Dr Ozlem Arikan
PhD
Management School
Lecturer in Accounting and Financial Management
Professional Association Accreditation Review Lead for the Accounting and Financial Management Programmes
Co-Director, Behavioural Research Alliance for Impact and Networks at Sheffield (BRAINS)
Full contact details
Management School
B050
Sheffield University Management School
Conduit Road
Sheffield
S10 1FL
- Profile
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Ozlem's research interests broadly entail the judgement and decision-making of stakeholders in corporate reporting and accountability settings. She sits on the Editorial Board of Accounting and Business Research (ABR) and is one of the few European experts in experimental methodologies on corporate reporting. Between February 2023 and September 2025, Ozlem was the Level 2 Undergraduate Programme Director for the Accounting and Financial Management Programme at the University of Sheffield, and between 2019 and 2022 she was the director of an MSc programme in accounting and finance at Aston University. Since September 2025, she has been the academic coordinator for professional accreditations of the accounting and financial management programmes at the University of Sheffield. In 2025, she was awarded the University of Sheffield's Recognition Award in recognition of her contributions to curriculum development.
As a passionate educator, she received the CGMA 2025 Global Gold Award, organised by the professional accounting bodies AICPA and CIMA, for her accounting innovation project, 'Educating Accounting Students on the Connection Between Climate and Financial Reports'. She also received the University of Sheffield's Recognition Award in 2024 for her contributions to teaching and personal tutoring, and was nominated by her students for various teaching awards in 2024 and 2025. She has also received teaching awards from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Warwick and Aston University.
- Qualifications
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PhD - University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Senior Fellow of Higher Education Academy
- Research interests
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Environmental and social responsibility
Most stakeholders focus on profitability, a short-term indicator, which is bringing the world to an end. Are there better ways to measure performance? What works and what doesn't when companies focus on environmental and social responsibility, and why? How can we encourage organisations to engage more with environmental and social responsibility?
Accountability
Although accounting systems are used to facilitate accountability within organisations, they often have unintended consequences for organisations and individuals. What can we do to prevent such consequences?
Judgement and decision-making
Language is a flexible communication tool, and managers exploit this flexibility strategically to promote their desired agenda and conceal what they wish to hide. Ozlem’s research finds that, when reading management reports, stakeholders often reach different judgements on the same information when it is conveyed using slightly different wording. Nevertheless, this does not mean that managers always achieve their desired outcomes through their strategic use of language. The implications of these strategies are often counter-intuitive.
- Publications
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Journal articles
- Benefit corporation certification and financial performance: Capital structure matters. European Financial Management.
- The interaction of hierarchical and socializing accountability and the emergence of intelligent accountability in a classroom – a critical analysis. Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 36(7/8), 1763-1789. View this article in WRRO
- The effect of boilerplate language on nonprofessional investors’ judgments. Accounting and Business Research, 52(4), 417-442.
- Primacy in stock market participation: the effect of initial returns on market re-entry decisions. The European Journal of Finance, 25(10), 883-909.
- Financial estimates against investors’ preferences: anchoring, denial and spillover effects. Accounting and Business Research, 48(3), 299-320.
- Signposts or Weathervanes? The Curious Case of Corporate Social Responsibility and Conflict Minerals. Journal of Business Ethics, 146(3), 469-484.
- Experimental Research in Accounting, 1-4.
Book chapters
- An Emerging Economy's Engagement with the International Financial Reporting Standards and the IFRS Foundation, Accountability Research (pp. 145-162). Routledge
- Playful learning in accounting education, Games, Simulations and Playful Learning in Business Education Edward Elgar Publishing
Preprints
- Benefit corporation certification and financial performance: Capital structure matters. European Financial Management.
- Grants
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Danish (National) Free Research Foundation via Copenhagen Business School: The promissory economy of a linear future (with Adam Leaver, Principal Investigator - University of Sheffield)
Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures (Principal Investigator-Ozlem Arikan): An Emerging Economy’s Struggles with the Application of International Sustainability Reporting Standards. Project members: Ataur Belal (University of Birmingham, UK), Sevim Budak (Istanbul University, Turkiye), Ivo de Loo (Nyenrode Business University, the Netherlands)
Management Control Association (Principal Investigator-Ozlem Arikan): Management Control in the IFRS Foundation-A view from a Distance. Project members: Carolyn Cordery (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand), Ivo De Loo (Nyenrode Business University, the Netherlands), Melina Manochin (University of Birmingham, UK)
- Teaching interests
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Ozlem has taught in undergraduate, postgraduate, doctoral and executive levels and is a passionate educator. A focus on the 'big picture' underpins her teaching activities as the vast amount of details in financial reporting rules can prevent students to miss the main purpose of these rules when that focus is absent. She aims to make learning as enjoyable and as engaging as possible, and she uses playful learning tools to reach that aim. She is the author of the 2021 book chapter 'Playful Learning in Accounting Education'.
Her teaching practice has been recognised with awards and recognitions from the University of Sheffield, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Warwick, and Aston University. In addition to teaching financial reporting, financial analysis, and financial management, Ozlem engages in teaching survey, experimental and quasi experimental research designs to postgraduate and PhD students.
- Teaching activities
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- MGT143 - Foundations in Financial Management
- MGT225 - Intermediate Financial Accounting
- Experimental Methods in The Social Sciences (PGR Training)
- Professional activities and memberships
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Independent Co-opted Member of the Audit and Standards Committee: Sheffield City Council;
Editorial Board Member: Accounting and Business Research; Reviewer: Accounting, Auditing and Accountability, Accounting and Business Research, British Accounting Review, Eurasian Business Review, Journal of Business Ethics, International Review of Financial Analysis, Organization, Qualitative Research in Finance.
- PhD Supervision
Dr Arikan welcomes PhD candidates with qualitative or survey-based research projects in environmental and social sustainability, as well as in education for sustainability. Additionally, she is interested in experimental projects that investigate judgment and decision-making in accounting and finance.
Are you interested in applying for a PhD?
Current PhD Students
Eva Andriani-Integrating ESG Activities in Financial Literacy Education for Street Vendors: A Participatory Research Approach to Support the SDGs.Salma Baabbad: Integrating GenAI Technologies in Sustainability Education in Accounting.