Florian Hoos
Florian Hoos

Professor of Sustainability and ESG accounting

Florian Hoos is a Professor of Sustainability and ESG accounting at IMD. He is an award-winning teacher, innovator, and writer who was selected by Poets&Quants as one of “The World’s Top 40 Business School Professors Under 40” in 2014. Before joining IMD, he served 10 years as faculty member at HEC Paris, where he directed the Master’s in Sustainability and Social Innovation program, and was a visiting assistant professor at MIT Sloan School. He also accumulated 10 years’ experience in leadership positions as managing director and entrepreneur with his own firm.

An accountant by training and impact innovator by experience, his work in academia and practice focuses on the challenges of triple-impact creation: making strong profits through integrating social and ecological aspects into business. The core of his work is helping organizations from startups to multinationals to execute strategies with measurable economic, social, and ecological impact. He has designed and directed customized programs for several large multinationals, helping them to innovate business models, internal processes, and incentive and reporting systems that prepare them for a future where sustainability is at the heart of the business.

Today, a company’s performance is assessed with a much stronger focus on sustainability than a decade ago. Consequently, companies need to measure their social and ecological impacts and explain how they increase profits and drive growth. Making this connection visible and manageable is key to gaining and maintaining competitive advantage.

Besides his academic positions, Hoos was Managing Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship of the Technical University in Berlin, where he managed an accelerator and makerspace and advised deep-tech and tech-for-impact startups with his team of 20+ people. He has advised a wide range of companies from startups to multinationals on their ESG strategy, sustainable innovation, and business model development. As a certified radical collaboration trainer, he currently helps executives navigate the triple-impact transformation to guarantee a successful implementation of sustainable company structures such as triple-impact reporting and incentive systems.

His work has been published in leading scientific journals including the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of Business Ethics, Management Accounting Research, and Accounting and Business Research. He is also a member of the editorial review board of Academy of Management Learning & Education and won one of the journal’s 2020 best reviewer awards for his academic services. Hoos was a pioneer of online education with courses on the coursera.com platform including his course Social Entrepreneurship and Changemaking for the first fully online master’s program at HEC Paris. Besides multiple awards for his teaching in executive programs and pedagogical innovations, he won the Best Professor Award of HEC Paris (Prix Vernimmen) in 2014.

Selected publications
Article
Showing off or showing impact?: The joint signalling effect of reputation and accountability on social entrepreneurs’ crowdfunding success
In the early stages of their ventures, social entrepreneurs often struggle to attract financing in traditional financial markets and therefore use new markets, such as crowdfunding platforms. Based...
Published 1 March 2022
Article
Impact measurement based on repeated randomized control trials: The case of a training program to encourage social entrepreneurship
Designing effective entrepreneurship training programs is still a challenge despite the investments in training made by governments and private institutions, and its importance for economic growth....
Published 1 June 2021
Article
Who’s watching?: Accountability in different audit regimes and the effects on auditors’ professional skepticism
The European Commission has suggested that the use of joint audits should lead to improved auditor skepticism and—by extension—audit quality, through increased accountability. However, archival res...
Published 23 June 2019
Article
Why are auditors blamed when something goes wrong?: Experimental evidence
Audit firms claim that they are used as the whipping boy when something goes wrong, either because of the public's poor knowledge of the auditing function or because financial incentives exist to b...
Published 1 November 2018
Article
The relationship between lack of controllability and proactive work behaviour: An empirical analysis of competing theoretical explanations
The controllability principle suggests evaluating managers solely based on performance measures they can control. In practice, however, companies often disregard this principle. Therefore, our stud...
Published 2 January 2017
Academic publications
Article
Who’s watching?: Accountability in different audit regimes and the effects on auditors’ professional skepticism
The European Commission has suggested that the use of joint audits should lead to improved auditor skepticism and—by extension—audit quality, through increased accountability. However, archival res...
Published 23 June 2019
Article
Showing off or showing impact?: The joint signalling effect of reputation and accountability on social entrepreneurs’ crowdfunding success
In the early stages of their ventures, social entrepreneurs often struggle to attract financing in traditional financial markets and therefore use new markets, such as crowdfunding platforms. Based...
Published 1 March 2022
Article
Effective, but not all the time: Experimental evidence on the effectiveness of a code of ethics' design
Relations between society and business are increasingly characterized by the societal demand for compliance with ethical standards. Companies are held responsible for behavior of their employees, w...
Published 15 June 2021
Article
An experimental investigation of the interaction effect of management training ground and reporting lines on internal auditors’ objectivity
Seventy-nine experienced internal auditors participated in an experiment investigating two factors that may affect internal auditors’ objectivity: (1) whether the internal audit function is used as...
Published 1 July 2018
Article
The importance of the Chief Audit Executive's communication: Experimental evidence on internal auditors' judgments in a 'two masters setting'
The position of an internal audit function (IAF) as a 'servant of two masters' (i.e., management and the audit committee) may lead to a conflict of priorities. In this setting, the tone at the top ...
Published 1 November 2015
Article
Why are auditors blamed when something goes wrong?: Experimental evidence
Audit firms claim that they are used as the whipping boy when something goes wrong, either because of the public's poor knowledge of the auditing function or because financial incentives exist to b...
Published 1 November 2018
Article
Impact measurement based on repeated randomized control trials: The case of a training program to encourage social entrepreneurship
Designing effective entrepreneurship training programs is still a challenge despite the investments in training made by governments and private institutions, and its importance for economic growth....
Published 1 June 2021
Article
Is accountability a double-edged sword?: Experimental evidence on the effectiveness of internal controls to prevent fraud
Recent legislations oblige organizations to monitor the effectiveness of internal control mechanisms that are necessary to prevent fraud. However, little is known about the effectiveness of differe...
Published 27 October 2012
Article
Internal audit effectiveness: Multiple case study research involving chief audit executives and senior management
The focus of this study is the relationship between chief audit executives (CAEs) and senior management (SM) and its relationship with internal audit (IA) effectiveness. The study reveals differenc...
Published 1 February 2017
Article
The relationship between lack of controllability and proactive work behaviour: An empirical analysis of competing theoretical explanations
The controllability principle suggests evaluating managers solely based on performance measures they can control. In practice, however, companies often disregard this principle. Therefore, our stud...
Published 2 January 2017
Article
Are we lost in translation?: The impact of using translated IFRS on decision-making
International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are issued in English and subsequently translated into a multitude of languages to make them accessible to non-English-speaking IFRS users. In an ...
Published 1 December 2015
Article
To be or not to be in the sample?: On using manipulation checks in experimental accounting research
Purpose: Manipulation checks are a recommended for experimental accounting research. Usage of information gained by manipulation checks varies. In some studies, participants who failed the manipula...
Published 1 June 2020
Article
The future role of internal audit function: Assure. Build. Consult
Chambers (2022) recently raised “a red flag” by pointing out that internal auditors have been unduly placing Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) risks on the back burner. Internal auditors ...
Published 18 January 2023
Insight for Executives
Report
CSR after Corona: An opportunity to gain competitive advantages or a cost to avoid?
“To prosper over time, every company must not only de- liver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society” wrote Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, in his letter...
Published 20 December 2020