BillMcCarthy

William E. McCarthy is a Professor of Accounting and Information Systems at Michigan State University. He received his A.B. in economics from Boston College in 1968 and his Ph.D. in accounting and computer science from the University of Massachusetts in 1978. His homepage is available at http://www.msu.edu/user/mccarth4/    (IK)

Professor McCarthy’s research interests center around the application of knowledge-based systems, object orientation, and database theories to the problems of building information architectures for use between and within business enterprises. His papers have been published in many leading accounting and computer science journals, and he has given invited presentations to a wide variety of academic and business institutions in the USA, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Professor McCarthy’s paper on REA accounting systems was given the first Seminal Contribution to Accounting Information Systems Literature Award at the American Accounting Association meeting in Chicago in 1996. His present research focuses on (1) the development of REA enterprise ontologies, (2) the integration of REA models within XML, and (3) the development of agent-oriented information systems with REA business process patterns.    (IL)

Most recently, he has been especially active in international e-commerce standardization efforts. He was a member of the business process team of the UN-based ebXML project, and he is also active with the UN’s Technologies and Methods Workgroup and the ISO-based Open-edi initiative. He was also active in semantic integration and model-based standards development work with the Open Applications Group (OAG) and the Object Management Group (OMG). For the years 2001-2003, he was the Vice-President of the American Accounting Association (AAA), and every summer he teaches at MSU an AAA-sponsored workshop on REA accounting systems to accounting faculty from all over the world.    (IM)

Professor McCarthy teaches a wide variety of graduate and undergraduate information systems classes at MSU, and he was the recipient of the Department of Accounting’s Roland F. Salmonson Outstanding Teaching Award in 1985, in 1993, and again in 2003. He is also cited in the 1995, 1998, and 2001 versions of the Business Week Guide to the Best Business Schools as one of the outstanding graduate teachers in the Broad College of Business, and in 1999 he was given the outstanding faculty teaching award from the Spartan Business Journal (MBA student newspaper). In 1999, Professor McCarthy was given the Withrow Teacher-Scholar Award, the lifetime teaching award from the Broad College of Business, and in 2003 he was given the American Accounting Association’s Innovation in Accounting Education Award. In February 2000, he was presented with the highest recognition given to professors at Michigan State University: the MSU Distinguished Faculty Award.    (IN)