Assistant professor Babak Mammadov received the 2022-2023 Charles D. and Katrina M. Way Faculty Fellowship. This prestigious award provides financial support for research that has implications for practitioners and students. Assistant professor Mammadov plans to use the award funding for a research project that investigates the implications of auditor-client firm corporate culture similarity on financial reporting quality. The research paper contributes to the stream of literature that adopts machine learning and artificial intelligence to measure corporate culture. Further, the study extends the relatively recent stream of research analyzing the effect of corporate culture on corporate behavior. This research visits the question of cultural diversity. Assistant professor Mammadov’s study lends credibility to the concern of regulators that close relationship or sharing similar backgrounds could potentially undermine quality of the financial reporting process. The study further suggests that diverse values have positive economic benefit. Therefore, it is important for our students to be exposed to different cultures and values as different viewpoints expand the horizons of students and better prepare them for the corporate world.
