Ouachita Stories

Ouachita Baptist University Professor Emeritus Robert L. Webster received the American Accounting Association’s 2016 KPMG Best Paper Award from the Gender Issues & Work-Life Balance (GIWB) Section of the AAA.

The AAA, an organization of more than 7,000 members, honored Webster with a plaque and a $1,000 cash prize for his research at the annual meeting in New York City earlier this month. KPMG, one of the largest public accounting firms in the world, sponsors the award each year.

“Any national award is wonderful to get whether it’s for teaching, research or service. Dr. Webster has set the standard for the research we do here,” said Bryan McKinney, dean of OBU’s Hickingbotham School of Business. “Something like this award is really validating because it shows the impact of his research.”

A KPMG Best Paper Award is given to the outstanding paper presented within each section at the AAA annual conference. Webster and his coauthor, Kevin Hammond of the University of Tennessee at Martin, wrote a paper titled, “The Role of Gender in Judging the Consequences of Market Orientation toward Students: A Study of Accounting Department Leaders.”

“In accounting, the AAA is the premier association for academics, so to be recognized by our peers for a ‘best paper’ within the section was gratifying,” Webster said. “It was an honor for me and my coauthor, Professor Hammond, a friend of mine since we went to doctoral school together in the early 1990s.”

“Dr. Webster’s paper was identified as most deserving due to its high quality of research methodology and its focus on relevant mainstream issues,” said Dr. Murphy Smith, the GIWB Section annual meeting coordinator. “With paper submissions from all around the world, being selected for this award is a momentous honor and extraordinary achievement. We are very pleased that this special recognition goes to a quintessential scholar like Dr. Webster.”

Webster has published more than 25 journal articles and has partnered with coauthor Hammond since the 1990s. Throughout his 23 years at Ouachita, Webster served as a department chair for accounting and continues to contribute to the department through teaching.

“The department of accounting grew dramatically under the 20 or so years that he served as chair, so that speaks volumes about the impact that he’s had at Ouachita,” McKinney said. “At the end of the day, Ouachita is always wanting its faculty members to be engaged in teaching, research and service, and he does great at all of them.”

For more information about this award or Ouachita’s Hickingbotham School of Business, contact Bryan McKinney at [email protected] or (870) 245-5513.

 

By Haley Martin