Is Accounting an Applied Discipline? An Institutional Theory Assessment of Its Labor Market

Abstract

This paper recasts the debate over whether accounting research is relevant to accounting practice by asking the more fundamental question of whether modern academic accounting is even an applied discipline. Using an institutional theory template, we argue that academic accounting only purports to be an applied discipline relative to the professional practice of accounting. We study personnel inflows into academic accounting and its consequences and conclude that practice experience is counterproductive to academic success in terms of research productivity. Implications pertaining to the broadly based schism between “town and gown” in accounting are drawn.