Kroeker has played a key role in efforts to improve the transparency and reduce the complexity of financial disclosure. For example, he recently served as staff director of the SEC's congressionally mandated study of fair value accounting standards, and he has led the efforts of the Office of the Chief Accountant to address the current economic turmoil, including steps to improve off-balance-sheet accounting guidelines. Mr. Kroeker also served as the Designated Federal Officer responsible for the staff oversight of the SEC's Advisory Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting. He also has been responsible for the day-to-day operations of the office's accounting group, including resolution of accounting practice issues, rulemaking, and oversight of private sector standard-setting efforts.

Prior to joining the SEC, Mr. Kroeker was a partner at Deloitte & Touche LLP in the firm's National Office Accounting Services Group and was responsible for providing consultation and support regarding the implementation, application, communication and development of accounting standards, including disclosure and reporting matters. Mr. Kroeker was Deloitte & Touche's representative on the AICPA Accounting Standards Executive Committee (AcSEC). Mr. Kroeker also served as a Practice Fellow at the Financial Accounting Standards Board.

Mr. Kroeker received a Bachelor of Science degree with an emphasis in accounting from the University of Nebraska in May 1992.

Robert S. Kaplan is Baker Foundation Professor at the Harvard Business School, Harvard University. Previously, he was a faculty member and Dean at the Tepper Business School, Carnegie-Mellon University. Kaplan received a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from M.I.T., and a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Cornell University.

Professor Kaplan's research and teaching has linked performance and cost management systems to strategy implementation. He has helped to develop both activity-based costing and the Balanced Scorecard. He has written, with multiple co-authors, 14 books and 140 articles, including 20 in Harvard Business Review. Kaplan speaks to business and government audiences throughout the world on strategy execution and performance management systems.

Professor Kaplan is a member of the Accounting Hall of Fame. He has received the AAA's Outstanding Accounting Educator Award, and its Seminal Contribution to Accounting Literature Award. He has also received multiple Wildman Medal and Notable Contributions to Accounting Literature Awards and Lifetime Contribution Awards from the AAA Management Accounting Section and the Institute of Management Accountants.

Much accounting scholarship of the past five decades has taken a social science perspective, studying statistical and behavioral patterns in existing accounting practice and standard setting. Unlike other professions, such as medicine, engineering and law, accounting faculty have rarely taken the lead in advancing professional practice. Such a situation would be tolerable if there were few opportunities for innovation and if the demands on the profession were stable and predictable. But the recent financial crisis has revealed severe deficiencies in companies’ reporting of their asset positions and their risk management practices. Similar deficiencies have also occurred with governments; the financial crisis in several US states and in countries, such as Greece, has revealed weak financial reporting and inadequate management controls.

The talk will provide several illustrations where academic research, grounded in documenting and influencing best practices, can play a much more constructive role to improve the accounting practices of companies, states, and countries. It will urge academics to play a leadership role in helping organizations adopt innovative practices based on sound theory and scholarship, and to improve their students’ education in the more complex models required for improved fair value reporting and risk management. All this will require major changes to the academic system of scholarship, including the incentive and rewards for faculty research, publication standards in academic accounting journals, the content of accounting courses and textbooks, and the recruitment and training of doctoral students. These innovations will not be easy nor will they initially be welcomed by many. But they are necessary if accounting research and education are to be responsive to contemporary and future challenges in their profession.

2010 Annual Meeting—Click Here to Register

San Francisco beckons and while we are still months away from the Annual Meeting and the Conference on Teaching and Learning in Accounting (CTLA), the blueprint for an exciting program is already in place. Check out our Annual Meeting Website. This year's meeting will be held in San Francisco, California, July 31 – August 4, at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square Hotel and the Parc 55 San Francisco Hotel. The early registration deadline is June 21, 2010.