Without doubt GMARS is by far the best Management Accounting conference on the planet.  While others may be larger, or have individual years where they excel, for consistent high quality management accounting research you cannot beat GMARS.

This year in Sydney was no exception.  Under relatively newbie conference chair Jane Baxter there was an excellent selection of social and behavioral management accounting research with a bit of economics based work thrown in.  The latter was a bit of a disappointment but it just may have been a thin year for archival based MA research.

The social and behavioral work was excellent with experimental economics, psychology based, case and field studies, survey based research all well represented.  I got to present a paper for the first time in 11 appearances at GMARS (those who know me know that my management accounting work has been spotty in recent years after three top tier papers at the turn of the century), notched another discussion (11th discussion I believe) and a late breaking addition to the program – an editor’s panel.

I was so kind, I did not mention the SSCI during my time on the editor’s panel 🙂  Maybe I can be a diplomat in my old age.