IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/accfor/v26y2002i1p1-30.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rites of passage and the self‐immolation of academic accounting labour: an essay exploring exclusivity versus mutuality in accounting scholarship

Author

Listed:
  • Rob Gray
  • James Guthrie
  • Lee Parker

Abstract

The changes in public sectors of many western democracies, particularly as applied in public funded universities, have led to an environment where students have been redefined as customers, organisations and their programs have been redefined as fee generating and services have been reconstituted as commercialised competitive activities in the open marketplace. Work in this ‘new’ Higher Education Sector (HES) environment has been construed as fee generating and cost incurring, subject to financial control and evaluated for its tangible, measured outputs. This paper considers the contemporary attitudes in accounting and management academia to what constitutes research and scholarship, using Australia and the UK as case examples. From this perspective, it is argued that the changing HES environment is transforming and commodifying research into a homogenised, measured and traded commodity. This commodity is then traded in the new academic marketplace in forms such as departmental research rankings, appointability of candidates for professorial positions, departmental and individual academic competitiveness for research grants, and university eligibility for government research funding. In addition, we contend that this commodification is exhibiting a convergent tendency, in that the tradable currency shows signs of reductionism to a common form of measurement, that is, to refereed research journal articles. This paper seeks to further open up discussion and debate on these issues from both academic and general community perspectives and to offer some tentative suggestions about how we, as a community of scholars, might seek to counter this process.

Suggested Citation

  • Rob Gray & James Guthrie & Lee Parker, 2002. "Rites of passage and the self‐immolation of academic accounting labour: an essay exploring exclusivity versus mutuality in accounting scholarship," Accounting Forum, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(1), pages 1-30, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:accfor:v:26:y:2002:i:1:p:1-30
    DOI: 10.1111/1467-6303.00077
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/1467-6303.00077
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1467-6303.00077?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andrikopoulos, Andreas & Kostaris, Konstantinos, 2017. "Collaboration networks in accounting research," Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 1-9.
    2. Brian Rutherford, 2010. "The social scientific turn in UK financial accounting research: A philosophical and sociological analysis," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(2), pages 149-171.
    3. Binh Bui & Hien Hoang & Duc P. T. Phan & P. W. Senarath Yapa, 2017. "Governance and compliance in accounting education in Vietnam – case of a public university," Accounting Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(3), pages 265-290, May.
    4. Giuseppe Nicolo’ & Francesca Manes-Rossi & Johan Christiaens & Natalia Aversano, 2020. "Accountability through intellectual capital disclosure in Italian Universities," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 24(4), pages 1055-1087, December.
    5. Geert Campenhout & Tom Caneghem & Steve Uytbergen, 2008. "A comparison of overall and sub-area journal influence: The case of the accounting literature," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 77(1), pages 61-90, October.
    6. Ulrike Schmidt & Thomas Günther, 2016. "Public sector accounting research in the higher education sector: a systematic literature review," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 66(4), pages 235-265, December.
    7. Catriona Paisey & Nicholas Paisey, 2005. "The research assessment exercise 2001—insights and implications for accounting education research in the UK," Accounting Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(4), pages 411-426.
    8. M. R. Mathews, 2007. "Publish or Perish: Is this Really a Viable Set of Options?," Accounting Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(3), pages 225-240.
    9. Tucker, Basil P. & Tilt, Carol A., 2019. "‘You know it when you see it’: In search of ‘the ideal’ research culture in university accounting faculties," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    10. Parker, Lee D., 2012. "Qualitative management accounting research: Assessing deliverables and relevance," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 54-70.
    11. Lowe, Alan & Locke, Joanne, 2006. "Constructing an ‘efficient frontier’ of accounting journal quality," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 321-341.
    12. Hussain, Simon, 2010. "Accounting journals and the ABS quality ratings," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 1-16.
    13. Tucker, Basil P. & Lawson, Raef, 2020. "EMBAs perceived usefulness of academic research for student learning and use in practice," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(5).
    14. Pelger, Christoph & Grottke, Markus, 2015. "What about the future of the academy? – Some remarks on the looming colonisation of doctoral education," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 117-129.
    15. Geert Van Campenhout & Tom Van Caneghem, 2010. "Article Contribution and Subsequent Citation Rates: Evidence from European Accounting Review," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(4), pages 837-855.
    16. Parker, Lee, 2011. "University corporatisation: Driving redefinition," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 434-450.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:accfor:v:26:y:2002:i:1:p:1-30. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/racc .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.