Jane Andrew

Biography

Jane Andrew joined the University of Sydney in 2010. Prior to that she had held a variety of academic roles at the University of Wollongong. Jane has a particular interest in the relationship between accounting information and public policy and has written extensively on public accountability, carbon accounting, immigration detention, prison privatisation and whistleblowing. The policy relevance of her work means she is often called upon to contribute to discussions of public policy at the State and Federal level. All of Jane’s work has considered the impact of accounting on issues of equity, justice and well-being within the context of neoliberalism. In 2016, Jane released a report titled Prison Privatisation in Australia: The State of the Nation providing the first comprehensive review of the costs, performance and accountability of Australian private prisons. Jane is an Associate Editor for two leading international journals, Abacus and Critical Perspectives on Accounting and is a member of the Editorial Board’s for Accounting, Auditing and Accountability, Advances in Public Interest Accounting and Australasian Accounting, Business and Finance Journal. She is also a member of CPA Australia, The Sydney Institute of Criminology and The Imprisonment Observatory. Jane teaches financial accounting to postgraduate students and is an active PhD supervisor.

Research Interest

Jane’s work explores the relationship between accounting information and public policy, with a particular focus on climate change and public service delivery. Given Jane’s belief that accounting information is increasingly influential in all spheres of decision making, much of her work considers the ways in which this information enables and obscures particular policy pathways, and the impact this has on our ability to meet contemporary social and environmental challenges. Jane is interested in the interaction between accounting information and public accountability and role accounting plays in the changing dynamics between organisations, governments and society. Her most recent work has explored the relationship between accounting and processes of neoliberalisation, including the privatisation of public services. Much of Jane’s research has focused on areas of public service that have traditionally been viewed as core activities of the government, and she is now well known for her work on prison privatisation in Australia. This work has considered a variety of issues, including the veracity of the accounting information used to inform policy decisions; the influence accounting has on the changing shape of prison privatisation over time; the use of accounting information in public debates over policy direction and the ways in which accounting is used to evaluate performance within the sector. Jane has also published extensively on the emergence of climate change related reporting and disclosure regulation and has contributed to the literature on social and environmental accounting. This work has explored the growth of private forms of environmental reporting regulation, such as the Carbon Disclosure Project and the Climate Disclosure Standards Board, and the influence non-governmental voluntary reporting frameworks have on any subsequent mandatory requirements. Jane is particularly interested in the ways coalitions of private actors are formed, the influence these have on the construction of climate related reporting norms, and whether these have helped produce greater transparency with regard to climate matters. In addition, Jane has researched the connections between neoliberalism and changing International Financial Reporting Standards; the accounting profession and accounting regulation in China; and climate related reporting regulation. She is also engaged in a project that explores the connections between new technologies, whistleblowing and new forms of accountability. Jane is involved in the supervision of a number of interesting research projects, including work that focuses on accountability within micro finance organisations (with Dr Lisa Marini and Professor Sandra van der Laan); the time budgeting practices within knowledge intensive consulting firms (with Dr Puja Ladva and Dr Cornelia Beck); and the interplay between accounting practices and architectural design (with Rob Morley and Professor John Roberts). Much of Jane’s work is interdisciplinary, and she has collaborated with colleagues from political economy, law and science to research public policy as it relates to climate change, immigration detention and prisons. Jane has collaborated extensively with Associate Professor Damien Cahill, Dr Max Baker, Dr Eagle Zhang and Dr Corinne Cortese. As a researcher, Jane aims to reach as many audiences as possible. Her work has been published in high quality international journals; she has made submissions to a number of public inquires; she has authored policy relevant research reports; and has written many media articles. Jane actively engages in evidence based policy discussions with a variety of industry partners and government departments.