Rethinking the academic accounting research model

Abstract

Current academic incentive systems primarily reward accounting faculty for publishing research articles in elite journals. Faculty members decide what research questions to address and what research methods to use to investigate those re-search questions. Regulators, accounting service firms, and practicing accountants have little input about which research questions are investigated, how the research is conducted, and how and where the results are disseminated. This current ap-proach often results in financial accounting and auditing research that is not rele-vant to the practice of accounting. This commentary proposes a market-driven approach to the conduct of financial and auditing accounting research similar to that used in the medical sciences where pharmaceutical companies and govern-mental entities determine the most pressing medical issues. Besides university-sponsored research, faculty members in the medical sciences apply for grants to support research targeted at improving the treatment of these medical issues, and relevant research findings are quickly disseminated through highly-regarded peer-reviewed outlets such as The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association, the British Medical Journal, and The Lancet so doctors and other medical professionals may quickly implement them into practice.