Dean of SoA (2015 - 2025)
Professor Cheng Qiang joined SMU on 1 July 2011 as the Associate Dean (Research) at SOA before his appointment to Dean in 2015. He is also the Lee Kong Chian Chair Professor of Accounting at SMU School of Accountancy.
Under his ten years of leadership, we reached new milestones that mark the distinguished achievements in SOA’s education and research.
The School has attained a global reputation in research, evidenced by our significant improvement in the Brigham Young University (BYU) Accounting Research Rankings. SOA has been consistently ranked Top 3 in the world for Archival Financial Research for the past 4 years, rising more than 26 places since 2017 when the ranking was first introduced.
In the area of education, SOA has launched a suite of new Undergraduate, Postgraduate and Doctoral programmes over the past 10 years. These include: two second majors (Accounting Data and Analytics and Financial Forensics); Work Study Electives; the Master of Science in Accounting (Data and Analytics); the Doctor of Business Administration (Accounting and Finance) with Zhejiang University; and the PhD programme in Accounting.
An award-winning researcher and teacher, Prof Cheng has also published over thirty articles in leading scholarly accounting and finance journals, including The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, and Journal of Financial Economics. He conducts research on various financial reporting and disclosure issues, including how corporate governance and family ownership affect corporate decisions, how investors use accounting information for valuation purposes, how executives affect financial reporting and disclosure decisions for their self-interests, and how security analysts help disseminate information in the capital markets. His current research focuses on the impact of digitalization on corporate decisions and ESG-related disclosure issues.
Undoubtedly, Prof Cheng’s stewardship paved the way for SOA to becoming the leading accounting school in Asia in thought leadership and accounting education.
Dr CHENG Qiang
Lee Kong Chian Chair Professor of Accounting
Dr. Cheng graduated from Tsinghua University, Beijing and received his PhD in the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US in 2002. He has previously taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Washington.
