Paradise Regained? Myth, Milton and Management Accounting

Abstract

The failure of empirical research to settle disputes about the efficacy of activity-based costing, total quality management and analogous innovations highlights, once again, the discrepancy between Academe's heavy commitment to empirical inquiry, and its inability to prove (or refute) anything significant with empirical evidence. What should we make of this irony? What is the raison d'etre of the multi-million dollar university research industry if research if research consistently fails to resolve anything definitive? This paper explores such questions using as case examples the works of Johnson and Kaplan. Contrary to the conventional notion of research—as foraging beyond the frontiers of knowledge for the universal benefit of humankind—this study views accounting research as one of a number of cultural institutions, struggling to impose social order and hegemony. In this view, the changing topics of accounting research reflect continuous ideological realignments in an unstable social milieu. Johnson and Kaplan and Johnson are seen as bellwethers in this historical process: they offer transitional business ideologies, spanning the era between Reaganism and an emergent Clintonism. We examine how these authors prosecute their cultural and ideological project by summoning deeply-embedded, ancient cultural themes, reflected in the titles of Milton's epics, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained . Empiricism, positivism and appeals to Milton are shown here to be masks for shielding this ideological enterprize from serious critical scrutiny.