Robert J. Swieringa

Biography

Robert Swieringa is Anne and Elmer Lindseth Dean Emeritus and professor emeritus of accounting at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management. He earned a BA in economics from Augustana College, an MBA in accounting and economics from the University of Denver, and a PhD in accounting and complex organizations from the University of Illinois. Swieringa's teaching interests are in the areas of corporate financial reporting, corporate governance, and the use of accounting information for decision making and performance evaluation.

Swieringa was a member of the accounting faculty at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and at Johnson before serving as a member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), the key policy-making organization for accounting issues in the United States, from 1986-1996. Swieringa gained wide visibility and influence in the corporate community through his work with the group. He was a professor in the practice of accounting at the Yale School of Management before returning to Johnson in 1997 as the Anne and Elmer Lindseth Dean from 1997-2007 and professor of accounting from 1997-2015. Swieringa was a visiting scholar at Harvard Business School in fall 2007.

An outstanding teacher and lecturer, Swieringa won the Justice Foundation Award for Outstanding Teaching at Cornell and has received numerous awards and honors in recognition of his scholarly and professional work. His research interests are in corporate financial reporting, corporate governance, and behavioral accounting.

Swieringa is a past chair of the board of directors of the Graduate Management Admission Council which provides the GMAT, the most widely used assessment test in graduate business studies. He is a member of the American Accounting Association and is a past president of its Financial Accounting and Reporting Section. He was a member of the board of trustees of Augustana College and the Board of Directors of General Electric. He is a member of the board of managers of the Partners Group Private Equity Fund.

Selected Publications

• Swieringa, Robert J. "Robert T. Sprouse and Fundamental Concepts of Financial Accounting"Accounting Horizons. 25.1 (2011): 207-220

Academic Degrees

• PhD University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1969
• MBA University of Denver, 1965
• BA Augustana College, 1964