Professor Breda Sweeney
Lecturer in Accounting
Breda's work focuses on management controls in organisations which go beyond financial systems and metrics and includes how organisations manage multiple dimensions of performance and meet the needs of a wide range of stakeholders. Her case studies and cross-cultural work have been informed by her international experience and her professional accounting qualification. She has been a visiting professor in Stockholm School of Economics (2022), VU Amsterdam (2022) and Esade Business School, Barcelona (2014) and an Erskine Fellow in University of Canterbury in 2016. Her recent work explores the challenges of designing and using management control systems to foster innovation and organisational ambidexterity and to manage organisational tensions. For example, she has examined how a balanced set of performance metrics can encourage organisations to focus on both short- and long-term horizons and how the breadth of performance metrics can help the integration and exploitation of external information in a company.
Breda's work contributes to these SDGs
Postgraduate Accountancy & Finance summer schools Breda has led the development of a suite of new postgraduate summer schools focused on new skills and areas of expertise needed for professional accountants to lead sustainable and responsible change in use of technology and performance measurement systems based on feedback from key stakeholders.
Key Target: 9.2 Promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization
Teaching
Management Control for Sustainable Organisations
Given the increased diversity of the workforce and the global nature of organisations, understanding how management controls operate in different countries is important in promoting inclusive industrialisation and fostering innovation. Breda collaborates with University of Groningen and Ghent University to design new module content on "Management control of innovation and sustainability: Cross-cultural understanding".
Contributing to Targets: 4.7 Education for sustainable development and global citizenship; 9.2 Promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization; 17 Partnership for the goals
Breda is currently supervising PhD students examining how the design and use of management controls in hospitals can improve access to quality essential health-care services.
Contributing to SDG 3 Good health and well-being; Target 3.8 Achieve universal health coverage
Management Accounting for Sustainable Business Success
In Breda’s MBA module, students learn how to apply management accounting techniques to prepare information for decision-making, recognising the broader remit of corporate social responsibility and the multiple dimensions that need to be reported to different stakeholder groups.
Breda engages with local industries and brings real-life case studies to her students, demonstrating the kind of long-term thinking that is essential to sustainable innovation.
Contributing to Targets: 4.7 Education for sustainable development and global citizenship; 9.2 Promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization; SDG 17 Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development
Engagement
Breda engages with local industries and brings real-life case studies to her students, demonstrating the kind of long-term thinking that is essential to sustainable innovation. She has led the development of a suite of new postgraduate summer schools focused on new skills and areas of expertise needed for professional accountants to lead sustainable and responsible change in use of technology and performance measurement systems based on feedback from key stakeholders.
These summer schools include Audit and Accounting in the 21st Century: Data & Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Related Technological Tools, which was co-designed and is co-delivered with Industry Partner KPMG.
Disruptive technologies in Accounting and Finance, which was developed in partnership with leading robotics software provider UiPath and incorporates use of their technology in empowering students to build robotic solutions for accounting problems; and
Financing for net zero, which challenges students to account for the planet in financial models and incorporates field trips to wind farms to illustrate successful outcomes of sustainable financing criteria and see net zero in action. This summer school is delivered by a qualified professional accountant with sectoral experience in building a sustainable clean energy system including residential energy efficiency, green infrastructure, clean cities, transport and renewable energy.
Focused on Targets: 11.2 Affordable and sustainable transport systems; 12.2 Sustainable management and use of natural resources
You are not innovating to be innovative – you need to consider what are the broader implications and engage in responsible productions.
Breda has written teaching cases on local indigenous companies.
SDG Targets
3.8 - Achieve universal health coverage
4.4 - Increase the number of people with relevant skills for financial success
4.7 - Education for sustainable development and global citizenship
5.5 - Ensure full participation in leadership and decision-making
8.1 - Sustainable economic growth
8.2 - Diversify, innovate and upgrade for economic productivity
8.4 - Improve resource efficiency in consumption and production
9.2 - Promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization
16.7 - Ensure responsive, inclusive and representative decision-making
Research
Featured Publications
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References |
SDGs |
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Sȋntejudeanu, M., Robbins, G., Sweeney, B. (2024). Healthcare network governance and accountability shaped by social capital. Accounting Forum, doi:10.1080/01559982.2024.2301851 |
3.8 |
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Curtis, E., Sweeney, B. (2023). Management control practices and pragmatism. Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 36(9), 200-225. |
7 |
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Bedford, D. S., Bisbe, J., Sweeney, B. (2022). The joint effects of performance measurement system design and TMT cognitive conflict on innovation ambidexterity. Management Accounting Research, 57. |
9 |
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Bedford, D., Bisbe, J., Sweeney, B. (2022). Enhancing external knowledge search: The influence of performance measurement system design on the absorptive capacity of top management teams. Technovation,118. |
9 |
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Curtis, E., Sweeney, B. (2019). Flexibility and control in managing collaborative and in-house NPD. Journal of Accounting and Organizational Change, 15(1), 30-57. |
9 |