Using the 2019 JBE conference and 2017 JIS themed issue as natural experiments to examine the role of editors as gatekeepers of the research literature in AIS and ethics

Abstract

In April 2019, the Journal of Business Ethics (JBE) held a conference devoted to the “The Impact of Technology on Ethics, Professionalism and Judgement in Accounting”. This follows the summer 2017 Journal of Information Systems (JIS) themed issue on “Accounting Information Systems and Ethics” I treat this conference and the themed issue as two natural experiments into the evolution of the research literature on Accounting Information Systems (AIS) and ethics. I label this literature as “AIS-ethics”, which I describe as the intersection of the fields of accounting, ethics and information systems. The choice of papers for these two initiatives is amongst the best available metrics of both the latest research on AIS-ethics, and of the kind of research considered desirable by editors/gatekeepers. In particular, I analyze whether these editors/gatekeepers desire papers that fit unambiguously into AIS-ethics, or whether they are willing to accept papers with a more tenuous connection in order to encourage broader participation by researchers. I find that of nine papers selected for special issues or conferences in AIS-ethics over the last three years, only three clearly fall into this domain, suggesting that achieving a critical mass of papers is prioritized over specialization at this stage in the development of a research literature into AIS and ethics.