Gerhard Speckbacher receives the award for his internationally visible, basic and application-oriented contributions to strategic control systems and controlling.
The prize-winner earned his Doctorate in 1992 from the University of Ulm and he completed his habilitation there in 1997 in Business Administration and Economics with the topic of Stakeholder-oriented Corporate Management. In 1996, shortly before his habilitation, he accepted a Professorship in Business Administration, with an emphasis in Accounting, at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University in Greifswald. In 1999 he was then appointed to a Professorship in Business Administration and Management Accounting at the Catholic University of Eichstätt/Ingolstadt and in 2000 he took over the Professorship for Corporate Management and headed the Institute of the same name at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. Since 2003 he has also been Head of the Department for Strategy and Innovation at the Vienna University of Economics and Business.
Gerhard Speckbacher is one of the leading international researchers on the role of controlling in steering creativity and innovation processes in companies. He has published on this core topic as well as on questions of performance management and strategy implementation in leading international journals such as: The Accounting Review, Strategic Management Journal and Accounting Organizations and Society. With almost 1,000 Google Scholar citations, his work on the use of the Balanced Scorecard as a management tool in listed companies in Austria, Switzerland and Germany is one of the internationally most-cited scientific works in the field of Management Accounting.
Gerhard Speckbacher has been organizing the annual ERMAC conference at the Vienna University of Economics and Business since 2011, which aims to promote young controlling researchers and to network with leading international scientists in the field of controlling. As part of the ERMAC conference, the "Thought Bridge" takes place every year, during which top managers from German-speaking countries discuss current practical topics of corporate management with leading international scientists and young scientists in the field of controlling.
Gerhard Speckbacher's teaching has received several teaching awards. Among other things, he was nominated in 2014 for the Austrian State Prize for university teaching as the best teacher in the category economics/law and after being nominated again in 2016, he was finally awarded the Austrian State Prize for university teaching.
The ACA Prize in Financial Governance will be awarded for the fourth time in 2020 in recognition of outstanding academic achievements in the fields of accounting, controlling, corporate finance and auditing. The Institute of Accounting, Control and Auditing at the University of St.Gallen (ACA-HSG) thus contributes to highlighting important research results and their practical implementation in the field of financial management. The award is one of the most valuable awards in the German-speaking world and underscores the claim of the ACA-HSG to provide and recognize outstanding achievements in the area of financial management.
The award ceremony took place online in August 2020.