Podcast Features Award-Winning Professorial Partnership

Scranton professors turned to Aristotle to fight fraud, fusing the philosophy of virtue with accounting practices.
a collage showing three images: the university of scranton logo in the middle with professional portrait headshots of two individuals to the left and right
Douglas M. Boyle, D.B.A.’88, left, professor and chair of the Accounting Department and director of the University’s Ph.D. program, and Daniel P. Haggerty, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Philosophy Department and director of the University’s Special Jesuit Liberal Arts Honors Program, were two of the three co-authors of a paper titled “Aristotle and Accounting: Building Virtue to Fight Fraud.” The unique interdisciplinary partnership has resulted in a prestigious award and a podcast appearance to speak about their work.

It’s not every day, nor on every college campus, where business and humanities faculty collaborate and propose bold alternatives to long-held beliefs.

However, that’s exactly what happened recently at The University of Scranton.

And the uncommon collaboration led to international recognition.

Douglas M. Boyle, D.B.A.’88, professor and chair of the Accounting Department and director of the University’s Ph.D. program, and Daniel P. Haggerty, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Philosophy Department and director of the University’s Special Jesuit Liberal Arts Honors Program, appeared this week on the Institute of Management Accountants’ (IMA) official podcast to discuss their article titled “Aristotle and Accounting: Building Virtue to Fight Fraud.”

“Often, when people think of ethics, they think of actions. What can you do? What can’t you do?” Dr. Haggerty said on the podcast. “But with virtue, as Aristotle understood it, action sort of comes at the end of the line. What (virtue ethics) focuses on is the development and the cultivation of habits of thinking, feeling, emotion, desire ... and all of those lead to action.”

The paper, which was co-authored by Dr. Boyle, Dr. Haggerty and Dana R. Hermanson, Ph.D., of Kennesaw State University, was selected as the IMA Committee on Ethics and Strategic Finance 2025 Curt Verschoor Ethics Feature of the Year.

The authors applied Aristotelian virtue ethics to modern accounting practices, offering a fresh and humanistic approach to fraud prevention.

“These leaders get their formal education through business school and that’s particularly focused on technical topics, net present value, how we do different things. It’s very quantitative, it’s very analytical and now it’s very technology-focused … lots of things that are very important to understand, but it’s not building virtue. It’s a rule book,” Dr. Boyle said on the podcast. “What we’re trying to do here is give these executives an alternative way to think about ethics and not just be so rules-based, but also be more human behavorial-based.”

The authors argue that building virtue takes time, trust and hard work, but it will ultimately happen. When it does happen, it leads to higher employee and customer satisfaction and ultimately better financial outcomes.

“This pursuit of virtue is not just a nice thing to do,” Dr. Boyle said, “it also has a real financial impact to a company.”

Dr. Boyle had previously won the prestigious Verschoor Award in 2020 and 2024 from the IMA, which has about 140,000 members in 150 countries. It is one of the largest associations focused on advancing the management accounting profession.

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