Rate My Professor Jim Psaros

Emeritus Professor Jim Psaros serves in the College of Human and Social Futures within the Accounting and Finance discipline at the University of Newcastle. He earned his PhD in Accounting from the University of New South Wales, along with a Master of Commerce and Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Newcastle. Before academia, he worked several years in Chartered Accounting, including with Big 4 firms in Australia and overseas. His career at the University of Newcastle spans numerous leadership roles, including Professor of Accounting until 2015, Head of the Department of Accounting and Finance, Deputy Head of the Faculty of Business and Law, Assistant Dean Teaching and Learning, Director of Executive and Corporate Programs, and Academic Director of the University of Newcastle Sydney. Additionally, he has sat on boards of directors of companies and audit committees of government authorities. A Fellow of CPA Australia, he contributes to the Editorial Board of the Accounting Research Journal.

Professor Psaros specializes in auditing and fraud, inadequacies of Australian accounting standards, and corporate governance mechanisms. He developed, in collaboration with Michael Seamer, a model for assessing corporate governance adequacy of organizations, which has been used annually since 2002 to rank Australia's largest 250 companies. His publication record includes the book Australian Corporate Governance: A Review and Analysis of Key Issues (2009) and 26 refereed journal articles, such as 'Ranking corporate governance of Australia's top companies: A decade on' with Seamer (2015, Australian Accounting Review), 'Internal Governance Does Matter to Equity Returns but Much More So During “Flights to Quality”' with Brooke, Docherty, and Seamer (2018, Journal of Applied Corporate Finance), 'The Relevance of Western Corporate Governance in Mitigating Management Misconduct in Thailand' with Inya and Seamer (2018, Emerging Markets Finance and Trade), and 'Do principles-based accounting standards lead to biased financial reporting? An Australian experiment' (2007, Accounting and Finance). He has supervised five PhD completions, presented at 32 conferences, produced 14 commissioned reports including annual Horwath Corporate Governance Reports, and secured 18 research grants totaling $174,510. His work has established a national and international reputation in corporate governance.