Feature Stories Campus Events All Stories

W&L Assistant Professor of Accounting Named Emerging Scholar

Ge Bai, assistant professor of accounting at Washington and Lee University’s Williams School of Commerce, Economics, and Politics, has been awarded the 2014 IMA Research Foundation’s Emerging Scholar Manuscript Award by the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA).

The award recognizes the accomplishments of the newest members of the management accounting academic community and acknowledges the exceptional manuscript contribution of a scholar or lead author.

Bai was recognized as lead author on the manuscript “The Role of Performance Measure Noise in Mediating the Relation between Task Complexity and Outsourcing.” The team of researchers used data from 305 inpatient and 1,255 ancillary and outpatient departments of for-profit hospitals to examine the effect of task complexity on a firm’s decision to outsource and the mediating role of performance measure noise. Using insights from agency and transaction cost economic theories, the paper found that performance measure noise mediates the relation between task complexity and outsourcing.

Bai came to W&L in 2012 after earning her Ph.D. in accounting from Michigan State University. Her research is focused on understanding how accounting information assists managerial decisions and whether governance mechanisms make a difference in various organizational outcomes.