Robert Davidson named William S. Gay Senior Faculty Fellow

Robert Davidson, assistant professor of accounting and information systems in the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech, was recently named the William S. Gay Senior Faculty Fellow by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.

The William S. Gay Senior Faculty Fellowship in Accounting and Information Systems was established by alumni and friends of William S. Gay, who was a faculty member in the Department of Accounting from 1929 until his retirement in 1969. Gay was the first head of the Department of Accounting. The fellowship recognizes teaching and research excellence, and recipients retain the fellowship for a three-year period.

A member of the Virginia Tech community since 2017, Davidson has addressed the following topics in his teaching and research: income statement and balance sheet fraud; executives’ legal records and insider trading activities; CEO materialism and corporate social responsibility; executive equity compensation and financial statement fraud; and board composition, CEO attributes, and corporate innovation.

He has published four peer-reviewed articles and made numerous presentations to academic and non-academic groups. His scholarship has been recognized with the Best Paper Award at the George Mason Conference on Corporate Governance. 

Davidson is currently the dissertation advisor for two Ph.D. students. He has served as a referee for several professional journals, including the Journal of Accounting Research, The Accounting Review, and Management Science. 

Before coming to Virginia Tech, Davidson taught at Georgetown University and the University of Texas at Austin.

He received his bachelor’s degree from Wayne State University and an MBA and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Written by Sookhan Ho and Mark Owczarski