Abstract
Abstract Academic research in accounting has often been characterised as exhibiting a dichotomy between the positivist approach and the critical, interpretive and interdisciplinary (CII) approaches. Our paper examines the extent of this dichotomy by presenting empirical evidence on the different source materials which the two communities use to construct their research papers. Across all articles published in six leading journals between 2002 and 2013, we find that positivist papers tend to be constructed from a narrower set of references drawn mostly from elite business journals while CII papers draw from a much more diverse range of sources, including non-elite journals, non-business journals and books. There is also evidence of the growing impact of journal ranking lists, with notable upward (downward) trends in the usage of high-ranked (unranked) reference sources. We suggest a link here with recent research on signalling within the publication process.
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