Business professor launches corporate reporting study

Lori Holder-Webb, an assistant professor of accounting and information systems at the UW–Madison School of Business, is part of a four-person research team recently awarded a grant to research corporate reporting.

The NASD Investor Education Foundation recently awarded more than $295,000 to Holder-Webb, David Wood and Jeffrey Cohen, both of the School of Management of Boston College, and Leda Nath of the sociology department at UW-Whitewater.

The team will explore corporate reporting of social, industry cohort and governance information – in other words, how non-financial performance measures are reported – in an effort to determine the extent to which investors value this information.

According to Holder-Webb, “Congress, the SEC, the professional oversight boards – these regulatory bodies are struggling with preserving the integrity of the capital markets in the wake of numerous scandals stemming from reporting failures. In particular, they are responding to a dramatic rise in demand for information about public companies. Our research is in direct response to the increasingly urgent requests of these bodies for relevant research that can inform their deliberations over changes in reporting requirements; thanks to the NASD Foundation, we will be able to provide useful information to inform the processes rather than simply reflecting on the adequacy of rules that have already been passed.”

Holder-Webb joined the School of Business in 2002. Her research interests include disclosure, financial distress, restructurings and corporate governance. She provides background and technical consulting for the Wall Street Journal.

The NASD Investor Education Foundation, established in 2003, supports innovative research and educational projects that give investors the tools they need to better understand the markets and the basic principles of financial planning.

UW–Madison School of Business is consistently ranked in the top 15 of U.S. business schools for overall faculty research productivity.