Faculty
Heather L. Pesch
Assistant Professor
Accounting

Heather L. Pesch

541-737-2517

peschh@oregonstate.edu

Faculty
Heather L. Pesch
Overview
Overview
Background
Publications

Overview

Credentials

Professor Pesch holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin's School of Business. 

Professor Pesch also holds a CPA license, currently inactive, in the State of California. 

Career Interests

Heather L. Pesch is an Assistant Professor of accounting at Oregon State University College of Business. Shecurrently teaches ACTG 379: Accounting Analytics both in-person on the OSU Corvallis campus and online for the OSU E-campus. Previously, she has taught auditing courses, introductory and intermediate financial reporting courses and cost accounting courses. 

Professor Pesch's research focuses on how cognitive and social forces influence judgment and decision making, particularly with respect to control systems, social responsibility, misconduct and whistle-blowing. She is particularly interested in how individual behaviors and strategies within an organization can lead to emergent macro-level properties (e.g., organizational norms). She works to match the research approach to the question at hand and thus, has utilized varied approaches, including experimentation, empirical archival, field study and agent-based modeling (a type of computer simulation).

Working Papers & Work in Process:
"The impact of internal controls on corrupt organizational norms". Preparing for submission to Accounting Organizations and Society.

"Pre-existing Controls, Organizational Identities and the Emergence of Formal Management Controls in a Family Firm: A Field Study" with Chris Akroyd and Julia Wu. Under review at Accounting Horizons.

"Executive charitable giving, occupational fraud, and whistle-blowing program" with Kara Obermire and Tuyet Tu. Preparing for submission to The Accounting Review.

"Faith at Work: The Role of Religious Values in Management Control" with Chris Akroyd, Kali Henderson, and Winnie O'Grady. Preparing for submission to The Accounting Review.

"On the Efficacy of Self-Reporting Regimes: Leveraging the Psychological Immune System to Constrain Financial Statement Fraud Recidivism" with Pat Hurley.

"Staff use of AI in business and accounting" with Blayze Baba.

 

Background

Professional Background

Prof. Pesch received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin's School of Business in 2011. Professor Pesch holds a CPA license, currently inactive, in the State of California and prior to her doctoral studies, she worked as an auditor at Deloitte and in various financial reporting roles at three different Fortune 500 companies. Prof. Pesch has worked as a professor at the University of WIsconsin-Whitewater, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

Personal Background

Prof. Pesch enjoys time with her partner and three children; her hobbies include cycling, snow-skiing, surfing, and any outdoor activity with a dog.

Publications

Academic Journal
Accounting

“Submit-to-Accept Delays in Accounting: Determinants, Comparisons to other Business Disciplines”

We use hand-collected data to analyze submission-to-acceptance (STA) times in the top-tier accounting journals relative to other top-tier business journals from 1993 through 2021. We find that, vis-à-vis other business disciplines, STA times at top-tier accounting journals were shorter in the first half of our sample period, and significantly longer thereafter. We also observe shorter STA times for articles with authors from more highly-ranked institutions; this effect exists only in top-tier accounting journals and has increased over time. In additional analyses, we find that our primary inferences are unchanged when considering maturity of initial journal submissions, journal-level democratization, and review-process improvements related to paper quality. Our results should be of interest to researchers, journal editors, reviewers, provosts, deans, and tenure and promotion committees.
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Patrick Hurley, Ronen Galor, W. Robert Knechel and Heather L. Pesch "Submit-to-Accept Delays in Accounting: Determinants, Comparisons to other Business Disciplines" The Accounting Review 219-247 pages 2025 View on: Google Scholar

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Academic Journal
Accounting

“Selection benefits of below-market pay in social-mission organizations: effects on individual performance and team cooperation”

Many organizations whose core purpose is to advance a social mission pay employees below-market wages. We investigate two under-appreciated benefits of below-market pay in these social-mission organizations. In a series of experiments, we predict and find that, holding employees’ outside opportunities constant, those attracted to social-mission organizations that pay below-market wages perform better individually and cooperate more effectively in teams than those attracted to social-mission organizations that pay higher wages. The individual performance effect arises because below-market pay facilitates the selection of value-congruent employees who are naturally inclined to work hard for the organizational mission. The team cooperation effect arises because employees expect team members who have selected a social-mission job that pays below market to be more value-congruent and, therefore, more cooperative than those who have selected a social-mission job that pays higher wages. Collectively, we demonstrate that in social-mission organizations, offering below-market pay can yield selection benefits.
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Clara Chen, Heather L. Pesch and Laura Wang "Selection benefits of below-market pay in social-mission organizations: effects on individual performance and team cooperation" The Accounting Review 57-77 pages 2020 View on: Google Scholar

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Academic Journal
Accounting

“Tenure Consequences of Submit-to-Accept Delays in Accounting”

We use hand-collected data to examine the impact of lengthening submission-to-acceptance (STA) times in accounting journals on tenure outcomes for accounting faculty in their first post-doctoral academic appointment. We find that longer STA times for articles published in the latter portion of the probationary period are associated with a significant decrease in the likelihood of the academic being tenured at their first institution. In supplemental analysis, we find that the negative association between STA times and tenure outcomes is only descriptive of candidates not working at higher-ranked schools. There is no association between longer STA times and tenure outcomes for faculty working at institutions ranked in the top 15 of the Glover et al (2012) ranking. Finally, we find that female tenure candidates with longer STA times are less likely to be tenured than male candidates with longer STA times. Our results should be of interest to journal editors, reviewers, provosts, deans, tenure and promotion committees, and tenure-track academics.
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Ronen Galor, Patrick Hurley and Heather L. Pesch "Tenure Consequences of Submit-to-Accept Delays in Accounting" Accounting Horizons View on: Google Scholar

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Other
Accounting

“Pre-existing controls, organizational identities and the emergence of formal management controls in a family firm”

Abstract
This paper explores how a deeply embedded pre-existing informal control system, comprised of a strong control environment and the associated organizational identities and norms, impacts the introduction of formal management controls in a family firm dealing with tensions around succession and growth. The authors conduct a case study of a family firm whose control environment relies largely on social controls intensely rooted in Christian values and strategic controls entrenched in an entrepreneurial growth orientation. Data is collected using semi-structured interviews and subsequently examined to better understand how the deeply embedded pre-existing control environment (and its related organizational identities and norms) impact organizational members’ acceptance of a newly imposed formal control system.

The authors identified three overarching organizational identities that comprise the firm’s control system and environment. First, since the company’s inception, the firm’s Founder relied heavily on informal social controls establishing an organizational identity built on Christian values. Second, also since inception, the Founder encouraged an entrepreneurial orientation by relying on a growth-focused organizational strategy. Third, more recently, a “formal controls” orientated identity was introduced as the founder aged and succession became imminent; the reliance on formal controls was espoused by the accounting department and embraced by the second generation of the family, who viewed it as necessary to support the continuity and stability of the firm as the Founder’s involvement in day-to-day activities declined. The pre-existing informal control system (i.e., the control environment, and the related organizational identities) significantly framed how organizational members perceived and ultimately challenged the introduction of the new formal control system. The findings provide an example of how deeply embedded pre-existing informal control systems, such as strong Christian-based group identities and norms, within a family firm affect the emergence of formal management controls and create challenges for the implementation process during growth and succession.

Keywords Management control, Family firm, Performative perspective, Identity, Social controls, Formal controls
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Chris Akroyd and Heather L. Pesch "Pre-existing controls, organizational identities and the emergence of formal management controls in a family firm"

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