Professor Farley started with VU at the beginning of 2009 and brought with him a diverse educational background with qualifications and expertise that covers Economics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Management Science and Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in addition to Accounting and Finance. He has held appointments at Monash, Deakin and Victoria Universities in positions that include PVC (Planning and Finance), Chief Finance Officer, Executive Dean, Principal Advisor to the Vice-Chancellor and Executive Deans (Business Planning), Assistant Provost, Head of Department/School, Director of Teaching and Learning and Associate Dean Education.
He was an Australian Universities Quality Agency auditor, and has served as both Vice-President and President of the Australian Council for Distance, Online and eLearning. He has also acted as an assessor for the Australian Learning and Teaching Council National Teaching Citations.
In Accounting and Finance Alan's experience is in both teaching and practice. He has taught mainly Management Accounting and Accounting Information Systems but he has also taught Finance, Financial Accounting and Auditing. His practical experience is mainly in budgeting and financial analysis, especially within the university sector. An example of this is his heavy involvement in the Base Funding Review for Higher Education, including his chairing of the Universities Australia working party that facilitated the analysis contained in university responses to the Review.
He has an active research record with publications in A* and A journals and has been part of over $1M worth of successful bids for competitive funding. He has been published in fields as diverse as Accounting, Finance, Management Science, and Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.
His extensive experience as a consultant led to him being selected as one of seven finalists in a worldwide competition to recognise the world's best application of Management Science in 1990. He was also invited to be a member of the Blackboard Client Strategy Council, a select international group advising the world's largest supplier of Learning Management Systems.
His recent PhD supervisions have included the following topics:
- Developing and Testing a Model of Successful Adoption of Activity Based Costing
- Impact of Government Funding Reforms on the Strategic Planning of Malaysian Public Universities
- Changing Institutional Environment, Chinese Company Characteristics, and Climate Change Reporting
- Corporate Environmental Disclosure in Malaysia
- Exploring the Relationship Between Changes in Australian Accounting Policies and Valuation of Australian Banking Firms
- Capturing the Best and Brightest: Examining the Career Intentions of Accounting and non-Accounting Students
- The Impact of Corporate Governance Regulations on Social Responsibility Disclosure in Saudi Arabia
- The Impact of New Saudi Company Regulations on Financial Reporting Quality Through Factors That Influence Audit Quality.
Recent publications
Yang, H., Clark, C., Wu, Changyu., and Farley A. Insights from Accounting Practitioners on China’s Convergence with IFRS, CPA funded project, Australian Accounting Review, doi:10.1111/auar.12182, 2017
Yang, H. and Farley, A. Convergence or divergence? Corporate climate-change reporting in China, International Journal of Accounting and Information Management, vol. 24 no. 4, pp 391-414, 2016.
Yang, H, Craig, R and Farley, A. A Review of Chinese and English Language Studies on Corporate Environmental Reporting in China, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, vol. 28, pp 30-48, 2015
Ahmad, AR, Farley, A, Ng Kim Soon, Impact of the Government Funding Reforms on the Research and Development at Malaysian Public Universities, Asian Social Science, Vol. 10, no. 14, pp. 13-22, 2014
Ahmad, AR, Farley, A, Ng Kim Soon. Funding Reforms in Malaysian Public Universities: Transitions towards Competitive Funding. Australian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences, 7(10), pp 553-561, 2013
Jain, A and Farley, A, Mobile Phone-Based Audience Response System and Student Engagement in Large-Group Teaching, Economic Papers, vol. 31 no. 4, pp. 428-439, 2012
Ahmad, AR, Farley, A and Naidoo, M, The study of government–university relationship in Malaysian higher education system. International Education Studies, vol. 5, no. 5., pp. 25-34, 2012
Jain, A., Thomson, D., Farley, A., and Mulready, P., Engagement and learning through social software in finance: A retrospective on the Trading Room experience, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, vol. 37, no. 6, pp. 701-718 2012
Farley,A.A., Jain, A., Thomson, D., Blended Learning in Finance: Comparing Student Perceptions of Lectures, Tutorials and Online Learning Environments across different year levels , Economic Papers, vol. 30, no. 1, 2011, pp. 1-10
Halabi, A.K, Tuovinen, J.E. and Farley, A.A, Empirical Evidence on the Relative Efficiency of Worked Examples Versus Problem-Solving Exercises in Accounting Principles Instruction, Issues in Accounting Education , 20-1, 2005, 21-32.
