In recognition of her research contributions on talent management in the auditing profession, Assistant Professor Ting Dong has been named the recipient of the 2025 SSE Corporate Partners' Research Award. The prestigious award, which includes a grant of 100,000 SEK, was presented by SSE President Lars Strannegård.

SSE met with Ting for a short interview on the award and what motivates her.

How did you find out you’d received the award, and how did it feel?

I was notified by email, it's absolutely fantastic news, I was super excited. I immediately shared the news with my closest colleagues and family—it was a truly joyous moment. It feels great to have our work recognized.

Why do you think you were selected as the recipient of the Corporate Partner Research Award 2025? 

I think it is because the work that I have been doing with my coauthors have made meaningful, real-world contributions for companies and society. For example, we have addressed challenges faced by the auditing industry, such as talent attraction and retention, ways to improve audit quality, and how to deal with inequality in the profession. Our results provide evidence-based answers that practitioners and policymakers can actually use to make better decisions.

What motivates you/dives your forward?

I guess it's curiosity. There are so many complex things happening in the business world and within organizations that we still don't fully understand, and that really intrigues me. Getting the chance to look closely at these issues, discover new information, and simply figure out how things work is incredibly rewarding. I’m also deeply thankful to our school for providing such a great research environment to pursue the topics I am truly passionate about.

Jury’s motivation

"Ting Dong is an outstanding scholar whose research combines methodological rigor with relevance across academic, professional, and regulatory domains. She has developed a distinctive agenda that engages with institutional and societal dynamics in accounting, auditing, and financial reporting. Her work on interpersonal dynamics in audit settings is valuable for audit firms’ strategic assignment of human resources. It shows that when auditors and client managers – especially CFOs – share similar personality traits, they tend to form stable working relationships, which enhances audit quality, particularly under heightened misreporting risk. Her research on auditors’ personality traits demonstrates that leadership ability improves commercial performance, benefits firm profitability, and influences career development. Ting’s work also provides timely insights into how adverse economic conditions, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, affect auditors’ professional judgment. More specifically, she identifies an asymmetric pattern in auditors’ materiality judgments, raising concerns about whether auditing standards were appropriately applied during the crisis. Her research on passive investors and audit regime shifts shows that passive institutional investors – despite their non-interventionist reputation – can enhance audit quality. In sustainability, she critically examines climate disclosure frameworks, highlighting tensions between symbolic compliance and substantive action. Overall, Ting’s scholarship engages with important questions in accounting and auditing and produces contributions that are academically significant and directly relevant to regulators and practitioners."

About SSE Corporate Partners' Research Award

The Corporate Partners' Research Award was established in 2003 to further enhance research at SSE. The award is given to a promising researcher who is successful in his or her area of research and has contributed to the development of knowledge within their discipline.