Accounting Craftspeople versus Accounting Seers: Exploring the Relevance and Innovation Gaps in Academic Accounting Research

SYNOPSIS: Is accounting research stuck in a rut of repetitiveness and irrelevancy? I would answer yes, and I would even predict that both its gap in relevancy and its gap in innovation are going to continue to get worse if the people and the attitudes that govern inquiry in the American academy remain the same. From my perspective in accounting information systems, mainstream accounting research topics have changed very little in 30 years, except for the fact that their scope now seems much more narrow and crowded. More and more people seem to be studying the same topics in financial reporting and managerial control in the same ways, over and over and over. My suggestions to get out of this rut are simple. First, the profession should allow itself to think a little bit normatively, so we can actually target practice improvement as a real goal. And second, we need to allow new scholars a wider berth in research topics and methods, so we can actually give the kind of creativity and innovation that occurs naturally with young people a chance to blossom.