Towards Intellectual Monism? An Institutional Perspective on Management Accounting Research

Management accounting is widely acknowledged for its diverse and innovative research approaches that contribute to a holistic understanding of management accounting. Nevertheless, the commodification of research is claimed to foster an increasing self-referentiality and narrowness of research approaches. Building on institutional theory and considering that editorial routines are powerful institutions that may shape the research endeavours of management accounting scholars, our paper analyses the composition and academic backgrounds of the editorial staffs of the two leading management accounting journals – Management Accounting Research and the Journal of Management Accounting Research. We argue that these analyses shed light on potentially narrowing research agendas in management accounting and aid the anticipation of potential future developments. Our findings reveal considerable differences concerning the research profiles of the schools that have graduated most of the editorial staff members. Whereas graduates from these influential schools strongly focus on control issues, we identify a diversified set of underlying theoretical and methodological approaches. Based on the assumption that the mind-set of the editorial staff members might have an impact on the type of research accepted for publication, we argue that a broad set of research approaches has a fair chance for publication in the two leading management accounting journals.