Research interests

• Cost accounting (Cost Behavior)
• Earnings Quality
• Tax Aggressiveness 
• Corporate reporting and analysis, governance and auditing

Current research

Dr. Dimitrios Ntounis has a current research focus in the field of accounting and finance, with contributions in the following areas:

1) Cost accounting (Cost Behavior): Dr. Ntounis's research explores factors that influence managerial adjustment decisions and their firm value implications. Specifically, his work investigates how external influences—such as political corruption, competition laws, and environmental factors—affect cost behavior. His recent published work also investigates the predictive ability of asymmetric cost behavior on financial outcomes like bankruptcy, and tax avoidance. These insights can inform both managerial decision-making and regulatory oversight, particularly in relation to financial reporting and corporate governance.

2) Earnings Quality: Dr. Ntounis’s research in earnings quality delves into how managerial decisions related to cost behavior can serve as an early warning signal for a firm's propensity to engage in financial reporting misconduct. His work highlights how cost asymmetry can predict accounting violations and regulatory scrutiny, including investigations by organizations such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). These findings are crucial for external stakeholders, including policymakers and regulatory authorities, to identify potential risks in financial reporting practices.

3) Tax Aggressiveness: Dr. Ntounis explores the intersection of managerial incentives, corporate governance, and tax-related decision-making. His research analyzes how tax-related frictions, including CEO personal tax incentives, influence cost management strategies and decision-making processes within firms. Through his studies, Dr. Ntounis examines the role of tax incentives in shaping managerial behavior, particularly in relation to cost behavior and corporate decision-making, with broader implications for tax aggressiveness and its impact on firm performance.

4) Corporate reporting and analysis, governance and auditing: Dr. Ntounis's recent research focuses on the drivers of CEO compensation. His projects reveal that shareholders, through corporate boards, strategically utilize CEO compensation incentives to respond to external environmental factors. By leveraging opportunities (e.g., American Inventor’s Protection Act) and addressing threats (e.g., Political Corruption), these incentives are designed to encourage managers to exploit opportunities or mitigate potential negative impacts on the corporation.

Dimitrios has extensive experience in teaching Financial and Management accounting modules in higher education institutions in the UK and Greece not only at the undergraduate (UG) but also at the postgraduate (PG) level.

He is currently providing seminars for the following module:

MANG1014: Commerical Law 1 (UG)

Dimitrios joined University of Southampton as Lecturer in Accounting in January 2025. Dimitrios is based in the Department of Accounting. His previous academic appointments were at the University of Kent (Lecturer in Financial Accounting), the Athens University of Economics and Business (Fellow in Accounting), and the Metropolitan College in Greece (Fixed-term Lecturer in Accounting).

Dimitrios holds his Ph.D. and a Postgraduate degree from the Department of Accounting and Finance (Athens University of Economics and Business), and a Bachelor’s degree from the Department of Business Administration (University of Piraeus), respectively. His Ph.D. research was co-financed by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (Greek Funding Institution). During his doctoral studies, he was also awarded the “EAA ARC International Ph.D. Visit Scholarship” to complete a two-month visit at the Tilburg University. Furthermore, he holds the Certified Fraud Examiner qualification.