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Professor Dr Vanessa Flagmeier receives "Prize for Good Teaching" from the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts
Science Minister Markus Blume has honoured 20 university lecturers from Bavaria with the "Prize for Good Teaching" for their outstanding teaching in 2023. Dr Vanessa Flagmeier, Junior Professor of Business Administration with a focus on Accounting at the University of Passau, is one of the award winners. The award ceremony took place on 11 April 2024 in Nuremberg.
Every year, the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts honours the work of the best teachers at Bavarian state universities with the "Prize for Good Teaching". This year, for the first time, the "Prize for Good Teaching" was presented to teachers at state universities, universities of applied sciences, technical universities and art colleges across all types of higher education institutions. The focus was on ways of organising effective teaching and learning processes. The prize emphasises that teaching is on an equal footing with research tasks.
The winner at the University of Passau is the economist Professor Vanessa Flagmeier, who has held the Junior Professorship of Business Administration with a focus on Accounting at the University of Passau since September 2020.
"Especially in large foundation courses, it is often challenging to pick up students with very different prior knowledge. My team and I try to use a lot of structure, communication and various didactic methods to get the participants excited about the content," explains the award winner. "I'm delighted that the vast majority of students rate this effort positively and that it has now been recognised."
This year's award ceremony was organised as part of a "Day for Good Teaching" at Nuremberg Institute of Technology Georg Simon Ohm. The award is endowed with 5,000 euros each.
In a recent ranking by manager magazin, the University of Passau once again achieved an excellent position and, at 14th place, is one of the top universities for auditing in 2024/25.
The ranking "Germany's best universities for auditing" is updated by manager magazin every two years. Since the first publication in April 2020, the University of Passau has consistently maintained its strong position among German universities. 81 auditing firms and 1,396 of their clients were surveyed for the ranking.
The Bachelor's degree programme in Business Administration and Economics and the Master's degree programme in Business Administration offer excellent opportunities to prepare for a career as an auditor as well as other professional activities in related areas of finance and accounting and tax and management consulting.
The high quality of support provided during studies is also reflected in the Accounting & Tax Specialist Circle recently founded by Prof Dr Vanessa Flagmeier (Professor of Accounting), Prof Dr Markus Diller (Chair of Taxation) and Prof Dr Christoph Pelger (Accounting and Auditing), which gives students with an interest in accounting and tax the opportunity to exchange ideas with the participating professors and practice partners.
"We are delighted with this excellent ranking once again, which underlines the very high quality of business education at the University of Passau," summarises the Dean of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, Prof. Dr Stefan Bauernschuster.
As part of the Financial Accounting lecture, we welcomed Mr Bernhard Stangl (StB, partner) and Ms Laura Kellhuber (tax assistant) from the SME consultancy firm Loserth Schranner & Partner on 14th December 2023. With the help of a case study of a medium-sized company, the two provided exciting insights into issues relating to the accounting of property, plant and equipment, the valuation of work in progress and the general preparation of annual financial statements.
Mr Günther David (WP, StB, Partner) and Mr Florian Sterner (Audit Manager, Senior Associate) from KPMG also came to Passau on 24th January 2024 as part of the lecture on Business Accounting. They provided insights into the recognition, measurement, and reversal of provisions from an auditor's perspective and were also able to answer some questions about the job profile of an auditor at a Big Four auditing firm.
We also invited guests for our masters students: In December we welcomed Mr Thomas Fischer (Director) and Mr Michael Smolinski (Senior Manager) from PWC to the Financial Statements Analysis lecture. As part of their practical presentation, the two explained the processes of a company takeover and focussed in particular on the analytical consideration of financial reporting as part of due diligence.
Already at the beginning of this year, the professorship had the pleasure to welcome Mr. Günther David, StB, WP (Partner) and Mr. Florian Sterner (Senior Associate) from KPMG Munich on 18.01.2023 in the context of the lecture "Business Accounting". In particular, the focus was on the topic of accruals and their treatment in the preparation and audit of the annual financial statements. Furthermore, the two gave an insight into the working methods of a BigFour consulting firm and were able to answer some questions about the daily work routine at KPMG.
In the context of the lecture Business Accounting the professorship had the pleasure to welcome Mr. Bernhard Stangl, tax consultant, and Mrs. Laura Kellhuber, tax assistant, from the business consultancy Loserth Schranner & Partner on 07.12.2022. Building on the previous lecture content, the two gave practical insights into issues relating to the accounting of property, plant and equipment, intangible assets or work in progress. They were also able to clarify a number of questions that had arisen concerning the day-to-day work in a medium-sized business consultancy.
For a second time in December the professorship had the pleasure to welcome Mr. Christoph Rupp, Senior Manager, Mr. Michael Smolinski, Manager and Ms. Isabel Ruf, Associate of PWC Munich for the master lecture Financial Statements Analysis on 13.12.2022. During the lecture they gave exciting insights into the process of a company takeover and the role of due diligence in it. In particular, they focused on the analytical consideration of financial reporting and its impact on the purchase price as well as the purchase and sale agreements.
At the Brown Bag Seminar Accounting, Finance and Taxation, which started in summer term 2022 and will be continued in winter term 22/23, Dr Bianca Beyer (Aalto University, Finland) gave a lecture on november 22, 2022. Her topic: How Does Carbon Footprint Information Affect Consumer Choice? A Field Experiment.
For more information on the Brown Bag Seminar, please visit the faculty homepage.
On June 30, 2022, Prof. Flagmeier gave a presentation on "Does private firms' disclosure affect public peers' information environment?" at the Accounting Brown-Bag Seminar at HU Berlin.
At the 44th Annual Congress of the European Accounting Association in Bergen / Norway, Professor Flagmeier gave a presentation on "Tax loss carryforward disclosure".
The article When do firms highlight their effective tax rate? by Prof. Dr. Vanessa Flagmeier, Prof. Dr. Jens Müller and Prof. Dr. Caren Sureth-Sloane (both Paderborn University) is now available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00014788.2021.1958669 (Accounting and Business Research). The study examines the visibility of tax information in firms’ annual reports. Firms face a trade-off in their disclosure decision as there are capital market incentives to highlight for example a decreasing effective tax rate but at the same time this might attract public attention and result in reputational costs. Findings indicate that incentives to highlight such tax rate outweigh potential concerns, resulting in higher disclosure visibility. However, this only holds for moderate decreases from ‘normal’ tax rate levels. The study adds to our understanding of firms’ tax disclosure behaviour by indicating how firms incorporate different stakeholder groups’ preferences into their disclosure decision.
Is there a connection between financial reporting and the digitalization of companies? This exciting and highly topical question has been approached by bachelor- and master students in Prof. Dr. Vanessa Flagmeier’s brand new seminar.
For the new accounting seminar in the summer term 2021, Prof. Dr. Flagmeier chose the topic digitalization and financial reporting. Bachelor- and master students empirically analysed the relation between digitalization and various parameters of financial reporting for a sample of German MDAX companies. The analysis focused on the length of annual reports, the timing of their publishing, audit fees, history of available annual reports, earnings management and tax avoidance.
After a joint kick-off event the students worked alone or in teams on their topic, presented interim results in May and recently handed in their seminar paper after a two-month working period. In a final workshop the results were presented and discussed.
After a joint kick-off event the students worked alone or in teams on their topic, presented interim results in May and recently handed in their seminar paper after a two-month working period. In a final workshop the results were presented and discussed.
A central issue of the empirical analysis was assessing the degree of digitalization in each company. Students had to be creative and followed various approaches. They used parameters like the frequency of terms associated with digitalization in annual reports, the technological proficiency displayed in a company’s website, digital competence on the management level and different industry indices. Results show that it is mostly companies in the media and communication industry that exhibit a high level of digitalization whereas real estate companies tend to be less digitalized.
The seminar digitalization and financial reporting showed to participants the exciting development of digitalization in accounting that has become a focus of research in recent years. Prof. Dr. Vanessa Flagmeier’s seminar thus also contributes to one of the University of Passau’s research guiding themes ‘Digitalisation, Networked Society and (Internet) Cultures’.
We were happy to offer a digital research presentation in cooperation with the ICEBS of the University of Passau and TRR266 Accounting for Transparency on June 11 2021.
Thank you Professor Jeffrey Hoopes from the University of North Carolina for your insights on "Tax Boycotts"!
After Jeffs presentation, a PhD workshop on the topic "Taxes and Disclosure" followed.
Since winter term 2015/16 the School of Business, Economics and Information Systems supports excellent students with the honors-programme. On 20 may 2021 Prof Dr Vanessa Flagmeier held a digital presentation as part of the research overview lecture titled "When do firms highlight their effective tax rate?”.
In the upcoming winter semester the course Financial Statement Analysis will be held in english again. For more information click here.
The article The Information Content of Deferred Taxes Under IFRS is published in the European Accounting review. Here you can find the complete article.