Panel on Big Unanswered Questions in Accounting—Genesis

Abstract

n recent years, prominent accounting scholars speaking at the annual meetings of the American Accounting Association AAA have bemoaned the state of accounting inquiry. The main thrust of the criticisms is that accounting researchers increasingly pursue very small and arrow questions that do not advance professional knowledge. For instance, at the 2006 AAA nnual Meeting, Demski 2007 and Fellingham 2007 questioned whether accounting was even n academic discipline. In a plenary address at the 2006 AAA Annual Meeting, Hopwood 2007 rgued that accounting researchers were shrinking their research boundaries and that the “top hree” U.S. accounting journals are increasingly unlikely to publish truly innovative research. hese commentators agree that “innovation is close to nonexistent” and that “our research is argely derivative, bifurcated, and far from foundational” Demski 2007 . Fellingham 2007 poses he challenge, “What big intellectual ideas have accounting researchers contributed to the niversity?” One reason senior researchers might feel that we are making little progress is that accounting esearchers do not share a common research goal such as particle physicists do in their quest for Grand Unified Theory of the fundamental forces. If we are to make big intellectual contributions o the academy, it would probably help to identify the big unanswered questions that we could ollectively attack, and then work on finding the tools to answer these questions rather than hoosing only the questions that our current research methods can address. At least this is one Imagined World of Accounting,” consistent with the theme of the 2007 AAA Annual Meeting. To elp identify these big-picture questions, I offered to moderate a panel discussion on this topic. But who would make good panelists? Galenson 2005 argues that important innovative ontributions tend to be made by either experimental Old Masters like Rembrandt and Alfred itchcock or conceptual Young Geniuses like Picasso and James Joyce. Berlin 1953 argues that mportant thinkers tend to be either hedgehogs who are guided by one defining idea such as Plato nd Hegel, or foxes who draw on a wide variety of experiences such as Aristotle and Shakespeare. hese perspectives suggest that an ideal panel would consist of innovative accounting researchers ho are at different career stages, some of whom regularly cross methodological and disciplinary arriers while others specialize in a particular research stream. Greg Waymire chair requested the AA Annual Meeting Planning Committee to suggest potential panelists. Greg Waymire, Shyam under AAA’s president , and I then invited several scholars whose research we admire, while rying to balance the coverage of research methodologies, research styles, career stages, panel size,