Chair of Business Administration & Accounting
Prof. Dr. Dirk Simons
Dirk Simons has held the Chair of Business Administration and Accounting at the University of Mannheim’s Business School since 2004. His research focuses on information and incentive-based aspects of corporate reporting, including the theory of corporate disclosure, auditing theory, and tax reporting. He is a Principal Investigator in the Collaborative Research Center/
Dirk Simons received his doctoral degree from Bielefeld University in 2001 and completed his habilitation in 2004. Following an interim professorship at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg (2003/04), he was appointed to the University of Mannheim. He also served as a contract professor at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (2008–2015) and held visiting scholar positions at institutions such as Simon Fraser University in Vancouver (2007), Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (2014), and the University of Alberta in Edmonton (2022). Since 2019, he has been a member of the advisory board for the “Smart Regulation” research initiative at the University of Graz.
Currently, Dirk Simons serves as a member of the Academic Senate at the University of Mannheim and as a reviewer for economics and business studies at the German Research Foundation (DFG). He was Vice President for International Affairs and Infrastructure at the University of Mannheim (2015–2021) and coordinated the European University Alliance Engage.EU (2020–2022). He has represented the Business School in various roles, including as Academic Director of the doctoral program in Business at the Graduate School of Economic and Social Sciences (GESS) from 2008 to 2014. He is a board member of the Schmalenbach Society (since 2018) and a member of the extended executive board of the German Economic Association (Verein für Socialpolitik) since 2024. From 2011 to 2016, he also served as treasurer of the German Academic Association for Business Research (VHB).
