(with contributions from M. BARBERA and W. CONNELL)
Professor Bill Birkett died on 18th August 2004, bringing to an untimely end a distinguished career notable for significant contributions extending beyond the academy to the accounting profession and accounting practice, both within Australia and internationally.
He began his academic career in 1962 at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) as an Associate Lecturer in Accountancy. In 1964 he became a lecturer at the University of Sydney (USYD), progressing to senior lecturer there in an era when Ray Chambers was establishing USYD as a major research institution. In 1974 he moved to Kuring-gai College of Advanced Education, to do his own institution-building as the foundation Head of the School of Financial and Administrative Studies before returning to UNSW as Professor of Accounting in 1982. In a frenetic and productive 20 year period there he built up the School of Accounting as Head of School before becoming Associate Dean—Development in the Faculty of Commerce and Economics. In 2003 he took on what turned out to be his last position, Executive Dean, Faculty of Law, Business and the Creative Arts at James Cook University in Townsville.
Bill was an innovative institution-builder who engaged in broadening and deepening research profiles and improving the quality of tertiary education while, at the same time, building links to the world of accounting practice through his leadership roles in Australian Centre for Management Accounting Development (ACMAD), CPA Australia and the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), among others. He also served on numerous committees of CPA Australia (and its predecessors) including the Professional Development, Educational & Membership and National Planning & Review committees; as well as taking on other roles such as serving on its National Task Force on Professional Specialization and its advisory panel on Management Accounting & Treasury.
He was an active member of the Accounting Association of Australia and New Zealand (AAANZ)Footnote1 during a formative period in the 1970s (serving as President, journal editor, member of its executive and Chair of the Organizing Committee of the third International Conference on Accounting Education). To illustrate further his capacity to straddle roles and organizations, in the 1980s he served as a member of a task force for accounting education in Australia created under the auspices of the Australian Society of Accountants (now CPA Australia), the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia (ICAA) and the AAANZ. During the early 1990s he was actively involved in developing competency standards in auditing, external reporting, insolvency and reconstructions, management accounting and taxation and treasury in Australia and New Zealand before extending this work to the world stage.
During his career he published over 60 articles in professional and academic journals, six book chapters, 24 research-based monographs and made over 300 presentations to academic and professional forums, in Australia and overseas. To achieve this prodigious output he secured close to $AUD 2 million in research funding to investigate areas as diverse as Australian company failures in the 1960s, non-government welfare associations, activity-based costing, information literacy, language and learning, competency frameworks, value creating and risk management in financial services and strategic resource management in the twenty-first century.
A challenging and inspiring teacher, Bill taught at all levels and was an active supervisor of Honours, Master's and PhD students. Bill developed and taught more than 50 subjects in four educational institutions. Furthermore, he developed whole disciplinary sequences and undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes. Always cognisant of innovations in education research he was one of the first accounting educators to explicitly incorporate generic attributes into curriculum design.
The reflections below of just a few of those who knew Bill capture in more personal terms a taste of what it was like to know and work with him.
Maria Barbera: former colleague at UNSW
The critique in Thomas Johnson and Robert Kaplan's Relevance Lost: The Rise and Fall of Management Accounting (1987)Footnote2 resonated strongly with Bill who, as the head of Management Accounting at UNSW, was already discovering, through his own research and his corporate friends, that management accounting was in desperate need of revitalization. Typically, Bill saw the ‘big picture’. The task, he knew, involved change and development, not only in his field, that of education and research, but also in ‘outside’ areas of practice and professional organization. And so began, for me and others, a ten-year period of hard but fascinating work.
Change, however, is not always easy. It is difficult within a university, for example, to make curriculum changes quickly as one is limited by the availability of textbooks. But, with Bill's encouragement, change came nevertheless. Staff meetings became regular events; material covering topics not included in textbooks was written by members of the team; projects were developed that better reflected the complex world of business; students became more interested; and teaching became more fun. It took a few years but, eventually, the second year Management Accounting staff wrote their own textbook Management Accounting for Change: Process Improvement and Innovation. And another big step: Michael Briers, the then lecturer-in-charge, introduced an experiential learning method which gave both teachers and students a new aspect on the learning process. The course was awarded the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence in 1996 and won the Australian Award for University Teaching in 1998.
Bill also introduced Management Accounting Research Conferences bringing together researchers from universities across Australia and overseas. The practice of inviting prominent academic researchers to present papers and comment on the focus of Australian research at each conference supplied an extra dimension of great value.
Bill was, essentially, a researcher. He had an extraordinary mind and it was mesmerizing to watch that mind identify the central question and then devise a detailed framework for addressing it. Typically, all of this would be shown in one of his legendary diagrams. (As he said to me one day, with a smile: ‘I think I feel a diagram coming on!’) Then he would spend unstinting time explaining his thought process to those of us with lesser minds and continue to encourage and help us until the project was completed. He was, in a word, wonderful.
Two mammoth projects deserve special mention because of their international influence. The Competency Framework for Internal Auditing (1999)Footnote3 and Competency Profiles for Management Accounting Practice and Practitioners (2002)Footnote4 comprehensively changed the thought and practice of the two professions addressed.
But Bill's greatest contribution to the Australian accounting world was the formation of ACMAD. At informal discussions with senior management of some of our larger companies, he found common ground—they were very aware of the need for an enhanced and more relevant management accounting function. Government, too, was aware of the problem and willing to participate and assist financially. So, in 1991, ACMAD came into being as a partnership between education, industry and government. Its aim was to move management accounting practice in Australia to the state of the art by activating and energizing a management accounting network consisting of managers, accountants, educators and other interested parties.
In its first nine months, the Centre developed a platform of interaction comprising a members' database, a database of issues, and a newsletter. Small discussion groups were formed, and issue-based forums were instituted to encourage corporate networking and cross-functional interaction. As membership grew over time to more than 100 organizations, divisions of ACMAD were established in Victoria and Queensland, research publications were completed and a multitude of diverse topics were debated and discussed at forums, discussion groups and conferences. It was a heady and a busy time—one in which management accounting in Australia took a huge leap forward.
Bill's family, colleagues and friends deeply mourn his passing. To me personally, he was a friend and mentor, a man I feel very fortunate to have known. But his influence was much wider. The whole world is a poorer place without him.
Bill Connell: chair, IFAC Professional Accountants In Business (PAIB) committee
There are a few people who you meet in life who are memorable whether as friends or as work colleagues. Bill Birkett was one of those people and for me he sits in both categories.
I first met Bill seven years ago when we both attended an IFAC meeting in Peru. He was well-established as one of the prime movers in the committee and I was the new boy. His thinking influenced me then and still does today. I often ponder why. Perhaps it was because we were two people with the same view of the future wanting to learn more from each other, resulting in a synergy between his academic skills and my practical experience.
Indeed, it was Bill's vision of the future that prompted the committee (then called the Financial and Management Accounting Committee) to produce the publication A Profession Transforming from Accounting to Management Footnote5 in March 2001. Bill coordinated the work of a number of accounting bodies around the world as they described the changes that were happening within their own organizations.
The next work to follow was Competency Profiles for Management Accounting Practice and Practitioners Footnote6 in January 2002. This work was led again by Bill and has become a reference book for management accountants. Indeed, my own institute has used this work extensively in designing its revised syllabus. What was most pleasing is that Bill and I only found this out when the work had been completed.
It was not surprising, therefore, when Bill's term as the Australian technical adviser on PAIB came to an end in September 2003, that he was presented with the first award for an outstanding contribution to Management Accounting.
My tribute to Bill would be incomplete if I did not mention his friendship. Bill and his wife Phillipa welcomed the committee to a barbeque at his home when we visited Australia. When we met on other occasions, usually only two or three times a year, it was very easy to talk as if our previous meeting was only yesterday, a sign of true friendship. When Bill moved to Townsville he suggested to the university that his ‘mate’ should come and run a risk workshop. I readily agreed, but made it clear that I did not want to work on my wife's birthday. Bill not only organized the workshops, but also a memorable day for Teresa, my wife, on the Great Barrier Reef followed by a candlelit dinner in the open. Despite his heavy workload Bill organized it with the same attention to detail that characterized his academic work.
During the visit Bill and I spent some time discussing the future of management accounting, a topic we often returned to. We agreed that strategic direction and value at risk were the new themes and had decided to co-author a book on value at risk. Unfortunately, it was our last discussion and I regret that the project is not to be.
Bill will be sadly missed by many and it is my privilege to add my thoughts to this tribute.
Associate Professor Chris Poullaos: University of Sydney
I first encountered Bill as a first-year accounting student at Sydney University. He distributed lecture notes bearing little relationship to the accounting textbooks in libraries and bookshops. In his lectures he actually developed an argument in front of the class. He operated on the assumption that students straight out of high-school could follow sophisticated arguments if their intellectual curiosity could be sufficiently aroused. Over the next 30 years I had closer contact with him as he became my honours supervisor, boss, mentor, colleague and friend. In these various roles he demonstrated an eye for detail as well as a flare for synthesis; was supportive but challenging, calm but iconoclastic, eclectic but focused, inspiring and demanding, quiet yet imposing, appreciative and perceptive but not sentimental; warm, humorous and courteous but to the point, a family man and an internationalist, a futurist and a historian. A conversation with him could easily range from accountability relationships in the ancient world, to the work of Ray Chambers, Max Weber, Thomas Kuhn, Michel Foucault (and many others), to the latest thinking on curriculum design and the role of the university and the latest books on organizational design and the nature of time. Not to mention the latest trends in management accounting practice and where we might be in 5, 10 or 20 years' time.
Conscious of the rapidly diminishing shelf life of received wisdom in the twentieth century, he did not hesitate to imagine possible futures quite different from those already trailing into history, and to move to actively create the present that seemed most fruitful, taking the rest of us on the journey. Bill's departure is his final (or most recent) challenge to those of us now left behind. OK, he might say, over to you!
A final thought: in the light of his unstinting devotion to his work, it is well worth reiterating the thanks recently offered (at his funeral service) by Dr Jane Baxter to Bill's family for sharing him with us.
Dr Rosina Mladenovic: University of Sydney
When I heard that Bill had died I felt an overwhelming sense of loss as I knew the enormous hole that this would leave in the world and in my life.
To Bill, I have so much to be thankful for. Over a period of 20 years he figured prominently in my life as a PhD supervisor, colleague and mentor—but most of all he was an extraordinary friend. He worked so hard, yet always made time to comment on a draft or to meet with me. He always seemed to know the right thing to say. Buddha-like, he exuded calm even if I was anxious. Our meetings were never dull on account of his continuous stream of new ideas … I often had to say ‘Bill, these are great ideas for future projects, but we need to stay focussed on the achievable so I can complete this PhD!’
Bill was charismatic and innovative. I have many fond memories of working with him on numerous ground-breaking projects at UNSW born of his drive to improve teaching and learning. He was an institution-builder in the truest sense. An inspirational leader, he brought people together to achieve innovative research and educational outcomes. I recall working on a generic skills project with him some time ago and thinking what an amazing person he was—his sincerity, his humility, his visionary ideas, his compassion and his tolerance even in the face of ignorance or inequity. I was left pondering what we would do if he ever left the institution and I wondered if I could ever become ‘like him’ one day.
Bill, you've touched my life as friend, colleague and mentor— thank you—with all my heart. Your generous help and guidance have contributed to many of the outcomes I have achieved, to who I am today and who I might become. I'm eternally grateful for the time we had together.
May your ideas continue to flourish and your big heart be filled with love where you are now. You are truly missed.
Notes
1. Now the Accounting & Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand (AFAANZ).
2. Johnson, H. T. and Kaplan, R. S. (1987) Relevance Lost: The Rise and Fall of Management Accounting (New York: International Federation of Accountants).
3. Birkett, W. P. (1999) The Competency Framework for Internal Auditing (Altamonte Springs, FL: The Institute of Internal Auditors).
4. Birkett, W. P. (2002) Competency Profiles for Management Accounting Practice and Practitioners (New York: International Federation of Accountants).
5. Birkett, W. P. and Poullaos, C. (2001) A Profession Transforming from Accounting to Management (New York: International Federation of Accountants).
6. Birkett, W. P. (2002) Competency Profiles for Management Accounting Practice and Practitioners (New York: International Federation of Accountants).