Accounting & Marketing

Concerns and Actively Engaged Research

Abstract

Alan Kirkpatrick*

This paper contends that recurring concerns regarding the nature of academic accounting research ought to be taken seriously. As a means of expanding our social license, it suggests engaging research. Engaged research is characterized as follows, based on the argument of Chua and Fiedler. It co-produces research on matters that matter (to practitioners, regulators, academics and communities) and engages with complex practice relations. The paper explains how accounting research could interact with a modern business environment marked by widespread digitization and new climate change risks and opportunities. Researchers who received their training but whose work is situated in very distinct research traditions, both voiced concerns that are comparable to those of hopwood. However, both are concerned that accounting researchers. Hopwood specifically referred to US-based researchers are too far removed from the real world. In their respective articles published in Management Science and The Accounting Review, both attempt to investigate the causes of this ill health.