Professor Wins Second National Accounting Ethics Award

An accounting professor at The University of Scranton won his second national award that annually recognizes one article “that focuses on the importance of ethics in business as a whole and finance and accounting in particular.”

Selected by the Institute of Management Accountants’ Committee on Ethics and Strategic Finance for the 2024 Curt Verschoor Ethics Feature of the Year Award, the article “The Fraud Prevention Pyramid” was written by Douglas M. Boyle, DBA, chair of The University of Scranton Accounting Department and director of the University’s Ph.D. in Accounting program, and Dana Hermanson, Ph.D., professor of accounting at Kennesaw State University and the Dinos Eminent Scholar of Private Enterprise. The article was published in Strategic Finance in March of 2024.

Accounting professors at Scranton have won this prestigious, national ethics award more than faculty at any other university in the nation. Dr. Boyle won the inaugural Curt Verschoor Ethics Feature of the Year Award in 2020 for an article written by him and Scranton accounting professors Amanda S. Marcy, Ph.D., James F. Boyle, DBA, and Daniel P. Mahoney, Ph.D. Dr. Marcy won the 2023 Curt Verschoor Ethics Feature of the Year Award for an article written with class of 2021 Scranton business doctoral student Ronald Douglas Parker, DBA, now an assistant professor of accounting at Western Carolina University.

In the article that won the 2024 Curt Verschoor Ethics Feature of the Year Award, Drs. Boyle and Hermanson introduce a five-stage Fraud Prevention Pyramid, which they write is “designed to assist financial professionals and others in building a career-long ability to shield themselves from fraud. It contains five increasingly advanced stages of anti-fraud preparation: developing fraud awareness and acumen; understanding fraud ingredients; avoiding common fraud pitfalls; mitigating dark triad traits and pressure; and mastering emotional intelligence.”

The article concludes with ways in which the Fraud Prevention Pyramid can be used to encourage ethical behavior by boards and executives and by organizations through continuing education programs, as well as by individuals for personal development.

Articles written by Dr. Boyle and doctoral students at Scranton and fellow professors have received numerous awards, including most recently a 2023 Institute of Management Accountants’ (IMA) Lybrand Silver Medal and Certificate of Merit. 

With respect to authorships of individual accounting faculty in the area of accounting education, Dr. Boyle, was ranked No. 5 in the world for research publishing success by most-recent 2023 Brigham Young University Accounting Rankings, a listing considered to be the gold standard in accounting disciplines.

Dr. Boyle is a Certified Public Accountant and a Certified Management Accountant with more than 30 years of industry executive experience. He has served in executive roles in startup, middle market, and Fortune 500 companies, where he has held the positions of board chair, chief executive officer, president, chief operations officer and chief financial officer. An award-winning researcher and teacher, Dr. Boyle was selected as the IMA Research Foundation Distinguished Scholar in 2022, awarded the Outstanding Accounting Educator of the Year Award from the Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accountants in 2015, and an Outstanding Lecturer Award from the Cultural Mission of the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in 2012. At Scranton, Dr. Boyle earned Provost Excellence Awards for University Service and Leadership in 2021, the Scholarship of Teaching in 2014 and Scholarly Publication in 2012, and the Faculty Senate’s Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award in 2019. He was named the Kania School of Management’s (KSOM) Alperin Teaching Fellow for 2015 to 2018 and received the KSOM Advisory Board’s Award for Curriculum Innovation for 2017-2018. He received the KSOM Faculty Research Award for 2019 – 2020 and was twice recognized as the KSOM Teacher of the Year. He is the founder and director of the University’s Nonprofit Leadership Certificate Program.

Dr. Boyle earned a bachelor’s degree from The University of Scranton, an MBA from Columbia University and a doctorate from Kennesaw State University.