Dr Paola Madini

Paola is a Senior Lecturer in accounting at Kent Business School. She has a PhD in business administration and management from Bocconi University, with a specialisation in accounting and control. She holds a PGCHE from the University of Kent and is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Previously, she has been Assistant Professor in management accounting and control at ESADE, researcher at SDA Bocconi School of Management and visiting PhD candidate at RSM, Erasmus University. 

Awards

• Distinguished Reviewer Award 2017 for the Journal of Management Control
• Runner up reviewer for 2015 for the Journal of Management Control

Paola’s research interests include the design and the implementation of management control systems (MCS) and their organisational and behavioural implications; budgeting; MCS in inter-organisational relationships and performance measurement.
She does field-based research involving finance and accounting professionals using case study and survey research designs. Her aim is to conduct research that advances academic knowledge and helps accounting and finance managers to improve their professional life.
Paola's recent projects focus on the design of budgetary processes, using a cross-sectional analysis, she is investigating which procedures companies adopt for structuring the process and what are the determinants of this adoption. She has also been studying the behavioural effects of using a negotiated budgetary process that spans multiple managerial levels. Currently, she is supervising a project on the impact of Covid-19 on the design and use of MCS by U.K. healthcare organizations.

Paola's teaching interests include: 

• Management control systems
•  Management accounting
• Performance measurement and survey and case study research designs.

At Kent Business School she teaches management accounting in different modules to undergraduate and postgraduate students.
Before joining KBS, she had taught a variety of audiences at Esade, RSM Erasmus University and Bocconi University.
To foster students learning, she uses participative-centred learning methods, as case studies, role plays, team presentations and discussions. She likes to use the flipped learning approach in course design. 

Paola has been successfully supervising postgraduate students in Accounting and Finance, and International Management, on master thesis and in-company projects. She has also been involved in PhD and Master of Research students supervision activities. She welcomes application for supervising projects on the following topics: 

Supervision Topics 

• Design/ implementation of management control systems in service or retail companies (i.e. fashion, consulting and finance industries) 
• Design/ implementation of performance measurement systems in family businesses or start-up companies 
• Top management team and management control systems' design 
• Target setting and managerial performance evaluation 

Past Supervisees

• C. Sacchetti: Design and implementation of a managerial reporting system in an acquired subsidiary: the case of Sunglasshut Iberia.
  
• S. Emberger: Design and implementation of the budgeting and managerial reporting system in a fashion retail company in Germany.
  
• G. Hynson: Design and implementation of a financial accounting system in a US-based start-up company.
  
• M. Mocanu: Managing the costs of training your clients: the case of the Professional Products Division of L'Oreal Spain. 

Paola is an Italian certified accountant as well as a member of the following professional associations: 

• European Accounting Association
  
• American Accounting Association
  
• Eurasian Economics and Business Society
  
• The Institute of Management Accountants
  

Paola is actively involved in the accounting academic community as:

• A reviewer for conferences and journals (i.e. in the Journal of Management Control)
• Invited discussant and chair in conferences (i.e. AAA Annual Meeting and EAA Annual Meetings) 
• Scientific committee member (i.e. Socialising Business Research conference) Organisational committee member (i.e. for a conference sponsored by AOS). 
• In 2004 she worked as an assistant to the chief controller at Kone Italy.
  

She is involved in ad-hoc consulting activities on management control systems design and implementation. For example, she participated in a research project sponsored by IBM Italy on the role of the integrative finance organisation in Benetton. She was also involved in a project sponsored by DocFlow on implementing a document management system at their clients, and on a project sponsored by CIMA, on fashion companies' implementation of accounting information systems to exchange information with suppliers.