Prof. Alexander Brüggen

Prof. Alexander Brüggen is a Professor of Management Accounting in the Department of Accounting & Information Management at Maastricht University, School of Business and Economics. He graduated (2001) and was promoted (2005) at the same institution. The title of his dissertation was: Incentives in Multi-Task Settings. In 2006, his thesis was ranked second by the American Accounting Association for “Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award”. In 2007 he was a guest researcher at Michigan State University, and in 2012 he was Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. His research is published by serveral international journals, such as the Journal of Management Accounting Research, Contemporary Accounting Research, Accounting, Organizations and Society and The Accounting Review. Next to his research, he is involved with multiple projects with different companies, like DSM, Lufthansa Cityline GmbH, Chrysler Corp., Federation des Experts Comptables Européens (FEE), and Authoriteit Financiële Markten (AFM).

THE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE JOB

The interaction between research and teaching is one of the highlights of the job.

”It is good to work with young people and help them to get on their way in their careers.”

This is what motivates him and what continues to make the job so interesting. Maastricht University is an excellent University and Maastricht itself provides a great location.

THE MBA APPROACH

Alexander teaches management accounting in the Corporate Finance & Accounting module of the Maastricht MBA. His teaching approach on this module is more with case studies and discussions. He assumes a certain level of interest from the students so he has found this approach to be effective.

CONNECTING TODAY’S BUSINESS TO CORPORATE FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING

”Accounting, and in particular management accounting is a constant necessity.”

Firms are interested in measuring all kinds of things, for example, their own performance, costs and emissions. All this relates to management accounting as this determines costs, performance evaluation and measures how things are reported internally. All of these aspects matter for the organisations’ bottom-line.

CHANGING STUDENTS’ MINDS

Some students do not initially take to accounting. However, rather than see this as an obstacle, Alexander considers this a challenge. By helping them see the relevance of it after his classes, he sees this as a positive result.

” When students, who initially do not like accounting at all, see at least the relevance of it after my class. This is an achievement I try to accomplish in every class.”

FROM ACCOUNTING TO BEEKEEPING

In his spare time, Alexander enjoys the great outdoors, spending time with his two daughters and attending to his other great passions, gardening and bees. When he is not in the classroom or lecture hall, Alexander can be found in full beekeeper gear at one of the three beehives at the University checking on his other, much smaller, but equally hard-working students, his bees. They keep him busy as the proverbial bee!

Alexander will teach on management accounting in the Corporate Finance & Accounting module. To learn more about his research and teaching activities see www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/a.bruggen.