identifying meaningful and significant topics

Identifying meaningful and significant topicsfor research and publication: a sharing ofexperiences and insights by ‘influential’

accounting authors§

Chee W. Chowa,*, Paul D. Harrisonb

aCollege of Business Administration, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182-8221, USAbW. Frank Barton School of Business, Wichita State University, Wichita, KS 67260-0087, USA

Received 1 May 2001; received in revised form 1 November 2001; accepted 1 January 2002

Abstract

This paper aims to advance understanding of how to generate meaningful or significant

topics for accounting research. This topic is important because significance of the researchtopic is a key determinant of publication success, yet the literature only provides very generalguidance on the idea generation process. To permit in-depth exploration, phone interviews

were conducted with 20 ‘‘influential’’ accounting researchers, as identified by Brown [Acc.Org. Soc. Oct/Nov (1996) 723] based on annual citation counts to authors’ works. Eachscholar was first asked to share his/her thoughts on what makes a research topic meaningful/

significant. There was considerable consensus that the research should have a significantimpact upon the literature and/or address a real world problem. The literature impact cancome from filling a significant gap in theory, producing salient, novel/new or unexpected

results, advancing understanding of hard-to-solve research issues, or introducing new proce-dures. The scholars then used specific publications to illustrate the processes that they hadused to generate and develop meaningful/significant research topics. Detailed quotes areincluded to facilitate access to the richness of the scholars’ responses. Applications to

accounting education research also are discussed. # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rightsreserved.

Keywords: Accounting research; Accounting education; Idea generation; Research/publication productivity

J. of Acc. Ed. 20 (2002) 183–203

www.elsevier.com/locate/jaccedu

0748-5751/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

PI I : S0748-5751(02 )00008 -8

§ Data availability: Interview transcripts will be made available by the second author subject to the

interviewees’ approval.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-619-594-5331; fax: +1-619-594-3675.

E-mail addresses: [email protected] (C.W. Chow), [email protected] (P.D. Harrison).

1. Introduction and overview

Publication productivity has long been a key component of accounting facultyevaluation (Engelbrecht, Iver, & Patterson, 1994; Hasselback, Reinstein, & Schwan,2000; Read, Rama, & Raghunandan, 1998; Schultz, Meade, & Khurana, 1989;Street, Baril, & Benke, 1993; Zivney, Bertin, & Gavin, 1995), and numerous studieshave investigated the factors that contribute to such productivity (e.g. Alsup, Hol-land, & Jacobs, 1988; Cargile & Bublitz, 1986; Chow & Harrison, 1998; Dwyer,1994; Fogarty & Ruhl, 1997; Maranto & Streuly, 1994; Hasselback & Reinstein,1995a, 1995b). The significance of the research topic has consistently been identifiedas a key determinant of publication success, yet there is a dearth of publishedmaterials on how one might generate significant or meaningful research topics. Theaim of this study is to increase insights into this critical question.Perhaps an effective way to learn the ‘‘art’’ or ‘‘craft’’ of research and publishing is

to work with, or under the guidance of, an experienced and successful mentor. Thismay be why one’s doctoral program and/or school of appointment have been foundto be important to research productivity (Fogarty & Ruhl, 1997). But many facultymembers are unlikely to have ready access to such mentors. Even if they did, giventhe size and time demands of most projects, their mentor’s experiences still may belimited in scope and/or can be highly idiosyncratic.Prominent accounting researchers’ sharing of their insights into key parts of the

research and publication process can also provide guidance to accounting research-ers. For example, Ashton (1998) and Zimmerman (1989) have offered detailed sug-gestions on how to write effectively, while Demski and Zimmerman (2000) haveexplicated how research and teaching can complement, rather than compete againsteach other. Such sharing can be both informative and stimulating, though it mayalso have idiosyncratic elements.The current study is verymuch in the spirit of Ashton (1998) and Zimmerman (1989).

But whereas these authors offered specific advice for improving the communication and‘‘packaging’’ aspect of research, we focus on the ‘‘upstream’’ activity of idea generation.This focus is based on the belief that even if a poor idea is effectively executed and pre-sented, it still would not be a worthwhile contribution to the literature.We view two factors as being integral to generating significant/meaningful topics.

The first factor is the process that one employs to generate research ideas, and the sec-ond factor is one’s ability to differentiate more significant/meaningful topics from lesssignificant/meaningful ones. To gain insights into these factors, we interviewed a subsetof the accounting authors who had participated in Chow and Harrison’s (1998) survey.In turn, Chow and Harrison’s (1998) sample was selected from the set of accountingresearchers identified by Brown (1996) as being ‘‘influential’’ based on average citationcounts in the ‘‘top five’’ accounting journals.1 By including a multitude of researchers,the findings can reflect a broad set of experiences and interests, while limiting theimpacts of idiosyncracies (‘‘outliers’’) that may be of limited reference value.The next section of the paper explains how interview data were collected and

analyzed. The findings are then reported and discussed. The final section provides asummary and discusses potential applications to accounting education research.

184 C.W. Chow, P.D. Harrison / J. of Acc. Ed. 20 (2002) 183–203

2. Method

Half of the 62 accounting scholars who had responded to Chow and Harrison’s(1998) mail survey were randomly selected. Each was sent a letter seeking his/herparticipation in a telephone interview as a follow up on the earlier study. The letteralso asked each scholar to think about two questions prior to the interview: (1)What makes a research topic especially meaningful and significant? and (2) Couldyou take a study or a series of studies that you have finished or published and thatyou consider to be especially noteworthy, and share the process that you wentthrough in arriving at and developing this idea?Up to five attempts were made to contact each scholar. This resulted in 21 subjects

being contacted, all but one of whom agreed to be interviewed.2 Each scholar con-sented to having his/her interview tape recorded, subject to the proviso that he/shewould not be quoted by name without permission. All subsequently assented to thequotes included in this paper.All of the scholars exhibited great openness in discussing their experiences, and all

seemed to make genuine attempts to share their insights. The result was a set oftranscripts with very rich content. The verbal and non-standardized nature of thedata made it necessary to distill them for drawing inferences and reporting. In con-ducting this data reduction process (abstracting, coding, looking for commonthemes), we followed the guidelines set forth in Miles and Huberman (1994) andLillis (1999) for content analyzing open-ended interview responses. Both members ofthe research team independently processed all of the interview transcripts, and thencompared notes to reach a consensus at each stage of the data analysis. While thisapproach still involves subjective judgments and cannot guarantee the total absenceof biases, we feel confident that the essence and richness of the responses have beenpreserved.3

1 Brown’s (1996) inclusion criterion was an average annual citation count of 4.0 or more to the indi-

vidual’s body of work in five leading accounting journals (The Accounting Review; Accounting, Organiza-

tions and Society; Contemporary Accounting Research; Journal of Accounting and Economics; and Journal

of Accounting Research). In making use of Brown’s list, Chow and Harrison (1998) acknowledged that

Brown’s (1996) definition of ‘‘influential’’ may be limited, as the journals used for the citation counts may

be dominated by certain paradigms or methodologies, and also under-represent authors who mostly

publish in journals with sub-area foci (e.g., accounting education, auditing, management accounting).

Also, one may question whether the number of citations is a valid or adequate measure of success.

Nevertheless, Chow and Harrison maintain that their subjects still would represent many of the more

successful accounting authors of our day.2 One of the co-authors was part of these 20 and was interviewed in the same way as the others. The

scholar who declined to be interviewed explained that he has been a full-time administrator for a number

of years and felt that his research experiences may not be current enough to be informative.3 We acknowledge the potential that people may not be able to fully comprehend or articulate how

they go about undertaking particular tasks, such as forming judgments. At the same time, there is prior

research to suggest that people are not devoid of self-insights into such matters (Gavanski & Hoffman,

1986, 1987; Harrison, Ryan, & Moore, 1996; Kraut & Lewis, 1982; Wright & Rip, 1981), thus lending

support to our interview approach. Even if interviews fail to fully elicit or capture the scholars’ insights,

readers still can benefit from their sharing of experiences at a level of detail beyond that typically achiev-

able in surveys.

C.W. Chow, P.D. Harrison / J. of Acc. Ed. 20 (2002) 183–203 185

3. Interview findings

3.1. What makes a research topic meaningful/significant?

Each scholar was randomly assigned an identification number from 1 to 20, whichwas used in both Tables 1 and 2. Table 1 presents our categorization of the respon-ses and the number of scholars naming each factor. We were able to discern twomajor categories of reasons why a research topic is meaningful or significant: (1)Addresses a real world/societal problem; and (2) Significantly impacts literature/knowledge. The latter, in turn, contains three major subcategories: (i) Fills sig-nificant gap/advances theory; (ii) Produces salient, novel/new or unexpected results;and (iii) Addresses hard-to-solve research issue/introduces new procedures. A smallnumber of other factors did not fit under a unifying theme, and are groupedunder a ‘‘miscellaneous’’ category. As Table 1 shows, some scholars namedmultiple factors.

3.1.1. Addresses a real world/societal problemThe importance of addressing a real world or societal problem was mentioned by

the largest number of scholars (11). John Evans stated his view as follows:

It seems to me that the key for a topic to really be interesting and of highimpact would be that it is a topic that is of fairly significant consequence in andof itself. And that is, it is important to society, it is important to the economy, itis important to business in general, and has some real economic/social sig-nificance, and . . . the research . . . has a big surprise effect.

Eric Noreen also got right to the point:

I would say a research topic is meaningful if it has the potential to significantlyimpact practice or our way of thinking about management accounting.

And Mark Dirsmith expressed his view in this way:

What makes an important topic is not some kind of theoretical hole, is notsome kind of glitch in the research methods, it is an evolving social problemwithin a specific context.

Finally, an auditing scholar (Arnold Wright) stated his belief that even if the topicis not important in the near term, it still should have long run importance to theprofession or to the accounting area. The underlying theme across the scholars isthat for research to be meaningful and significant, it must get out of the ‘‘ivorytower’’ of academia and address real world problems. The research should have thepotential to impact the practice of accounting or how accounting information isused, either in the short run or in the long run.


Table 1

Characteristics of meaningful/significant research topics as suggested by the accounting scholars

Accounting

scholar

Significantly impacts literature/knowledge Miscellaneous

Addresses a real world/

societal problem

Fills significant gap/

Advances theory

Produces salient,

novel/new,

or unexpected results

Addresses hard-to-solve research issue/

Introduces new procedures

1 X

2 X X

3 X X X

4 X X

5 X

6 X X X

7 X

8 X X

9 X X

10 X X

11 X X X

12 X X

13 X

14 X X

15 X

16 X

17 X

18 X X

19 X X

20 X

Total 11 6 7 4 7

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187

3.1.2. Significantly impacts literature/knowledge3.1.2.1. Fills significant gap/Advances theory. Six scholars indicated that for a researchtopic to be especially meaningful and significant, it should deal with a significant gap inthe literature or significantly advance theory in a particular area. The point that thesescholars stress is that a small tweaking of the literature is not likely to produce a sig-nificant contribution. For example, John Evans indicated that the research should be:

. . . not so much just an incremental tweaking of things that we already believebut rather something that results in a fairly significant change in prior beliefs ofthose who really know the field well and ideally not just experts in that area. . .You’d really like to see something that, maybe not immediately but ulti-mately, would really affect the practice in the area.

George Foster stated a similar view as follows:

Is this a topic which is going to do more than just marginally extend what’salready in the literature? It’s awfully important at the start of projects to thinkquite clearly about where this paper would look in the literature when it ispublished. You don’t want somebody to pick up the journal and say: ‘‘This istrivial,’’ or ‘‘This is not worth reading.’’

He went on to elaborate:

Is this something at which there’s an ability to get a stream of research headed in anew direction or, even better, to start up a new research direction? This approachcauses you to look at topics that potentially are more risky, but I think have moreupside. Too often what happens at the start of a research project is that peoplemap out a discipline and fill in the boxes. In the old days people used to do capitalmarket research and they would do an API study, a beta association study, or avaluation study. For any topic there were four or five different topics you couldlook at and then people would have on the rows say those four or five. On thecolumns they would have every new FASB opinion that came out. And what yousaw some people doing is saying ‘‘Let’s fill in the matrix for each opinion and ifthere’s not a tick there that’s a viable topic.’’ The trouble with that approach is thatit is far too predictable and you just don’t give yourself the chance to have a paperthat’s moving the discipline, the paper that’s going to be well cited.

3.1.2.2. Produces salient, novel/new or unexpected results. Seven scholars consideredit important for a piece of research to generate salient, novel/new, or unexpectedresults. A management accounting scholar, Michael Shields, expressed this viewsuccinctly when he said:

A study is interesting if it addresses a topic that is salient, consequential, novel,contrary to conventional wisdom, or unexpected, subject to the study beingbelievable.


Greg Waymire put it this way:

I look for things about the papers that are unique and that is, is there somethingabout this paper that I would not probably have seen otherwise or thoughtabout? And very few papers will fit that bill for me. Let me give you an example.Russ Lundholm and Mark Lang published a paper about 6 or 7 years ago thatlooked at a disclosure question that tried to measure firms’ disclosure practicesmore comprehensively using security analysts’ assessments of it. And they hadsome unique data that they brought to bear on it. I found that paper particularlyinteresting because there was something I saw there that I thought was particularlyuseful, and I wouldn’t have thought about going at it in that way.

3.1.2.3. Addresses hard-to-solve research issue/Introduces new procedures. Fourscholars saw the tackling of hard-to-solve research issues or introduction of newprocedures as affecting a topic’s degree of significance. Dan Collins had this to say:

I think a research topic that will generate the most interest is one that has acontemporary flavor to it—i.e. one that deals with a current reporting ormeasurement issue. In the financial accounting area, a topic that’s timely and dealswith an issue that the FASB or the SEC is wrestling with would be a good choice.For example, the measurement and reporting of intangibles like managerial talentor R&D.

An information systems scholar, Al Leitch, explained it this way:

. . .By that I mean trying to solve some problems. This involves the promotionof new innovations and procedures. In particular this will involve using thecapabilities of information technology to resolve accounting problems.

3.1.3. Miscellaneous factorsSeven responses focused on dimensions beyond those mentioned above. Two

scholars indicated that a topic must be internally exciting to them. This, of course,can be due to the topic’s potential contribution to the literature and/or solving ofreal world problems. But to the scholars who mentioned the need for personalexcitement, this factor seemed to encompass broader considerations. Jacob Birnbergexpressed his view as follows:

I think for the most part I tend to find topics that just appeal to me subject tothe constraint that they’re concerned with how people decide. I think that thechoice of specific topics is very much a garbage can model of decision making.

George Foster also stressed the importance of researcher interest in the topic:


Table 2

Processes used by the accounting scholars to identify/develop research topics

Accounting scholar Following and critically

looking at the literature

Keeping abreast of real

world issues

Working with

colleagues

Other

1 X

2 X X

3 X

4 X

5 X

6 X

7 X

8 X

9 X

10 X

11 X

12 X X

13 X

14 X

15 X X

16 X

17 X X

18 X

19 X

20 X X

Total 13 7 4 1

190

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I think the first thing to consider is whether it internally excites you. Is itsomething you want to devote some time and some resources to? That’s not gotanything to do with the discipline per se. If you’ve got to work on somethingthat’s potentially going to take a year or longer, you should be able to get up inthe morning and get excited about it.

He went on to suggest another relevant factor:

I actually think citations are really important. You should think about citingpatterns at the front of a research project. Is this something that you thinkother people will be citing? The purpose of writing is to be read and althoughbeing read does not necessarily mean that you’re going to be cited, I wouldargue that most of the well-cited papers are indeed read. So I really encouragedoctoral students and junior faculty here, when they set up their researchagenda, to have an agenda, and not a paper by paper approach.

Overall, the comments of these scholars suggest that there are diverse ways for aresearch topic to be meaningful or significant. The research can be focused on spe-cific societal issues or problems in practice, particular areas or phenomena, or gapsin the literature or knowledge. And the contribution can come from introducing newmethods or theories or obtaining unique results. But a common point of emphasis isthat the research should aim for a substantial advance rather than be satisfied with aminor tweaking of prior approaches or methods, and that the topic has to be interestingto the researcher.

3.2. Identifying and developing ideas into publications

Table 2 presents our categorization of the scholars’ descriptions of their ideageneration processes. As with Table 1, some scholars’ responses encompassed mul-tiple categories. Also as may be expected, the categories in Table 2 are closely relatedto those in Table 1. There are three categories in addition to an ‘‘other’’ category: (1)Following and critically looking at the literature; (2) Keeping abreast of real worldissues; and (3) Working with colleagues. It is important to emphasize that these cate-gories are not mutually exclusive. For example, one could discuss the literature or realworld issues with colleagues. Or issues can span both practice and the research lit-erature. Thus, while we believe that the categories facilitate presentation of findings,we also hope that readers will be on guard against an overly rigid interpretation(‘‘pigeon-holing’’) of the scholars’ experiences and insights.

3.2.1. Following and critically evaluating the literatureThirteen scholars reported that staying current with the literature was the primary

way that they had successfully identified and developed research ideas. Commentingon his work on activity-based-costing, Eric Noreen reported that he had begun byfocusing on the untested assumptions of this costing approach:


It struck me early on that there were a number of very very strong assumptionsthat were made by activity-based-costing and by people who were implementingactivity-based-costing, and they didn’t seem to be aware of the assumptions norwere they concerned about the possibility that some of the very strongassumptions that were being made were in fact false. . . It seemed to me that thefirst thing to do was to establish what the assumptions of activity-based-costingwere and then the next step would be to go and attempt to test those assump-tions with empirical data to find out if the assumptions are reasonably satisfiedor not. And that was a conscious plan. And so I sat down and wrote a com-pletely analytical paper for that which appeared in the Journal of ManagementAccounting Research. Once I had done that then I said ‘‘Alright I’m going to goand attempt to test some of these assumptions.’’ I have not tested all of them.Actually the only one I really tested to any degree is the assumption that costsare proportional to activity and the way I went about testing that was withhospital data from Washington State. . . I was able to test that looking at itfrom a number of perspectives and the short answer is that costs are not at allproportional; they’re much less than proportional.

This quote suggests that big gaps in the literature and knowledge are more likelyto be found in a new area. But gaps can be found in more developed areas as well, asillustrated by Arnold Wright’s description of his research on analytical procedures:

I think where this came about was our feeling that the prior work had focused alittle too narrowly. . . For example, people were tending to look at generatinghypotheses on analytical procedures. We thought: ‘‘Well, this was only part ofthe process that practitioners have to deal with.’’ So it began by thinking aboutand developing a model (or the way we conceptualized how practitioners wouldgo about dealing with this task) and we saw the prior literature being verynarrow as compared to what we had read in the auditing standards, talking topractitioners, anecdotal evidence, and our experience. . . The next step was totry to think of the theories to support this framework or model that we had puttogether. We saw it as a multi-stage kind of a thing. There has been a little bitof work done by Lisa Koonce in this area. So we tried to build upon her work.We felt there were links between these stages in the process and . . .we did aproject looking at how does one stage affect the other stages. . .. We gatheredsome data there and published a couple of papers in that area. It was broughtup to us that there was really a stage before that and a stage after that. So as welearned more. . .you find out it’s more complicated, you develop findings andfind more questions than you began with, I think. So instead of looking at thisas ‘‘We are going to do a study and get it published and it’s all over and go onto the next one,’’ to think of ‘‘What did we learn from this and what are stillopen ended questions’’ and moving the process forward.

The experience relayed by Dan Collins suggests other nuances of generating ideasfrom extant research:


There’s a lot written about so-called market anomalies like the post earningsannouncement drift. This anomaly is documented in studies by Bernard andThomas (1989 and 1990) among others. A perplexing issue is whether the mar-ket is truly inefficient and systematically fails to recognize the future earningsimplications of current period earnings surprises. Bernard and Thomasdemonstrate fairly persuasively that such is the case. A recent paper by Sloan(1996) suggests the market also seems to mis-price accruals. On the surface,there seems to be a bit of a contradiction here. The post-earnings announce-ment drift results suggest the market undervalues or under-appreciates theimplications of current earnings surprises for future earnings. In other words,the market doesn’t adjust future earnings expectations enough once the currentperiod earnings surprise becomes known. The Sloan results, on the other hand,suggest that the market over-estimates the persistence of accruals and, there-fore, over-reacts to the accruals component of earnings. That is, firms withlarge negative accruals tend to be under-priced. Sloan finds a price reversalwhen subsequent periods’ earnings are released and the market discovers theaccruals are less persistent than previously thought.

So the interesting question is: Can both of these pricing anomalies, which onthe surface appear to be inconsistent, exist simultaneously? Are these reallydifferent pricing anomalies, or do they overlap? If they are different forms ofmis-pricing, can one exploit these anomalies to generate even greater abnormalreturns than have been documented in the literature to date.

Collins’ investigation of these issues resulted in a paper with Paul Hribar in theJournal of Accounting and Economics. In the process of conducting this research,they came to another discovery:

[A] lot of accruals studies to date have actually mis-measured accruals in asubstantive way. Most researchers have relied on the presumed articulationbetween changes in working capital amounts from the balance sheet andaccrued (deferred) revenues and expenses on the income statement. Hence, theycalculate accruals indirectly by taking the year-to-year changes in workingcapital balance sheet accounts. However, this approach introduces significantmeasurement error into the accrual estimates when there are mergers, acquisi-tions, divestitures or foreign currency translations.

To follow up, Collins and Paul Hribar completed another paper which demon-strated the impact that this measurement error has in three research settings: (1)studies designed to detect earnings management; (2) studies on the pricing of cashflow and accruals components of earnings; and (3) studies on the mis-pricing ofaccruals. Thus, while they did not consciously set out to do multiple papers, newideas emerged as they worked on the first topic.Another accounting scholar, Michael Shields, indicated that he is using an inter-

disciplinary approach to develop a line of research in the judgment/decision making


area. Part of this process entails interactions with other researchers, much like thejoint work described by Dan Collins.

I would select a series of studies that Joan Luft and I have been working on.The process was a lot of brainstorming over lunches and independent readingof the literature. We wanted to do a judgment/decision making study in man-agerial accounting and we realized that what was of interest was the relation-ship between intangibles (spending on them and their later performance) andprofit performance. We looked at a lot of the psychology literature on how andhow well people do subjective regression (predict future profits based on thecurrent performance of intangibles) in the context of the multiple cue prob-ability learning paradigm, the marketing and psychology literatures on theeffects of labels for data (e.g., investment versus expense for the same expendi-ture), and some literature at the interface of organizational learning andindustrial dynamics concerning complex causality. After repeated meetings, wefinally found a couple of keys to organize our thinking. This quickly led toseveral hypotheses and the realization that it would require many experimentsto test them. Subsequently, this led to several more hypotheses, which are nowpackaged as two papers, with the next in the stream underway.

Looking across these quotes, it is obvious that there are many ways to find sig-nificant gaps in the extant literature or knowledge. These gaps may exist in the formof untested assumptions, anomalous or conflicting results, or uncertainty abouteffects or relationships. Identification of such gaps requires, or at least is facilitatedby, an in-depth and up-to-date knowledge of the area. Bringing to bear an inter-disciplinary approach can further increase one’s chances of unearthing promisingtopics and research directions.

3.2.2. Keeping abreast of real world issuesWhile the quotes for the current category emphasize attention to real world issues,

those for the preceding category also referenced such issues. Hence, the two cate-gories reflect a difference in emphasis more than a fundamental divergence ofapproach. Together, they suggest the view that research topics are more meaningfuland/or significant if they address issues of interest to the academic literature, the realworld, or both. One can identify such issues by starting from the academic literature,and then relating this literature to real world issues. Or one can start with real worldissues, and see the extent to which the academic literature has successfully addressedthese issues.Emphasizing the benefits from interacting with the real world, Ted Mock descri-

bed his experience with spending a year at a large public accounting firm:

I spent a year with Peat Marwick and we discussed three or four lines ofresearch or areas of research that they were interested in having work done on.These came from practice. One was internal control and with my background ininformation systems and computers, I felt that was possibly a good match. I


worked with Jerry Turner, manager with Peat Marwick. . . . At that time therewas very little published research, particularly academic research, so it was awide open area. We actually started by developing a portfolio of research pos-sibilities. We presented that to Peat Marwick and . . .ended up doing a multi-method study in consultation with these partners, but it was interesting thatthey preferred the experimental study. So we spent about a year doing three setsof experiments and a protocol study.

Another auditing researcher, Bill Kinney, summarized his experiences with devel-oping two research ideas:

Eighteen years ago the Auditing Standards Board was writing SAS No. 39on audit sampling and there were alternative ways of wording the guidancefor auditors to follow. We conducted an experiment on which way wouldlead to less error by auditors in applying it. The guidance was based uponpsychological theory as to how practitioners would better understand thestatistical concepts involved, whether it was in terms of confidence intervalor hypothesis test. The standards then were written consistent with whatpsychology theory said because we tested it out on practitioners in anexperiment. This past year the SEC became interested in the effect of smallerrors on earnings and their possible effect on stock price valuation. Thisled to two studies of the effect of misstatement, one a capital market studyon earnings surprises, working with analysts’ forecasts and the earningsthat were announced and then measuring stock price reaction to variouslevels of accounting misstatement. The second study was an experiment ofaudit managers on what they thought management would do in light ofthe increased interest by the SEC in booking all audit differences that werenoted.

John Evans, who has done considerable research on not-for-profit organizations,described in detail how he had developed a healthcare research project with colleagues:

We were talking to the chief financial officer of a hospital about some issuesfacing his industry. . .and. . .he described a program that they had in place wherethey were trying to change the behavior of the physicians who practiced at thehospital. Like most hospitals, this is a not-for-profit organization where thegreat majority of the practice that goes on there is by physicians who have pri-vileges at the hospital but are not hospital employees. . ..Yet the physiciansmake most of the calls as far as the ultimate resource consumption within thehospital was concerned. And the program that they were looking at was some-thing. . .where what they attempt to do is profile the practice pattern of thephysician and compare that physician to other physicians treating cases in asimilar area in the hospital, and providing the physician with feedback on aquarterly basis. . .. And along with that feedback information they would havean interview with a department chair. . .. What we were trying to find out was


really two issues. First, when they put this program in place, did it have a realeffect on the decisions the physicians were making at the hospital in terms ofgetting the patients out of the hospital sooner? And. . .it in fact did have a sig-nificant effect. And then we looked at the financial issue or the accounting issue.Ok, you got a change in behavior there but did it ultimately have the financialimpact that you’d really like? . . .This is I think a bit more con-troversial. . .because usually in that industry, the length of stay or days in thehospital is thought of as a natural cost driver. . . But we had a lot of reason tothink the days weren’t driving a lot of the costs. . . and what we found. . . wasthat you really could not find any related financial savings even though theywere able to achieve a fairly significant reduction in the length of stay in thehospital.

3.2.3. Working with colleaguesA number of the preceding quotes had alluded to the benefits of working with

colleagues and students. Four scholars specifically emphasized the importance ofthis factor to their success. Lawrence Brown illustrates the dynamics of workingwith a colleague, at the same time echoing earlier quotes that research is an evolvingprocess of discovery, with early steps sometimes leading to directions previouslyunanticipated:

I was working with Michael Rozeff on a study where we were evaluating ana-lysts and we wanted to know how good analysts are at predicting earnings. Thestate of the art at the time suggested that analysts were no better than simplyextrapolating from the past into the future, the so-called simple time seriesmodel or some time series model. At this time–this was in the late 70’s — the so-called Box Jenkins models were starting to become known. I wouldn’t really saypopular because I’m not sure they were yet. They started to become popular I’dsay in accounting. We needed some benchmark, we didn’t want to compareanalysts with last quarter’s earnings equals this quarter’s earnings type of amodel because it would be a weak benchmark so we needed some benchmark,some valid benchmark for evaluating how good analysts are. I became aware ofa couple of working papers at the time, one by Foster which later was publishedin the Accounting Review in January 1977, and a paper by Griffin which laterappeared in the 1976 Journal of Accounting Research. There was also a workingpaper that was never published by Watts in 1975 suggesting that the time seriesprocess is so and so and such and such. Well even prior to that time I said toRozeff, ‘‘Look, Box Jenkins is popular. Why don’t you go and look at our firmsand try to figure out what is the so-called underlying Box Jenkins model thatseems to be underlying our firms. Just go ahead and identify these firms indivi-dually and figure out what the process is.’’ So we did that and after we did thatI learned about these other papers and I said ‘‘Hey Mike, by the way how manyof these individually identified models that you came up with were of the Watts-Griffin type and how many of them were of the Foster type?’’ He said ‘‘Well,


you know, I had so many of these and so many of those but I had a third typewhich showed up more than any of them.’’ We said ‘‘Ok, how do each of thesethree models, the model we identified, the model Foster identified, and themodel Griffin identified, what are we finding?’’ And we’re finding that themodel we identified seemed to be explaining better than the so-called individu-ally identified models we came up with. So we were doing one thing for onepurpose and then became aware of something else that was going on.

The experience of Chee Chow also convinced him of the benefits from workingwith co-authors, in addition to interacting with practitioners:

I was sitting in on a colleague’s cost/management accounting course, and therewas a speaker from a local hospital. Part of his talk was about the cost alloca-tions in a hospital and the regulations about how it is to be done. I invited aPhD student who I had taught in a seminar to visit the hospital administratorwith me to find out more about the cost allocation process. In the course of ourconversation with the administrator, he pulled a couple of thick file foldersfrom his shelf and explained to us how the State of Washington HospitalCommission regulated reimbursement rates for hospitals in the state, includinghow these differed among different types of hospitals, and how the fixed vs.variable overheads were treated. After the conversation, the student and Istarted to talk about what we had learned. The idea just struck me that with theWashington State regulatory approach, hospitals could actually game the sys-tem by manipulating the forecasts that they provided to the Commission. Afterthis idea was further developed, we invited Eric Noreen to work with us todevelop the analytics, arranged to get the real hospital data, and published thestudy in the Accounting Review. . . .This experience really brought home to methe importance of teaming up with others. The student who I had invited to joinme on the project was quite early in the doctoral program and far less knowl-edgeable than I was about accounting research. Yet through our interaction, wewere able to come up with a research idea that neither of us would likely havegenerated by himself.

Finally, Jerold Zimmerman described how he and Ross Watts had developed the‘‘positive theory’’ of accounting choice:

Back in the 70’s a lot of people in finance and some accounting people lookedat a series of studies on capital market efficiencies and concluded that the mar-ket can pretty much discount the differences between accounting methods andlook beyond the accounting numbers to the underlying cash flows in settingstock prices. And if that was the case, then it was hard to understand why theBig 8 and large corporations, security analysts. . .there was so much resourcesbeing devoted to the setting of accounting standards. At the time, most aca-demics at the top schools seemed to think the whole standard setting practicewas misdirected effort, especially as it was portrayed. At that time Ross Watts


and I thought there must be something else to accounting standards other thansecurity valuation. That set us off thinking about a series of contracting vari-ables and other uses of accounting other than providing information for thecapital markets. That was basically the process that got us thinking throughthis. At the same time there was also a set of colleagues at Rochester, colleaguesin Economics and Finance, Mike Jensen and Bill Meckling in particular, whowere looking at various corporate governance questions and were developingsome of the early agency theory papers.

The message from these quotes is that not only can colleagues provide valuableadditional expertise, but the interaction with them can lead to new ideas and facilitatethe development of ideas into successful publications.

3.2.4. OtherThere was only one response classified into this category. This scholar indicated

that he worked on things over a very long time period. This person further indicatedthat he/she frequently mulled things over for possibly years before deciding how toattack a problem.

4. Summary and applications to accounting education research

In his treatise on the nature of scholarship, Boyer (1990) called for taking a broadview of what scholarship entails. He proposed that scholarship extends beyond thetraditional emphasis on ‘‘commitment to knowledge for its own sake’’ (p. 17) andintegration (giving meaning to isolated facts and putting them in perspective).Rather, scholarship also includes application [‘‘How can knowledge be responsiblyapplied to consequential problems? How can it be helpful to individuals as well asinstitutions?’’ (p.21)] and teaching, which ‘‘at its best, means not only transmittingknowledge, but transforming and extending it as well.’’ (p. 24).Taken as a whole, the accounting scholars interviewed for this study seemed to

share Boyer’s broad and encompassing perspective of scholarship. With regard towhat makes a research topic meaningful/significant, there was considerable con-sensus that the research should have a significant impact upon the literature and/oraddress a real world problem. The literature impact can come from filling a significantgap in theory, producing salient, novel/new or unexpected results, advancing under-standing of hard-to-solve research issues, or introducing new procedures. Muchemphasis was placed on not only developing an in-depth and up-to-date knowledge ofthe academic literature, but also on relating such knowledge to developments in theenvironment within which accounting functions.Regarding the idea generation process, the scholars provided numerous examples

of how they look for gaps in the literature, identify important real-world problems,and work with colleagues to generate and develop research ideas. Many of theseexamples were quoted in detail to facilitate access to the richness and nuances of thescholars’ approaches and experiences.


How are the findings of this study relevant to conducting accounting educationresearch? On the whole, the scholars interviewed for this study had primarily pub-lished in other areas of the accounting literature. If there are unique challenges inconducting and publishing accounting education research, applicability of thesescholars’ experiences may be limited. As such, a study similar to this one, but tar-geting highly published and/or cited authors of accounting education research,could add useful insights.We acknowledge that each area of accounting research may have its idiosyncratic

elements (e.g. paradigms, data, and predominant empirical methods). But we alsowould maintain that issues of a fundamental nature — such as what characteristicsmake an idea meaningful/significant — transcend the boundaries among researchareas. Evidence to support this view is abundant from the interviews. Despite theirdiverse areas of research foci, the 20 scholars were remarkably consistent in theirpoints of emphasis.Adopting this premise, we propose that the findings can provide useful guidance

to accounting education researchers. First and foremost, the findings underscore theimportance of identifying issues that are of major, rather than incidental, import tothe environment, practice, or theory of accounting education. As implied by thescholars’ experiences, successfully identifying meaningful topics requires knowledgeof the current state of accounting education, an awareness of issues that are of cur-rent concern, and theories and methods that are potentially applicable to educationtopics.Just as accounting research in general often imports theories and methods from

other disciplines (e.g., economics, finance, psychology), accounting education ofteninterfaces with areas like education, educational psychology, and information tech-nology. The scholars’ emphasis on keeping abreast of developments in sister dis-ciplines suggests that accounting education researchers can benefit from similarattention to developments in these fields. Furthermore, issues in accounting educa-tion often transcend sub-areas of the accounting discipline, such that there is bothneed and potential benefit from collaboration and communication among colleagueswith different sub-area expertise. Indeed, some central issues in accounting educa-tion, such as performance evaluation and motivation of faculty, could readily bepositioned as research issues in management controls.Accounting education researchers face the same challenge confronting researchers

in other areas of accounting research, namely, that the field is highly complex, withmultitudes of factors and relationships. An effective aid for understanding the lit-erature and developments is a framework that identifies the relevant participants,factors, processes, and interrelationships. To a large degree, one’s success in identi-fying issues, gaps in the literature, room for new procedures, etc. will depend on therichness of the framework that he/she develops. As suggested by the scholars’emphasis on teamwork, interacting with others can significantly enhance one’s fra-mework development. But there also is a foundation from extant writings on thenature and constituent elements of accounting education (e.g. Chang & Chow, 1999;Frederickson & Pratt, 1995; Herring & Izard, 1992; Nelson, Bailey, & Nelson, 1998;Williams, Tiller, Herring, & Scheiner, 1988). At a more detailed level, help also is


available from scholars who have provided reviews of the field. For example,Rebele, Apostolou, Buckless, Hassell, Pacquett, and Stout (1998a) have reviewedthe accounting education literature on curriculum and instructional approaches;Rebele, Apostolou, Buckless, Hassell, Pacquett, and Stout (1998b) focused on writ-ings related to students, educational technology, assessment and faculty issues, andApostolou, Watson, Hassell, and Webber (2001) have provided an update to 1999.While it is incumbent upon each scholar to develop his/her own framework, Fig. 1

illustrates how one may be structured. This illustrative model integrates a number ofproposed frameworks for understanding the nature and components of accountingeducation. It views the ‘‘raw material’’ inputs of accounting education asthe students, who possess a set of personal characteristics, including preferences,experiences and aptitudes, and expectations. These students are attracted from alarger pool, their choice of accounting over other fields being influenced by suchfactors as their career expectations, information about the content of an accountingprogram and how it differs from others, information about employment prospects ofaccounting graduates versus those of other specialties, their perceptions about the fitbetween their own capabilities and interests and the demands of accounting versusalternate programs of study, and the universities or programs to which they havegained admission. Once enrolled, the students go through a ‘‘production’’ or edu-cational process that involves a number of facets and factors. These components ofthe accounting education production function include the curriculum (e.g., mix andcontent of accounting and non-accounting courses), the faculty who contribute their

Fig. 1. A simple model of the accounting educational process.


expertise and effort, teaching materials and methods (e.g., lecture versus problem-based learning, relative use of individual versus team-based learning activities),outcome assessment methods (e.g., testing), facilities and other infrastructure sup-port (e.g., computers, databases, advising, library resources), as well as contact andinteraction with peers and external parties (e.g., practitioners).Both the availability and configuration of these facets and factors are subject to

institutional and other influences. For example, faculty competencies and effort maybe affected by the faculty selection process, support for staff development, level andadequacy of faculty remuneration, workload, and how faculty performance is eval-uated and rewarded (e.g., the relative emphases on teaching, research and servicecontributions; whether teaching performance is evaluated solely on the basis of stu-dent evaluations, or also based on peer evaluations and an assessment of the portfolioof teaching materials; the extent to which research assessment is focused on quantityversus quality of output). Computer availability may be subject to institutional allo-cation policies and government funding. Together, these factors can affect the stu-dents’ own input into the learning process (e.g., level and focus of effort).At the end of the process, students emerge with particular personal and profes-

sional characteristics (e.g., work ethic, professional ethics, competencies, and life-long learning capabilities), and enter the labor market and provide services tosociety and their employers. Over time, as changes occur in the external environmentand the institution, and feedback is obtained from past results (e.g., students’ degreeof success after graduation), changes may occur in each component of the process aswell as how they relate to each other.By developing a framework like this, a researcher can more readily organize what

he/she understands about the literature and the field, thereby identifying issues thateither have not been addressed or have not been addressed adequately. For example,the framework can facilitate placement and evaluation of prior research on theinterface between accounting education and the input to the process (e.g. Geiger &Ogilby, 2000; Saemann & Crooker, 1999), on the accounting education process itself(e.g. Johnstone & Biggs, 1998; Baker & White, 1999; Bailey, Gupta, & Schrader,2000), on the interface between the output of the process and the market foraccounting graduates (e.g. Ott & Donnelly, 1999; Schmutte, 1998; Theuri & Gunn,1998) as well as research relating accounting education to environmental factors(e.g., Jordan, 1999).In closing, there is much room and need for additional research into issues in

accounting education as well as other areas of accounting. We hope that the detailedsharing of experiences by the 20 accounting scholars will help readers attain higherlevels of publication productivity and contribution to knowledge.

Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to two anonymous reviewers and the Editor for manyuseful suggestions. They also thank the many accounting scholars who so generouslyshared their experiences and insights.


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identifying meaningful and significant topics

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