Costello Research Internal Audit

Mason research shows that hiring internal auditors, and giving them proper organizational authority, can be the first steps toward addressing the root causes of business failure.

Research by Mason Accounting Professor Bret Johnson, a former SEC staff accountant and academic fellow, shows how seemingly mundane intra-agency policies can have unintended effects that benefit Wall Street over Main Street.

As Jenelle Conaway, assistant professor of accounting at George Mason University School of Business, says, “Being able to compare companies more easily makes for more efficient investment choices. And that scales from the individual level up to banks choosing who they lend to, and companies choosing who they want to merge with and acquire.” Her recent research finds that comparability trends have grown complicated.

Government corruption has universally corrosive effects on U.S. society. Yet there is little uniformity to the structure of state-level corruption oversight agencies. Syrena Shirley, an assistant professor of accounting at Mason, recently published a research paper in Current Issues in Auditing suggesting that in the fight against corruption, these structural inconsistencies are impactful.