Opinion piece: Discussion of “Rethinking the academic accounting research model”
Giorgio Gotti / Financial Reporting / 1-2024
Opinion piece: Rethinking the academic accounting research model
Mark C. Dawkins / Financial Reporting / 1-2024
Current academic incentive systems primarily reward accounting faculty for publishing research articles in elite journals. Faculty members decide what research questions to address and what research methods to use to investigate those re-search questions. Regulators, accounting service firms, and practicing accountants have little input about which research questions are investigated, how the research is conducted, and how and where the results are disseminated. This current ap-proach often results in financial accounting and auditing research that is not rele-vant to the practice of accounting. This commentary proposes a market-driven approach to the conduct of financial and auditing accounting research similar to that used in the medical sciences where pharmaceutical companies and govern-mental entities determine the most pressing medical issues. Besides university-sponsored research, faculty members in the medical sciences apply for grants to support research targeted at improving the treatment of these medical issues, and relevant research findings are quickly disseminated through highly-regarded peer-reviewed outlets such as The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association, the British Medical Journal, and The Lancet so doctors and other medical professionals may quickly implement them into practice.
Accounting research production and evaluation: The view of the professionals
Orazio Vagnozzi / Financial Reporting / 2-2017
The existence of a gap between accounting research and accounting practice has been extensively described in literature. In order to be able to publish a research in a high-ranked accounting journal, it seems that methodological issues are more important than those related to the relevance of the topics covered. To improve research and accounting practice and to avoid the risk of accounting research becoming self-referential, every effort should be made to bridge the current gap between research and accounting practice. To this end, the development of mutual knowledge of the agenda of researchers and practitioners on the one hand, and participation in joint projects on the other, could represent possible future solutions to be pursued.
Accounting profession, Accounting research, Research impact, Impact factor
The usefulness of accounting research: A practitioner’s point of view
Giovanni Andrea Toselli / Financial Reporting / 2-2017
This paper represents a contribution from the point of view of a practitioner who strongly believes that it is essential to continue to invest in accounting research. The cooperation between chief financial officers, auditors and academic institutions is central not only for improving the process of accounting regulations but also for relaunching, at the same time, the industrial system (and not only it), by creating a strong feeling of trust in general economic and financial communication, thus fostering higher level of accountability.
Accounting profession, Accounting research, Research impact, Impact factor, Accountability
The points of contacts between academics and professionals
Massimiliano Semprini / Financial Reporting / 2-2017
Some argue that the ultimate purpose of accounting research should be to improve accounting practice, rather than simply to describe or understand or critique it. Hence a gap appears to have emerged between practitioners and academics with regards to accounting research. In order to exploit as better as possible the output of the accounting research performed by academic researchers, the accounting profession should create a point of contact; auditing networks might facilitate this link. On the other hand, research performed by academics should become “understandable” by practitioners using a different jargon and simple mathematical formulas.
Accounting profession, Accounting research, Research impact, Impact factor
The Real Impact Factor and the Gap between Accounting Research and Practice
Quagli Alberto, Avallone Francesco, Ramassa Paola/ Financial Reporting, Riviste / Fascicolo: 1-2016
This paper explores the gap between accounting research and practice with two primary objectives. First, it provides a review of the main results obtained by the impressive literature on the topic to get a comprehensive picture of this phenomenon, considering the different perspectives and research methods used so far. This review aims not only at summarizing results, but also at outlining a logical framework that could be useful for both our analysis and future studies on the topic. Against this background, our second objective is to carry out an empirical analysis on scholars’ motivations and incentives – rather neglected by prior literature – with a particular focus on their relationships with professional associations. Evidence from our survey (with 447 questionnaires completed by EAA members) suggests that there is a hierarchy of objectives informing scholars’ motivations and that the first one is to publish on highly ranked journals. In such a context, the positive attitude of academics towards practice can be sometimes in conflict with scholars’ expectation about effort, individual result and peers’ consideration. In other terms, our study supports the idea that there is a gap between research and practice, together with a risk of an increasingly closed community of scientists. Our results seem in line with studies stating that the reasons for this gap essentially lie in the current evaluation logic driving scholars’ incentives. Additionally, evidence on scholars’ incentives might be helpful in finding new solutions to bridge the gap and supporting future research sharing the same objective.
Keywords: Research-practice gap, research impact, real impact factor, accounting research, accounting practice
The “Real” Impact Factor: Reflections on the Impact of the Research Excellence Framework
Broadbent Jane/ Financial Reporting, Riviste / Fascicolo: 1-2016
This paper is an argument for the importance of academics undertaking some (but not only) research that relates to the practical issues faced by practitioners and policy makers and that is geared to achieving impact. It offers a normative argument informed by my experience as a practitioner and an academic and by my experiences in the assessment of impact as part of the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) in 2014. The paper introduces the nature of the REF and how it was implemented. It also addresses the implications of the performance measurement of impact of REF for Higher Educational Institutions and the individual academics that work within them. In that respect it recognises that performance measures give extrinsic encouragement to particular behaviours. The paper argues that academics should also be intrinsically driven to research that has impact. In order to achieve impact, the paper suggests that we should not see a gap between academics and practitioners, but should instead see practice and academic endeavour as different but complementary elements of the same profession. We should seek to develop better discourses between academics and practitioners and should not attribute greater importance to the views of either party. Instead we should have an engagement that is open to the generation of disagreement as well as agreement but that nevertheless does not see disagreement as the basis for closing down communication.
Keywords: Research impact, engagement, evidence for policymakers and practitioners, Research Excellence Framework