Berit Hartmann

Accounting

Who are you and where are you from?

I am a person with love for Scandinavia – its nature and its way of live – and German-Norwegian roots. I was raised in Germany and lived in Berlin for many years before I moved to Sweden in 2007.

How did you decide to become a doctoral student? And why did you decide to do it at JIBS?

After my studies in Berlin, I started to work for one of the BigFour auditing companies as an accounting consultant. The work was challenging and rewarding in many ways, however, I soon felt that there was just too little time to reflect on the ways in which we do business and accounting, the things we take for granted and the ways in which we look upon accounting phenomena. In addition, already during my studies I was intrigued to work at a university later on, because there is only few work places with such constant inflow of new ideas, inspiration and impressions. 

Being Scandinavia affine all my life, I decided that it would be fantastic to move to Sweden starting a PhD program. JIBS presented itself as a very international and dynamic work place and the connection to MMT Centre gave me the opportunity to look at one of the most fluent and changing business areas in an interdisciplinary environment.

What are your main research interests?

My research interest is oriented towards understanding the influence of financial accounting and reporting in various organisational and social contexts. In my PhD thesis I focus on the ways in which International Financial Reporting Standards enable and constrain managerial practice and accounting. Whilst in the common understanding, financial accounting and management accounting are rather separated, one key concern of my work is the ways in which these two are related and what this means for organisational practices.

What is the best thing with working at JIBS?

The best thing in working at JIBS is the freedom of working with what you love to do and the excellent support in terms of research possibilities. This school is truly international, much more the most of the other schools I have visited, and it makes work just so much more interesting and open for new things.