Financial Management Accounting (FMA)

Director Honours Accounting Programme

Prior to joining University of Strathclyde Ian lectured at Heriot-Watt and Napier Universities in Edinburgh.
He is a Chartered Management Accountant with considerable public sector accounting experience at senior management level with the National Health Service and BBC Scotland.

His teaching includes Management Decision Making and Control, Advanced Management Accounting, Planning and Control Systems, Accounting and Sustainability.

Since 2004 attached faculty to Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research, University of St Andrews. In July 2004 invited by Landcare Research (New Zealand) to review aspects of their research programme and to develop research projects.
Convenor of CSEAR Education Committee 2006.

Consultancy, or policy advice given to business, professional bodies, government or regulatory bodies, not-for-profit organisations and other users of research.

Presenter at seminar to the Scottish Executives Sustainable Development Strategy Team on Designing Sustainable Development Indicators in June 2005.

Engaged as a consultant by WWF Scotland to prepare a report on the Spending Review 2003-2006 and its contribution to Sustainable Development (Reality Check 3). This report was tabled and discussed at the Cabinet Subcommittee on Sustainable Development and a summary requested for consideration by the First Ministers Office.

Plenary/keynote addresses at major conferences

Plenary speaker at ACCA/British Accounting Association  Corporate Governance Special Issue Group  London, July 2005.
Speaker at ESRC Transdisciplinary Seminar on Law Probability and Risk:  Environmental Policy and Regulation, International Centre for Mathematics, University of Edinburgh June 2005
Invited Speaker on The Impact of the Scottish Parliament 2 Years On, Centre for Scottish Public Policy Research and Royal Society Edinburgh July 2002
Invited speaker on Learning Technology Support Network seminar on Engaging Students With Their Learning, Univeristy of Ulster June 2005
Plenary speaker, Irish Accounting and Finance Association Special Conference on Social and Environmental Reporting, November 2005.

Research Interests

•        Contemporary accounting theory and practice and its role in social and environmental decision and policy making
•        The history of social and environmental accounting
•        Accounting pedagogy
•        Accounting in the 'risk society'

Selected Research Publications

•        Georgakopoulos, G. and Thomson, I. (forthcoming) "Social Reporting, Engagements, Controversies and conflict in Scottish Salmon Farming", Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal.
•        Solomon, J. and Thomson, I. (forthcoming) "Satanic Mills: An Illustration of Victorian External Environmental Accounting?" Accounting Forum.
•        Thomson, I. (2007) "Accounting and Sustainability: Mapping the Terrain", chapter 1 in Bebbington, O'Dwyer and Unerman, Accounting and Sustainability, Routledge, London .
•        Bebbington, J., Brown, J., Frame, B., and Thomson, I. (2007) "Theorizing engagement: the potential of a critical dialogic approach", Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal.
•        Bebbington, J. and Thomson, I. (2007) "Social and environmental accounting, auditing and reporting: a potential source of organizational risk governance?" Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, Vol. 25(1), pp. 38 - 55.
•        Thomson, I. And Coulson, A. (2006). "Accounting and Sustainability; Encouraging a dialogical approach; integrating learning activities, delivery mechanisms and assessment strategies", Accounting Education: An International Journal, Vol 15(3), pp.261-273.
•        Thomson, I. and Bebbington, J. (2005), "Corporate Social Reporting: A Pedagogic Evaluation", Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 16(5), pp.507-533.