Grants were awarded to the following researchers to study specific business topics critical to the accounting profession:

"¢ Management Control of Foreign Sourcing Relationships - Frank H. Selto and Ramiro Montealegre of the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado-Boulder and Thomas L.C.M. Groot of Vrije University, Amsterdam, Netherlands
"¢ ERM: Critical Success Factors in the Value Creation Process - Mark Beasley, Bonnie Hancock and Bruce Branson of the North Carolina State University College of Management's Enterprise Risk Management Initiative
"¢ Strategic Change, Incentive Systems and Firm Performance: Evidence from Corporate Turnarounds - Xiaoling Chen and Jianxin Gong of the University of Illinois at Urbana -
Champaign "For 2008 we increased our budget from $50,000 to $75,000 and expanded our scope of topics, identifying strategic management, performance management and risk management as key areas of interest reflecting the challenges that our members in business and industry face," said John Morrow, Vice President for AICPA members in Business, Industry and Government. "We received a number of excellent proposals and are excited to be able to fund these three outstanding projects."

"It is noteworthy that the AICPA increased its level of funding in the second year of this program, demonstrating its commitment to management accounting research," said Dr. Kenneth Merchant, Deloitte & Touche, LLP and Chair of Accountancy at the Marshall School of Business at the University of California. "Foreign sourcing, risk management and performance measurement are three complex business problems for AICPA's members in business, and each of these projects should result in a meaningful contribution to better understanding of these challenges."

The researchers are expected to complete their work by July 2008 and publish the results in a major academic journal. -http://www.aicpa.org