Jan Bouwens is full professor of accounting at the University of Amsterdam and is research fellow at the University of Cambridge.
He studies and teaches performance-management and assurance practices. For his research Bouwens draws on economic theory and he uses organization-specific archival data to test these theories and to establish how findings may inform practice. He examines how performance metric use (like profit or emission levels) and target setting practices affects cooperation in organizations and intertemporal decision making by managers. He also examines how and whether the design of audit engagements affect the quality of annul reports. Finally, he examines whether and how accounting metrics enhance or deteriorate trust between employees and between individual organizations and its stakeholders.
He holds his doctorate degree from Tilburg University and has published in several top tier academic journals, including Management Science; the Journal of Accounting and Economics; Journal of Accounting Research; Contemporary Accounting Research; Accounting, Organizations and Society; and The Accounting Review.
Jan is department editor of accounting at Management Science and has recently established the Journal Accountability in a Sustainable World Quarterly together with Peter Easton, Robert Knechel and Shiva Rajgopal. He writes editorials for the Dutch national newspapers and Financial Times.