Accountancy professor wins research award

F. Asís Martínez-Jerez, an associate accountancy professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, was recognized for his outstanding research contributions with the 2019 Notable Contribution to Management Accounting Literature Award from the American Accounting Association, the largest organizational group of accountants in academia.

Martínez-Jerez and his co-authors received the award for their paper, “The performance effect of feedback frequency and detail: Evidence from a field experiment in customer satisfaction,” published in the Journal of Accounting Research in December 2017. The paper examines the effects of nonfinancial performance feedback on the behavior of professionals working for an insurance repair company. As part of their findings, the researchers discovered that more information as well as information delivered more frequently does not always help improve performance, as might have been expected. In fact, they found that professionals achieve the best outcomes when they receive detailed but infrequent feedback. The criteria for the award includes relevance to theory, practice or instruction of management accounting; a broad appeal to those interested in management accounting; originality, innovativeness and potential contribution to knowledge; and impact or potential impact on other research. Martínez-Jerez’s research focuses on accounting information and control systems to implement customer-centric strategies, as well as on corporate governance and its interaction with accounting information. His work has been published in The Accounting Review, Management Science and American Economic Journal, among others. A native of Alicante, Spain, Martínez-Jerez earned his undergraduate degrees in law and business administration at ICADE-Madrid and his MBA from Harvard Business School. His professional experience includes working for La Suisse Assurances in Lausanne, Switzerland, and consulting for McKinsey & Co. in Europe and Latin America. He received his Ph.D. in business economics from Harvard University in 2002. Prior to joining Notre Dame in 2013, he taught MBA and executive education courses at Harvard Business School.