Inducing structural change in academic accounting research

Researchers have expressed concerns about the stagnation of accounting research over an extended period of time, especially in the U.S. context. The literature provides extensive documentation of the problem and many suggestions for change; nonetheless, little change has ensued. In this paper, we draw on the sociology literature to provide a theoretical basis for a programme of structural change. We suggest that there is little merit in researchers seeking to effect incremental change because the current structures are so deep and those with the power to effect change are well served in maintaining these structures. The lesson from the sociology literature, and an application of this literature to accounting research, is that successful structural change almost certainly requires a significant resource shift. It is this resource shift that allows new schema (the underlying beliefs and assumptions) to emerge. There is evidence that such resource shifts precipitated the development of the current structure that shapes accounting research and it is unlikely that significant structural change can be achieved without a similar resource realignment. We call on accounting researchers to shift their attention away from documenting the problem and towards applying pressure to policy-makers to take action.

[1]  S. Seidman.  THE POLITICAL UNCONSCIOUS OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES , 1996 .

[2]  US doctoral students’ familiarity with accounting journals: insights into the structure of the US academy , 2005 .

[3]  Paul F. Williams,et al.  The Accounting Review and the Production of Accounting Knowledge , 1995 .

[4]  J. Habermas,et al.  Knowledge and Human Interests , 1972 .

[5]  Donald V. Moser,et al.  A Broader Perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility Research in Accounting , 2012 .

[6]  G. V. Wyhe.  A History of U.S. Higher Education in Accounting, Part II: Reforming Accounting within the Academy , 2007 .

[7]  Joel S. Demski,et al.  Is Accounting an Academic Discipline , 2007 .

[8]  A. Giddens.  New rules of sociological method : a positive critique of interpretative sociologies , 1980 .

[9]  F. Pierson,et al.  The education of American businessmen : a study of university-college programs in business administration , 1959 .

[10]  A. Giddens,et al.  New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretative Sociologies. , 1977 .

[11]  Paul F. Williams,et al.  The winnowing away of behavioral accounting research in the US: The process for anointing academic elites , 2006 .

[12]  Jesse Dillard,et al.  The making and remaking of organization context , 2004 .

[13]  W. Sewell.  A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation , 1989, American Journal of Sociology.

[14]  R. Ball,et al.  An empirical evaluation of accounting income numbers , 1968 .

[15]  S. Ghoshal.  Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices , 2005 .

[16]  Jesse Dillard,et al.  Beyond Competition: Institutional Isomorphism in U.S. Accounting Research , 2007 .

[17]  Philip Mirowski,et al.  4. The Rise of the Chicago School of Economics and the Birth of Neoliberalism , 2009 .

[18]  Ross L. Watts,et al.  Positive Accounting Theory , 2006 .

[19]  Wim A. Van der Stede,et al.  The most influential journals in academic accounting , 2006 .

[20]  A. Hopwood,et al.  Changing Pressures on the Research Process: On Trying to Research in an Age when Curiosity is not Enough , 2008 .

[21]  S. Zeff,et al.  2 Decades Of The Journal-Of-Accounting-Research , 1984 .

[22]  P. J. Arnold.  Global financial crisis: The challenge to accounting research , 2009 .

[23]  Robert Aaron Gordon,et al.  Higher Education for Business , 1959 .

[24]  A. Lowe,et al.  Evidence and Implications of Multiple Paradigms in Accounting Knowledge Production , 2008 .

[25]  Wendy Nelson Espeland,et al.  The Discipline of Rankings: Tight Coupling and Organizational Change , 2009 .

[26]  A. Hopwood,et al.  Whither Accounting Research , 2007 .

[27]  Gregory A. Jonas,et al.  The hand that rocks the cradle: Disciplinary socialization at the American Accounting Association's Doctoral Consortium , 2010 .

[28]  Paul F. Williams,et al.  Making imaginary worlds real : the case of expensing employee stock options , 2009 .

[29]  Pamela S. Tolbert,et al.  Institutionalization and Structuration: Studying the Links between Action and Institution , 1997 .

[30]  Thomas A. Lee.  Shaping the US Academic Accounting Research Profession: The American Accounting Association and the Social Construction of a Professional Elite , 1995 .

[31]  Luis L. Martins,et al.  A Model of the Effects of Reputational Rankings on Organizational Change , 2005, Organ. Sci..

[32]  Nihel Chabrak.  Money talks: the language of the Rochester School , 2012 .

[33]  Kenneth A. Merchant,et al.  Paradigms in accounting research: A view from North America , 2010 .

[34]  Rihab Khalifa,et al.  The Governance of Accounting Academia: Issues for a Debate , 2008 .

[35]  W. Bennis,et al.  How business schools lost their way. , 2005, Harvard business review.

[36]  Fabrizio Ferraro,et al.  Economics Language and Assumptions: How Theories Can Become Self-Fulfilling , 2003 .

[37]  Thomas A. Lee,et al.  The editorial gatekeepers of the accounting academy , 1997 .

[38]  Richard Whitley,et al.  THE TRANSFORMATION OF BUSINESS FINANCE INTO FINANCIAL ECONOMICS: THE ROLES OF ACADEMIC EXPANSION... , 1986 .

[39]  Thomas A. Lee.  Anatomy of a Professional Élite: The Executive Commitee of the American Accounting Association 1916-1996 , 1999 .

[40]  Paul F. Williams,et al.  The structure and progressivity of accounting research: the crisis in the academy revisited , 2002 .

[41]  K. Lukka,et al.  Is accounting a global or a local discipline? evidence from major research journals , 1996 .

[42]  Yves Gendron,et al.  Constituting the Academic Performer: The Spectre of Superficiality and Stagnation in Academia , 2008 .

[43]  J. Habermas,et al.  Knowledge and Human Interests , 1972 .

[44]  A. Giddens.  Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis , 1979 .

[45]  James Guthrie,et al.  Accounting and management research: passwords from the gatekeepers , 1998 .

[46]  Alan Sangster,et al.  The ERA: A Brave New World of Accountability for Australian University Accounting Schools , 2010 .

[47]  Joanne Locke,et al.  Perceptions of journal quality and research paradigm: results of a web-based survey of British accounting academics , 2005 .

[48]  R. Whitley.  The Intellectual and Social Organization of the Sciences (Second Edition: with new introductory chapter entitled 'Science Transformed? The Changing Nature of Knowledge Production at the End of the Twentieth Century') , 1984 .

[49]  H. Longino.  Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry , 1990 .