Professor Gabriel Donleavy
Deputy Head of School - UNE Business School
Biography
Gabriel Donleavy has been a full-time full professor of Accounting in the UNE Business School since January 2015.
He writes:-
“I was born and educated in England, reading Economics at Cambridge, and serving articles with Price Waterhouse in the City of London. I held positions as chief accountant, finance director and partnership in a commodity brokerage in my commercial career. My academic career began in 1975 as a lecturer at the University of Greenwich in London, I have held academic positions at the top-rated National University of Singapore, been academic director of the University of Hong Kong Business School, and Head of the School of Commerce and Law at CQ University. I have held three Deanships: at Victoria University, CQ University and the University of Macau. For six years I ran the Anglo European Chiropractic College and set it on the path that led to to its designation as a public university college.
I obtained my PhD in Accounting from the University of Glasgow in 1991, have generated 47 refereed articles, six in A and A* journals, 7 books and around 200 other pieces over my 47 year career, including opinion pieces for China Daily and the UK Guardian. I have presented at quinquennial meetings of the World Congress of Accounting Education three times, the American Accounting Association twice and have edited and reviewed for established journals in accounting and business ethics. The journal I founded in 1991, the Asian Review of Accounting is steadily improving its rankings and I have served on its board over its entire lifetime.
My voluntary activities have included: -
Founding Committee Member, Abortion Law Reform Association, Birmingham UK 1964;
Founder Member, Committee off European Students’ Associations, Berlin 1966.
Secretary, Watford Branch, Association of Scientific Technical and Managerial Staffs 1970-74.
Chair, Young European Left, 1971;
Committee, Member Family Advice Information and Rescue, London, late 70s
Treasurer and committee member, Friends of the Earth, Hong Kong late 80s and early 90s
Treasurer, vice chair, chair, then trustee of Amnesty International Hong Kong. Late 80s and early 90s
Volunteer advisor and national trustee, Citizens Advice Bureau, UK, 2000-2004
Master Parramatta City Daylight Lodge, 2014
Political Advisory Committee NSW, National Seniors 2013-19
President UNE Branch, NTEU, Armidale, NSW 2018
Performance poet, Australian Poetry Hall of Fame from 2022
Qualifications
BA (Hons) (Cambridge), LLB (Hons) (London), MA (Cambridge), PhD (Glasgow);FCPA, FI Mgt, FRSA, JP (Q)
Teaching Areas
Undergraduate Level
AFM301 Accounting Theory (2015+)
Postgraduate Level
AFM501 Accounting Theory and Research (2015+)
Research Interests
Cash flow statements, academic accounting management structures, the origins of fair value accounting, criticisms of stakeholder theory, accounting measurement and alternatives to subjective estimation, evolving a general theory of accounting, third sector management. To date, I have published 40 refereed articles, many papers and 6 books.
Research Supervision Experience
HDR supervision topic areas
- Cash flow statements
- Learning outcomes and graduate attributes in accounting and business education
- The business of accreditation
- Critical perspectives in accounting, business law or management
- International accounting comparisons and global issues
- IRRC reports and measurements of the new capitals
- Accounting for and to employees
- Deconstructing stakeholder theory, legitimacy theory or fair value
- Accounting history nationally or internationally (not individual company studies)
- Third sector regulation, management or disclosure
HDR supervision data
1.Taylor, Dennis (1995), "Budget Related Behaviour in Sino-foreign Joint Ventures: Contingency, Agency and Cultural Perspectives", University of Hong Kong.
2.Selvaratnam, R M (1996), "Accounting Numbers and the Perceived Risk Class of Hong Kong Companies", University of Hong Kong.
3.Kwok, Helen (1999), "The Role of Financial Statements in the Lending Decision – A Protocol Analysis", University of Hong Kong.
4.Gupta, Rakesh (2009), "Time Varying Correlations and Optimal Allocation in Emerging Market Equities for Australian Investors" CQ University.
5.Ha, Thai Pham (2015), “Accounting for the Maintenance of New South wales Infrastructure” UWS.
6.Cull, Michelle (2015),” Personal trust in the Financial Planning Industry”, UWS.
Publications
Books/Monographs and Book Chapters
Donleavy, G. & Chen, K.C. (2018). Recent trends in East and West University Governance: Two kinds of hollowness, in G. Redding, A. Drew & S. Crump (eds.), The Handbook of Comparative Higher Education Systems and University Management
Accounting for Deferred Tax, monograph with Mike Johnson of Deloittes, Hong Kong Society Of Accountants, December 1988. (Major level of contribution) 52 pages long, 3 editions
Hong Kong Accountancy Ethics, Research report to the Confederation of Asia Pacific Accountants Trust 1988, 52 pages long.
The Audit of Companies Exempt from Full Disclosure Requirements, Monograph for the Hong Kong Society of Accountants, January 1992.
Overview of the Personal Finance Markets in Hong Kong, monograph incorporating the results of 25 interviews with stockbrokers, regulators, fund managers and insurers, financed by a contract from the Independent Commission Against Corruption and followed by a closed seminar for their senior operatives in October 1993.
Corporate Codes of Conduct, research monograph to the Independent Commission Against Corruption concerning public and business attitudes to malpractice and the possible role of corporate codes in their reduction, Hong Kong, 1994.
Journal Articles
Donleavy, G. (2018). An inquiry into the origins of fair value. Accounting History, 24(2), 253-268.
"Aspects of Hungarian Accounting". In Advances In International Accounting edited by Prof. K.S.Most, JAI Press, Greenwich, CT, USA, pages 85-109, Fall 1987. ISBN 0-89232-693-X.
"A Note on Students Understanding of Truth and Fairness After Encountering Funds Flow Statements". British Accounting Review, 22:2, 119-122, Summer 1990.
"Cross Cultural Validation of the Thematic Apperception Test", with Amanda Lim. Assessment and Evaluation In Higher Education, 15:1, 1-11, Spring 1990. (Major level of contribution).
"Business and Professional Ethics in Hong Kong". Perspectives 11:1 pages 4 and 5, August 1991.
"Funds Statements: An Inquest". Managerial Finance, 18:6, 27-44, summer 1992 (18 pages).
"Triple Entry and The Physics of Accounting". Indian Journal Of Accounting, 22:2, 1-19, June 1991.
"Office Robotics: A Possible Scenario". Long Range Planning, May 1994 [Accepted June 1985 sic] (10 pages).
"The Sun Yee On Bank Case", in Cases in International Accounting, edited by S J Gray, C B Roberts and J W Swieringa, McGraw Hill 1995.
"Objections to the Teaching of Business Ethics", jointly with Gael M McDonald. Journal of Business Ethics, 14:5. 529-543 May 1995
"A History of Accountancy", Chapter 2 of Accounting: A New Perspective. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press 1996. ISBN 9620762347
"Trading Values, Introduction", i-xiv of Whose Business Values, edited by G D Donleavy and S E A Stewart, Hong Kong University Press, 1995
"A Faculty Restructuring Exercise", Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 20:1, 65-76, May 1998.
"A Basic Law of Management?" presentation to the Oslo conference on Competency in Management, June 1998, article under same title in Advances in Applied Business Strategy Vol. 6A - Theory Development for Competence Based Management, 57-67, R Sanchez and A Heene, editors, Stamford CT: JAI Press 2000. ISBN 0-7623-0675-0
"Nobody Expects the Governance Inquisition: Deconstructing the New Amateurism", Academy of Business Administration Conference, Warsaw, August 2002.
"Governism: The Effects of Corporate Governance as Dogma", EAIR Conference, Prague, September 2002.
"The Law of Requisite Variety Applied to Corporate Governance Issues", 2005 International Conference on Service Systems and Services Management, Chongqing, China, Proceedings Vol 1, 63-68, June 2005. ISBN 0-7803-8971-9.
"Does East Meet West in Business Ethics – An Introduction to the Special Issue", lead author with KC Lam and S M Ho, Journal of Business Ethics, 79: 1/2, 1-8, April 2008. (Online April 2007)
"Care, Contracts and Kohlberg", International Journal of Business Research Papers 3(1), March 2007.
No man's land: exploring the space between Gilligan and Kohlberg, Journal of Business Ethics 80:4, 807-822, July 2008 (online August 2007)
"Getting to Dui: Help and Hindrance from Commentators on Negotiating in China", China Insights, August 2007.
"Towards An Ethical Framework Grounded in Everyday Business Life", Social and Economic Issues in Accounting 1:2 199-216, online through EBSCO Host, 2007.
"Benefits of Diversifying Investments into Emerging Markets with Time-varying Correlations: An Australian perspective", with R K Gupta, Journal of Multinational Financial Management, 19:2, 160-177, April 2009.
"The Workplace as Office Fief", Euro Asia Journal of Management, 19(1), Issue 37, 3-11, June 2009.
"Fair Enough", First World Accounting Frontiers Conference, Macau, July 2009.
"Triple Entry Accounting and its Metaphors Reconsidered", 10th Conference of the Asian Academic Accounting Association, Istanbul, November 2009.
"Contra Contractarianism", International Journal of Accounting and Economics, 2(1), 2010. Inaugural lecture at UNE, May 2015, presentation to American Accounting Association’s August 2015 meeting.
"The Attempt to Privatise Business Ethics: A Critique of the Claims of Contractarianism to be the Ethical Framework for Global Business", online Journal of Business Systems, Governance and Ethics, 5 (1) 57-74, July 2010
"Floodgates and Accountability: Issues in an Orbital Theory", International Journal of Economics and Accounting, 3(2), 101-114, 2012.
"Away From the Numbers", International Journal of Critical Accounting, accepted 2011 but published 6(5), 469-489, 2015.
"Graduate Attributes in Australian Universities: Problems, Prospects and Proposals", Quality Assurance in Education, 20 (4), 341-356, 2012.
"Fair Value and Just Price: A Null Hypothesis Supported", International Journal of Arts and Commerce 2(2) 157-174, 2013.
"A Step Towards A General Theory of Accounting Valuation", International Journal of Economics and Accounting, 5(3), 269-279. 2014.
“Usefulness Unfulfilled: A performance review of value added statements”, International Journal of Critical Accounting, in press 2015.
Conference Papers
"True and Fair Funds Flow Statements", paper presented to the South East Asian University Accounting Teachers Conference "New Frontiers in Accounting Education" Singapore 1986 proceedings 296-317
"Triple Entry Accounting and Economic Development", 288-305 of The Proceedings Of The Sixth International Conference On Accounting Education, edited by K Someya for the Japan Accounting Association in 1987. ISBN 0-89930-420-6.
Business Ethics Courses; Oriental Perspectives, Hong Kong University Management Working Paper #99, April 1989 (21 pages)
"The Economics of Privileged Sacrifice", paper presented to the 1990 meeting of the Association of South East Asian Institutes of Higher Learning, Manila, September 1990. (16 pages)
"Information Overload and Accounts Processing", Conference paper G16-08 in the Proceedings of The International Information And Systems Conference In Hangzhou, China, Autumn 1991 (5 pages).
"Prospects for Accounting Harmonization in the Asia Pacific in the 1990s", paper for the CGA conference, Montreal, August1990; revised for the South East Asian Accounting Teacher's Conference, Jakarta, January 1991 (pages 303-315 of that conference's proceedings) where it was runner up in the International Accounting category.
.Accounting Education, Development and the IFAC Guidelines, Paper presented to the Seventh World Conference on Accounting Education held in Washington in October1992 Published an edited version in pages 43 - 56 of the Asian Review of Accounting's pilot issue under the title "Bleak Disjuncture".
"Caveat Auditor", paper to (and in the proceedings of) the sixth Hong Kong Accounting Conference 1994, jointly with R I Tricker.
"Feudalism, Ethics and Post-modern Company Life", paper to the first international conference on business ethics, Hong Kong, 1 June 1994. and Chapter 7 of Whose Business Values edited by G D Donleavy and S E A Stewart, Hong Kong University Press 1995.
"Phases in the Development of Accounting Professions"; Paper presented to Monash University October 1993, the Fifth Asia Pacific Accounting Conference, Mexico City, November 1993; and the Indian Accounting Association Conference, Calcutta, January 1994 (in the proceedings of the last two). New version in preparation and re-researched for presentation to the 2015 Accounting Historians’ Conference, Federation University, August 2015.
"Ethical and Cross Cultural Issues in Business Education"; a presentation to the October 1993 Conference of the Association of South East Asian Institutes of Higher Learning, Medan, Indonesia.
"Disclosure and Fixation: A Situationist Critique of Accounting", Working Paper Hong Kong University 1993
"Pacioli in His Time and Ours", talk to the Hong Kong Society of Accountants, 23 June 1994.
"Foxes and Chickens: Unethical Doctors", Target Intelligence Report, 2-6, November 1994.
"Gentlemen Bankers and Rogue Traders: The Fall of Barings", presentation seminar to the Dept. of Accounting and Law, VUT Melbourne, September 1996
"Internationalising the Curriculum", Workshop presentation to Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, October 1996.
"The PhD is not sufficient", Plenary address to the University of New England conference on professional doctorates, Coffs Harbour, Australia, October 1996.
"Existential Management", lecture to the Victorian Existentialist Society, Melbourne, June 1998.
"Paradigms Lost: Middle Management and Its Malcontents", inaugural professorial lecture at Bournemouth University, 11 May 2000.
"Abelard and Heloise and Their Resonances" lecture to Birmingham University of the Third Age, May 2002.
"Doing Business in the Far East" presentation to the Dorset Chamber of Commerce, May 2003.
"Metaphysical Evidence: Is There Such a Thing?" lecture to Birmingham University of the Third Age, May 2003.
"The Future of Casino Management Education", presentation to the International Gaming Exposition in Macau, April 2005.
"Macau, the Pearl River Delta and the Business Outlook to 2011", presentation to the July 2005 PACIBER meeting held in the Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto.
"A Strategy for Strengthening and Optimizing Institutional Networks" presentation accepted for the September 2005 meeting of the Association of Universities of Asia and the Pacific, Surabaya, Indonesia.
"Corporate Governance: Norms, Antecedents and Contradictions", presentation to the conference on "American Corporate Governance :Implications for Asia" at City University of Hong Kong organised by Hong Kong America Center of the American Studies Institute in Asia and the University of Hong Kong's Asian Institute of International Financial Law. June 2006.
"Gender Issues in Teaching Business Ethics" presentation and facilitated workshop to the 2006 Teaching Business Ethics conference in Boulder Colorado, organized by the Society for Business Ethics and the University of Colorado at Boulder's Business School, June 2006.
"Experiences of Good and Bad Leadership", guest lecture to the MBA class in leadership at the University of Macau, October 2006
"Social Responsibilities of Universities: Indicators for Quality Community Service or Social Roles" 7th Chair of panel of rapporteurs and writer of this part of the proceedings, conference of the Association of Universities of Asia and the Pacific: Towards an Asia-Pacific Quality Assurance and Accreditation in Higher Education, 22 October 2006.
"Exploring the space between Kohlberg and Gilligan", World Business Ethics Forum, 1 November 2006
"The effectiveness of business ethics courses in changing attitudes in China and Macau", jointly with Li Yan, World Business Ethics Forum, 3 November 2006.
"Contractarianism and Care Theory as Ethical frameworks for Global Business", Asian Regional Academy of International Business, Hangzhou, December 2007.
"Directors' Liability under Macau Law", International symposium on directors' liability, Macau University of Science and Technology, 14 December 2007, re-presented to the Faculty of Business at Victoria University, Melbourne 20th March 2008.
"Critical Perspectives on Corporate Governance", presentation to Faculty of Business, University of Macau, 31st March 2008.
"Fair Enough? A Recent History of Metaphysics in Accounting", University of Sydney Accounting Seminars, 27th August 2008.
"The Office as Workplace Fief", Australia and New Zealand Academy of Management, Auckland, 3rd December 2008.
"Does the Current Financial Crisis Falsify Any of The Claims of Friedman, Fama, Sharpe and Lintner?" Faculty of Business, University of Macau, 5th January 2009.
"Leadership: A View from the Middle", leadership symposium series, CQ University, March 2009. Access it through: http://learning.cqu.edu.au/FCWViewer/view.do?page=9420
"Profiles of students who multiple fail courses in commerce" best paper prize at the International Association for Accounting Education and Research conference, Singapore, October 2010, jointly with Beth Tennent and Michele Woolf.
"Foundations of a General Theory of Accounting", CQU and UWS, 7th and 19th October 2010. Accountability half of the theory presented to University of Tasmania, 20th July 2012. Inaugural lecture at UNE, May 2015, presentation to American Accounting Association’s August 2015 meeting.
"That's Edutainment!" CQU, Rockhampton, 7 October 2010.
"The Legal Origins of Fair Value Accounting" Accounting and Business Historians Conference, University of Sydney, December 2010, first revision presented to the American Accounting Association meeting Denver, August 2011. Revised draft presented to the Accounting History special interest group at AFAANZ Melbourne 1st July 2012.
"An Orbital Theory of Accountability" first version to the 2nd WAFS conference at UWS in December 2010 and revised version to the critical accounting conference at Baruch College NYU, New York, April 2011. Revised version was published in the International Journal of Accounting and Economics. Further development of the theory was presented at University of Tasmania 20th July 2012 and Charles Sturt University 17th September 2012 and the results will be incorporated in the general theory of accounting monograph mentioned in the present job section of this CV.
"Raise and Enhance", paper to the UWS Senate on raising its profile and enhancing the academic discourse throughout the university. Under development for AUR journal and a book chapter.
"A Step Towards A General Theory Of Accounting Valuation", paper presented the 2014 International Conference on Critical Accounting, New York, April. Since published.
"A Critical Perspective Of Stakeholder Theory As A Foundation For Employee Stakeholder Accounting", paper presented the 2014 International Conference on Critical Accounting, New York, April and in press with the International Journal of Critical Accounting 2015.
"Third sector accounting accountability in Australia: anything but a level playing field", ANZTSR Conference, Christchurch, New Zealand, November 2014.
"Were most English, mid-sixties, bankruptcies caused by 'rash and hazardous speculations'?" Accounting Historians Annual Conference, University of Sydney, November 2014.
“Towards a general theory of accounting” American Accounting Association, Chicago, August 2015
“Isomorphisms in the development of accounting professions”, 8th Accounting History Special Interest Group conference of the Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, Federation University, Ballarat, August 2015..
Creative Work
"The Goblinmaster", Critical Perspectives in Accounting 11, 647-8, October 2000.
"Deng's Death", Critical Perspectives in Accounting 12, 114-5, 2/2001.
"Serenity Fair", online column for a US e-journal critically reviewing New Age phenomena from 2006 to 2009, now archived.
“How I Became A Free Radical”, Quadrant, July/August 2105.
Working Paper
All now conference papers or articles above.
Memberships
- Fellow, CPA Australia
- Fellow, Chartered Institute of Management, UK
- Fellow, Royal Society of Arts, Australia and UK
- Member, United Oxford and Cambridge Universities Club, London
Consultancy Interests
My consulting experience is in business ethics: - devising codes of conduct, writing HR handbooks, financial statement analysis, audit process checks, negotiation skill building, academic quality assurance both at program and at institutional level, and all aspects of third sector management. This has been applied in UK, Asia and Australia over 30 years.
