Purpose – The accounting regulation literature has recently devoted a significant degree of attention to delineating the roles of accounting firms as key professional actors in the transnational policy arena. Such a heightened level of scholarly engagement with firms seems to have shifted the focus away from the roles of the national professional institutes. The purpose of this paper is to…
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the motivation for this special issue and its contributions. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is a conceptual editorial piece which discusses current methodological tendencies in qualitative accounting research. Findings – The paper argues that qualitative research involves some balancing acts between, on the one hand, prag…
In some respects it is disconcerting to have to respond in defence of a paper which is seen as dangerous, absurd, promiscuous and unsettling, of attacking the wrong enemy and in danger of facilitating the rebirth of old orthodoxies.But then, in other respects, such language is comforting as it serves to emphasize a central point of the paper – that theoretical discourse in accounting, as in a…
The simple fact is that accounting research has tended to isolate itself from accounting in practice…What is needed are more substantive investigations orientated towards providing bases for understanding or explaining the workings of accounting in action (Hopwood, 1983, pp. 302-3). It is ironical given the managerialist bias of so much accounting research and its reflection in leading text…
In recent years, research selectivity exercises have played an increasingly influential role in defining the meaning of life in British university accounting departments. The purpose of research is now more directly set in terms of maintaining and, it is hoped, improving departmental research ratings. Highly rated accounting departments readily advertise their assigned research scores at confe…
Purpose – The starting point for the paper is an assessment of the impact of a 1993 special issue of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, which provided an interdisciplinary analysis of the pursuit of accountable management reforms in the UK public sector. From this assessment, the paper offers a set of reflections on the development over the last two decades of “new” public …
This paper explores the development of household accounting practice in post-war Japan through a review of reported experiences of the winners of an annual accounting prize scheme organized, since 1954, by the Central Council for Saving Information. While academic study of accounting at home is a developing area, analysis has tended so far to rely mainly on Anglo-Saxon contexts. This paper'…