Biographical notes
Leader of the project
Piotr Kozak, PhD
A graduate of the Faculty of Economic Sciences and Management at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. After graduation, he worked in banking and insurance. Currently, he works as an assistant professor at the Department of Management Accounting of the Faculty of Economic Sciences and Management, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. Lecturer in subjects related to controlling, cost accounting and financial analysis. He supervises postgraduate studies in controlling. Founder and supervisor of the Controller’s Club and also the Science Association of Accounting. Member of the Scientific Council Committee at the Accountants Association in Poland. Member of the International Association of Controllers, the IBCS Association and the Accountants Association in Poland. In 2018 leader of the team awarded in the Bank Handlowy S.A. Warsaw Citibank Europe plc and Absolvent.PL competition for a project in the field of robotization of back office processes. Leader of an international team implementing a research grant in the field of Robotic Process Automation. Leader of the ICV Young Controllers Barcamp working group and member of the ICV Future of Controlling initiative. In 2021 a member of an IBCS Association team, developing the new 1.2 version of the International Business Communictions Standards. In the period 2003-2007 he was member of the Board of Directors of the Accountants Association in Poland and the President of the Board of the Accountants Association in Poland, District Branch in Toruń. An author of over 70 publications in the field of controlling, cost accounting and financial accounting.
Members of the team (in alphabetical order)
Ewa Chojnacka-Pelowska, PhD
She works as an assistant professor at the Department of Financial Accounting, Faculty of Economic Sciences and Management, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. Her research topics cover capital structure determinants, financial statements (financial statements analysis, financial statements as a source of information), nonfinancial information reporting and robotic process automation. She is an author of nearly 40 publications. Lecturer in the following areas: Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Analysis, Non-Profit Organizations Accounting. She is a member of the Accountants Association in Poland and a member of the Editorial Team of Copernican Journal of Finance & Accounting.
Rui Costa Robalo, PhD
He holds a PhD in Business Sciences from the Faculty of Economics at University of Porto (Portugal). He is associate professor at the School of Management and Technology of the Polytechnic Institute of Santarém (Portugal). His teaching has included a variety of accounting subjects, namely management accounting, management control, financial accounting, nonfinancial reporting, and research methods in accounting and finance. He has supervised several internships of graduate and masters students. He has also supervised masters students research, which covered several topics. He has published research in national and international accounting journals and books. His current research focuses on trends and developments in the accounting profession, mainly related to the role of accountants in the digitalization processes of accounting tasks and in nonfiancial reporting practices.
Prof. Dr. Mike Schulze
He is Vice Dean and Professor of Controlling, Accounting and Financial Management at CBS International Business School in Mainz, Germany. Furthermore, he is Senior Research Fellow at EBS Universität für Wirtschaft und Recht in Oestrich-Winkel, Germany as well as Lecturer in Executive Education at Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. Until January 2020, he also acted as the editor-in-chief of the newly established professional journal “REthinking Finance”, published by Handelsblatt Fachmedien, which focuses on the technological and organizational change of the Finance function in companies and supports specialists and managers in Finance departments in actively shaping the digital transformation in their companies. His current research and consulting activities focus on trends and developments in the CFO area, the digitalization of Controlling and corporate sustainability performance management.. Prof. Schulze possesses considerable experience in practice-oriented research and as author of numerous scientific (Journal of Industrial Ecology, Journal of Cleaner Production and Journal of Strategy and Management) and practice-oriented publications in the field of management accounting. Most recently, together with a co-author, he also published a study report on “Robotic Process Automation in Controlling”. This empirical study was funded by the International Group of Controlling (IGC). He was formerly employed as Finance Analyst at the Ford Motor Company in Cologne, Germany and served as an officer in the German Federal Armed Forces.
Tomasz M. Zieliński, PhD
Doctor of Philosophy – in the area of finance with a specialization in controlling and accounting. He is the author of the RPCA concept (Resource and Process Consumption Accounting), which is currently implemented in large Polish capital groups and enterprises in the manufacturing, commercial, financial and service sectors. His RPCA concept has also been included in teaching programs at the Polish schools of economics, such as the Poznan University of Economics and Business, Warsaw School of Economics, University of Lodz, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. He is the author and co-author of books and articles on the RPCA concept, controlling and particularly cost accounting. Since 2019 he has been Director of Controlling at VOX Capital Group. Since 2018 he has been Managing Director of ICV Poland (Delegate for Poland). Since 2006 – he has been Chairman of the Board and lecturer at Akademia Controllingu. From 2004 until 2018 he was Chairman of the Board at BI company – ABC Akademia. For more than 15 years he has worked as lecturer in a number of post graduate courses, in the areas of the RPCA concept, process management, logistics costing and green controlling at the following universities: Poznan University of Economics and Business, Warsaw School of Economics, University of Lodz, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. He has a master’s degree in Logistics.
Prof. Dr. Malgorzata Zmuda
Graduated from the Kraków University of Economics, where she wrote her PhD on the topic of macrocompetitiveness. Since 2016 she has held a professorship in International Strategic Management at the CBS International Business School, supervising students specializing in Consulting at the Bachelor and Master levels. Parallel to her academic path she has been involved in the field of management consulting, where she has been supporting a variety of public and private entities (e.g. the economic departments of the Polish Embassy; German SMEs, where she developed expansion strategies into Central and Eastern Europe; leading European private equity houses, where she coordinated due diligence projects, German companies from the DAX 30 list, where she managed projects related to the digitalization challenges and digital transformation). Her research interests are focused on the topics of economic vulnerability in the context of globalization and hypercompetition, as well as international competitiveness and its sources on the micro, mezzo and macro levels. In her PhD written at the Kraków University of Economics, she examined the impact of foreign direct investment on long term competitiveness of a small open economy. She has been actively internationalizing her research activities, regularly attending international conferences (e.g. European Trade Study Group, International Atlantic Economic Society, Academy of International Business) and publishing in international journals (Journal of Comparative Studies on Central and Eastern Europe, Journal of Management and Business Administration. Central Europe, Journal of International Entrepreneurship). In summer 2010 and summer 2016 she was Visiting Fellow at the Duquesne University School of Business, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Since 2016, in collaboration with the Warsaw School of Economics and the Kraków University of Economics she has been working on a project funded by the Polish National Science Center research grant, entitled “Changes in competitiveness and the intensity of international economic cooperation of the new EU Member States in the years 2000-2014”.