《会计研究向何处去》《Whither Accounting Research》

1365THE ACCOUNTING REVIEWVol.82,No.5200713651374Whither Accounting Research?Anthony G.HopwoodUniversity of OxfordIthink that there is a growing sense of unease about the state and direction of accountingresearch.Although articulated in a variety of different ways in a number of differentcontexts,there nevertheless is a view that accounting research has become insufficientlyinnovative and increasingly detached from the practice of the craft.As I am sympatheticwith only some of these emerging concerns,I intend to give a quite explicitly personalview of the field of accounting research as it has emerged and as it might developahighly selective one and,at times,a somewhat idiosyncratic one.But as I do not have thetime to be comprehensive,my aim is to provide a personal account of some of my enthu-siasms,my dismays,and some of my suggestions.Although partial,my account is alsomeant to be well intentioned.I start with some personal reminiscences.I came to the United States as a FulbrightScholar in 1965.Arriving in the port of New York on board the Queen Mary on a delightfulautumn day(travel by boat then being a requirement of the Fulbright Commission),I wasalready full of anticipation about my forthcoming studies at the University of Chicago.Thelate 1960s were tremendously exciting times for accounting research in that institution andpossibly for intellectual and cultural life generally in the United States.Certainly for ac-counting at Chicago,new knowledge was in the process of being created.As I arrived,BillBeaver had just finished his doctorate and had joined the faculty,as had Gene Fama in thefinance area.I still remember standing on the steps of the Business School building withJoel Demski as he waited for the results of his doctoral defense.Phil Brown was alreadytwo years into the accounting doctoral program,and Ray Ball and Ross Watts arrived ayear after me.The future Nobel Prize winner Myron Scholes was still working on hisdoctorate in the finance area,as were Marshall Blume and Mike Jensen.I studied financewith Merton Miller,industrial organization with George Stigler,and macroeconomics withMilton Friedman,all of whom were to go on to receive Nobel Prizes.To top it all,afterone year I decided to drop finance,the ultimate of heresies,to pick up behavioral scienceand organizational sociology,studying with such great names as Peter Blau and MorrisJanowitz.It really was an exciting time.Knowledge almost literally was moving before your veryeyes.Indeed there was a quite explicit awareness that understandings were in the processof changing,an impression that was reinforced by the fact that you could still experienceThis article is from a plenary address that was delivered during the Annual Meeting of the American AccountingAssociation in the capacity of the 2006 Presidential Scholar.I am grateful for the comments and suggestions ofChris Chapman,Bob Colson,Yves Gendron,and Paolo Quattrone.Editors note:The Executive Committee of the American Accounting Association has recommended the commis-sion of a series of Presidential Research Lectures,to be delivered at annual meetings of the Association.Toencourage broad dissemination,the Committee has requested that The Accounting Review publish this lecture givenat the 2006 American Accounting Association Annual Meeting in Washington,D.C.1366HopwoodThe Accounting Review,October 2007both the old and the new knowledges in both accounting and finance.At the very sametime as doctoral theses were starting to explicate new approaches to accounting research,incoming doctoral students still had to study the earlier American traditions of accountingtheorizing as they had emerged throughout the twentieth century.Indeed in this way Iactually met Carl Devine and even took a course from Bill Vatter.Similarly in finance,thenew sat alongside the old,at least for a time.While M.B.A.students could study withMiller and Fama,they still had access to the old chartist knowledges of the likes of MarshallKetchum.It was indeed a time of transition.Of course,Chicago was not the only site for the creation of the new accounting knowl-edge.Related developments were going on elsewhere.Berkeley,Carnegie Mellon,andMinnesota come to mind,but interestingly not Columbia,Harvard,Stanford,and Wharton,at least at that time.As part of the development of my argument,I want to emphasize a number of aspectsof the research culture and environment at that time,at least as I remember them.In accounting,the creation of the new knowledge was largely a revolution from below.Certainly at Chicago so much of the significant research was done by doctoral students,bethey Ray Ball,Bill Beaver,Philip Brown,Joel Demski,Ross Watts,or even myself.Ofcourse the faculty were not irrelevant.George Sorter did a brilliant job recruiting doctoralstudents from all around the world in his capacity as Director of the Doctoral Program.David Greens focus on empirical research was also crucial.Remember this was the timeof the first Empirical Research in Accounting Conference organized by a still new Journalof Accounting Research.Additionally a young Nick Dopuch was an enthusiastic supporterof all the new developments,be they economic or behavioral.But the real sense of excite-ment resided with the doctoral students who seemed to live a life of new research horizonsand continual research discussions.For believers in the nonhierarchical nature of goodresearch cultures,accounting research at Chicago at this time provides an excellentexample.Strong normative beliefs drove a great deal of those early inquires.Ball,Brown,andparticularly Ross Watts were deeply concerned about the monopolistic pretensions of whatwas then still called the accounting profession.As a result of this,there undoubtedly wasan interest in showing that accounting functioned in a competitive information environmentalongside other sources of corporate information.Indeed,the pioneering Ball and Brown(1968)study sought to demonstrate just that,and the subsequent Market for Excusespaper co-authored by Watts(Watts and Zimmerman 1979)developed out of related concernswith the consequences of the monopolistic tendencies of a professionalized accounting.Ialso had the very strong view that management accounting had to be studied in the contextsin which it operated and,therefore,literally fought to be allowed to do field research inaccounting,something that was a very novel idea at that time at Chicago and most likelyelsewhere.The suggested compromise of an experimental study collapsed after a trial at-tempt using Ray Ball,Ross Watts,and others as experimental subjects descended intohilarity:perhaps such subjects dont have to be that bright!So for a variety of reasons,positive accounting research(Watts and Zimmerman 1978)emerged from a deeply nor-mative context.The new accounting research was also strongly interdisciplinary in orientation.Newfields of inquiry often are in both the sciences and the social sciences.Famas research onefficient markets emerged at the interface of finance,economics,and statistics.Similarlyfor the endeavors of Ball and Brown,and my own research(Hopwood 1973)utilized theinsights and approaches of social psychology and organizational sociology as well as ac-counting.Often located at the margins of the established disciplines(Miller 1998),theWhither Accounting Research?1367The Accounting Review,October 2007practitioners of the new often find it easier to affiliate with a diversity of understandings,feeling less of an identity with the status quo.However,by the creation of that sense of newness,interdisciplinary inquiry makes thedissemination and publication of the new knowledge more difficult.That certainly wasthe case for the pioneering and hugely influential Ball and Brown study.It was rejected byThe Accounting Review and published in the Chicago-based Journal of Accounting Researchby default,the reason for the rejection being that it was not accounting.I want to emphasize this point.There were then,there have been in the interveningperiod,and there are now people who think that they know what accountingand auditingfor that matteris.How wrong these people are.They are the ones who list the attributesof the status quo,seemingly wanting to confine the new to being within the boundaries ofthe old.They have no conception that accounting and accounting research have repeatedlychanged across time,and when things change they become what they were not,at least inpart.Accounting has been a craft that has had no essence.It has changed significantlyacross time,adopting new forms,methods,and roles.Likewise for accounting research.Historically,it too has developed in relation to a diverse series of circumstances and pres-sures,taking on different forms in different places and at different moments of time,re-peatedly adopting approaches that were novel and contentious.Moreover,both accountingand accounting research will continue to do just that,regardless of the pleas and efforts ofthose who act in the name of the status quo.Indeed the very role of accounting researchis in part to make both accounting and our knowledge of it differentto move forwardour understandings of accounting and,at times,the practice of accounting itself.In finance,in particular,we have seen how research not only models the financial world,helping us to understand its inner dynamics and processes,but also changes the functioningof finance in operation.Finance in practice is now different from what it used to be as aresult of finance research.The resultant knowledge has played a significant role in thecreation of new markets in options,the emergence of new financial instruments,and verydifferent approaches to the management of financial risk.Indeed finance research has beenconstitutive of finance itself,a phenomenon that is the theme of a recent book of immensesignificance by MacKenzie(2006).Ideally,accounting research should have the same potential,but I think that any suchpotential is still weakly developed,although by no means absent.On a more contemporary noteand one related to some of the later themes in thisdiscussionI am convinced that the present-day equivalent of the Ball and Brown paper,albeit something very different in content and intellectual positioning,would still be rejectedby The Accounting Review because there are still too many people who think that theyknow what accounting and accounting research are and should be.That in itself is some-thing on which we should all ponder.But in all probability the situation today is even worsethan that.While in the late 1960s the newly launched Journal of Accounting Research couldtake a risk with publication;in my estimation,that would be much less likely now.Forboth that journal and the Journal of Accounting and Economics have become more focusedand less innovative than they used to be.They have entered the mainstream with all thecosts associated with that.Another development arising from the new wave of Chicago research is that accountingresearch started to embrace the study of not only accounting itself,but also accountingsconsequences and its modes of functioning in wider institutional settings.That indeed wasone of the key points of the Ball and Brown analysis:that accounting functioned in acompetitive market in information on the enterprise.Accounting,in other words,is part ofa wider wholea market in information on the enterprise and the economic and business1368HopwoodThe Accounting Review,October 2007contexts in which it operatesand to understand accounting one needs to understand thatwider whole and its ties to and implications for accounting.My own research in the areaof management accounting(Hopwood 1973)was similar,illustrating the need for an un-derstanding of the ways in which the wider organizational structure and culture mediatedthe use made of accounting data and,thereby,their consequences.Of course,the danger is that such research developments have produced two types ofaccounting researchers who tend not to communicate with one another.On the one hand,we have those who can research the consequences of accounting,be it with a capital marketor behavioral emphasis.Such researchers currently represent the mainstream of accountingresearch.On the other hand,however,are those who have a thorough understanding ofaccounting itself and can reflect on its internal logics and the possibilities for these tochange.Such researchers tended to be more in vogue from the 1930s until the period inthe 1960s that witnessed the intellectual developments we have just discussed.In an idealworld,researchers having such obviously complementary interests and skills would com-municate and collaborate,but that has very rarely happened.We tend to have one emphasisor the other despite the fact that both are needed.A final observation on the new program of accounting research initiated at Chicagorelates to how it furthered the development of a more abstract and a more global form ofaccounting inquiry that was and is very different from earlier traditions of American ac-counting research.American accounting research used to be a form of intellectual inquirythat was tied to the institutional and philosophical traditions of America.In other words,itwas deeply embedded in the country of its creation,its history,institutions,and intellectualtraditions.Movement to a different cultural context was not easy for any such form ofnational intellectual tradition because it necessitates the re-establishment of the often quitespecific intellectual and institutional linkages that sustained the particular form of inquiryin its original setting.Little such nationally focused accounting research is now conducted,at least in the United States.The approach can still be found in the field of accountinghistory where there are scholars who ground their research in traditions of American prag-matism and whose inquires are still sympathetic to the types of institutional understandingsthat were significant in earlier American intellectual traditions.But elsewhere a more ge-neric,less contextualized version of accounting research flourishes.Itself the product of adiversity of intellectual influences,such research has few ties to any particular culturalcontext or the norms of the specific institutional settings in which it emerged.Indeed,without such ties,this new form of accounting research can and does travel.Althoughemergent in the United States,it can just as easily be conducted in Europe and Asiaandis.A novice can be initiated into its traditions and practices within the context of a threeof four-year doctoral program.That time could not possibly produce a practitioner ofGerman philosophy,for instance,a subject that is still tied very strongly to the local insti-tutional traditions of the settings in which it emerged.Such a detachment from context has both advantages and disadvantages.Yes,knowl-edge can travel,perhaps initially loosely attaching itself to new settings,although that doesnot preclude a more substantial integration as it has few specific institutional or intellectualpreconditions or requirements.The widespread dissemination and adoption of modern fi-nance knowledge illustrates this so well.But there can be costs associated with the dis-placement and loss of local vernacular traditions of inquiry and investigation.Global knowl-edges are often not very tolerant of local ones and yet sometimes they experience difficultyembedding themselves into the detail of local institutional contexts:the new knowledgesremaining only loosely coupled to the settings in which they operate and thereby unableto infuse the functioning of practice.Whither Accounting Research?1369The Accounting Review,October 2007But enough of the past and some of the issues and implications that emerge from itmany of which still have a very significant impact on contemporary accounting research.The subsequent 30 or so years have seen enormous changes in the world of accountingitself and a new set of questions are arising as to the appropriateness and nature of thecontemporary accounting research endeavor.Let me therefore quickly review some ofthe most significant changes in the world of practice that might be driving the demands fornew accounting knowledge.In financial accounting we have witnessed a rapid rise in regulation and the associatedpressures for greater standardization.As a result of this,a new institutional realm of ac-counting dialogue has been created that had few precedents in the past.Many more peoplenow talk,contemplate,and act on accounting as well as and often instead of merely doingit.Accounting now has a domain of policy making as well as one of practice.New pos-sibilities have thereby been created for the transference of accounting ideas and vocabu-laries.People can argue for particular accounting treatments,appealing to more abstractcriteria for the selection of specific accounting alternatives.The emergence of new under-standings of the rationales for accounting practice can create different possibilities for itsmodification and change.The new institutional realm of accounting regulation therebyprovides a platform for mediating between the research community and that of direct prac-tice,as the debates on fair value accounting and mark-to-market illustrate,although as yetwe have few understandings of how this occurs and the means by which it can be furthered.Accounting,both financial and managerial,also has to grapple with a more complexcommercial and institutional world.Such processes of adaptation are certainly not new asthe histories of accountings struggle to relate to a more capital-intensive capitalism havedemonstrated.But in recent decades accounting has had to try to respond to changingemployment practices and forms of remuneration,more complex organizational forms anddesigns,changing configurations of organizational interrelationships and moves to a moreknowledge based economy with consequent shifts in the forms in which corporate advan-tage is gained and maintained.And new issues are emergent,not least those that mightstem from a world that is more conscious of the pressures for sustainability.Accountingpractice is still trying to grapple with the backlog of pressures on it to change and in aworld where many of these changes will be mediated by the regulatory authorities,thedemand for new more abstract insights into the possibilities for a different accounting craftbecome ever greater.At the same time as these pressures have been developing,that other important insti-tutional component of the accounting world,the audit firm,has itself been subject to fun-damental change.Audit firms are not only much more international,indeed more interna-tional than the practice of accounting,and fewer in number,but they also are much moreexplicitly commercial in orientation.If they ever existed,the days of a more profession-alized practice have now certainly gone.The audit industry,as it might more accurately becalled,is now a much more significant component of the institutional setting for accountingpractice,making much stronger demands on the regulatory authorities and introducing itsown dynamic into the relationship between the corporate world and that of accounting.Just as the audit firms are now more international in scope,so is accounting itselfboth financial and managerial.The regulation of accounting has entered the supranationaldomain.Corporate accountings are often multinational in nature and innovations in man-agerial accounting seem to pervade the world in record time,increasingly akin to a formof fashion,no doubt propagated by management consultancies,some key ones of whichare now part of the audit firms.1370HopwoodThe Accounting Review,October 2007Within the enterprise,accounting has rapidly become a less isolated phenomenon asit has become embedded in massive,more generic enterprise wide management systems.Itis now quite explicitly a part of a wider whole.At the same time,there also ha