Michelle Lowry

Education

Ph.D. University of Hong Kong

Specialization

Corporate governance, boards of directors, cybersecurity and IT governance, Hong Kong capital markets

Biography

Dr. Michelle Lowry is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Accounting and Information Systems.

Dr. Lowry's research examines corporate governance, with a focus on how boards of directors monitor management and shape corporate leadership. She studies these questions in Hong Kong and technology-intensive settings, using archival qualitative field methods. A theme across her work is the gap between governance as regulators design it and governance as it operates in practice; for example, how firms comply nominally with board independence rules, and how boards oversee risks that exceed their expertise.

Her work is published in Management Science, European Journal of Information Systems, Accounting Horizons, and the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance. Her Management Science study of board-level cybersecurity oversight, based on interviews with directors and security executives, finds that directors without cybersecurity expertise often believe they are providing substantive oversight when their efforts remain largely symbolic. That work was featured in The Wall Street Journal and informed comment letters she submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York State Department of Financial Services. Her Hong Kong research, supported by two Hong Kong University Grants Council GRF grants, draws on a hand-collected database of board structure and ownership covering all Hong Kong-listed companies. 

Dr. Lowry teaches Intermediate Financial Accounting I (ACIS 3115). Dr. Lowry is a certified public accountant with seven years of regional public accounting firm experience in Arizona and Utah, most recently as a manager in taxation.