Wei Cai

Wei Cai joined Columbia University in 2020. Her research interests revolve around management accounting and organizational culture. Her work broadly investigates how to measure and manage key dimensions of organizational capital, including organizational culture, leadership, managerial practices, and the systems that facilitate effective communication, coordination, and decision-making. For example, she examines how corporate leaders and managers can deliberately design and shape organizational culture, and improve organizational outcomes through innovative management control systems. She uses multiple research methods, including statistical analyses of large-scale archival data, field experiments, surveys, and novel computational approaches such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. She closely collaborates with practitioners and collects unique data that can provide important managerial implications for the design of management control systems in shaping desirable organizational outcomes.

Professor Cai's research has appeared in leading journals across accounting and management, including Journal of Accounting Research, The Accounting Review, Management Science, Review of Accounting Studies, Contemporary Accounting Research, and Strategic Management Journal. Her work has been recognized with multiple awards including the Best Dissertation Award, the Innovation in Research Award, the Best Early Career Researcher Award in Management Accounting from the American Accounting Association, and the Best Emerging Scholar Award from the Institute of Management Accountants. Her research has also been frequently featured in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and other major outlets. Professor Cai delivered a TEDx talk, A Symphony of Inclusion.

Professor Cai is an active contributor to the academic profession. She serves on the editorial boards of The Accounting Review, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Management Accounting Research, and Accounting Horizons and regularly reviews for top journals across disciplines. Additionally, she has served on several conference and award committees.

Professor Cai received a Doctor of Business Administration (Accounting and Management) from Harvard Business School. Prior to earning her DBA, she worked as a senior financial advisor at Ernst & Young in New York.

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TEDx Talk