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1 – 3 of 3Crawford Spence and Dorothy Toh
This paper aims to show how The Audit Society was oriented towards, not just accounting scholars but also towards social scientific enquiry more broadly.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to show how The Audit Society was oriented towards, not just accounting scholars but also towards social scientific enquiry more broadly.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a reflective review of the impact that Mike Power’s The Audit Society has had on social science.
Findings
The authors find that The Audit Society successfully built conceptual bridges “up” and “out” towards other social science disciplines.
Research limitations/implications
The authors highlight the importance of theorizing “up” and “out” for present day accounting scholars.
Originality/value
The authors offer a personal reflection on The Audit Society which has influenced the own study in various ways.
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Keywords
Yasmine Chahed, Robert Charnock, Sabina Du Rietz Dahlström, Niels Joseph Lennon, Tommaso Palermo, Cristiana Parisi, Dane Pflueger, Andreas Sundström, Dorothy Toh and Lichen Yu
The purpose of this essay is to explore the opportunities and challenges that early-career researchers (ECRs) face when they seek to contribute to academic knowledge production…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this essay is to explore the opportunities and challenges that early-career researchers (ECRs) face when they seek to contribute to academic knowledge production through research activities “other than” those directly focused on making progress with their own, to-be-published, research papers in a context associated with the “publish or perish” (PoP) mentality.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing broadly on the notion of technologies of humility (Jasanoff, 2003), this reflective essay develops upon the experiences of the authors in organizing and participating in a series of nine workshops undertaken between June 2013 and April 2021, as well as the arduous process of writing this paper itself. Retrospective accounts, workshop materials, email exchanges and surveys of workshop participants provide the key data sources for the analysis presented in the paper.
Findings
The paper shows how the organization of the workshops is intertwined with the building of a small community of ECRs and exploration of how to address the perceived limitations of a “gap-spotting” approach to developing research ideas and questions. The analysis foregrounds how the workshops provide a seemingly valuable research experience that is not without contradictions. Workshop participation reveals tensions between engagement in activities “other than” working on papers for publication and institutionalized pressures to produce publication outputs, between the (weak) perceived status of ECRs in the field and the aspiration to make a scholarly contribution, and between the desire to develop a personally satisfying intellectual journey and the pressure to respond to requirements that allow access to a wider community of scholars.
Originality/value
Our analysis contributes to debates about the ways in which seemingly valuable outputs are produced in academia despite a pervasive “publish or perish” mentality. The analysis also shows how reflexive writing can help to better understand the opportunities and challenges of pursuing activities that might be considered “unproductive” because they are not directly related to to-be-published papers.
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Christopher Chapman, Asako Kimura, Norio Sawabe and Hiroyuki Selmes-Suzuki
This paper aims to explore how researchers in general, and field researchers in particular, might respond to systems of governance of the researchers' activity in ways that can…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how researchers in general, and field researchers in particular, might respond to systems of governance of the researchers' activity in ways that can support rather than distort the quality of the research.
Design/methodology/approach
We draw upon literature on serendipity to develop a framework for engaging with the positive and negative potentials of systems of governance. We ground our analysis in discussion of participation in the field comprising two parts: first, the examination of our own activities and second, the accounts of participation found in two career-autobiographical interviews with emeritus professors of management accounting from Japan.
Findings
We highlight the potential for a productive tension between two contrasting perspectives that researchers might take on governance of their activity. A contractual perspective sees the value of targets and detailed pre-planning. A reflexive perspective sees the value of exploring the unexpected and considering many alternatives. We offer a framework for considering serendipity and the conditions that facilitate serendipity to help researchers maintain a productive tension between these perspectives.
Research limitations/implications
We build upon retrospective accounts of two successful individuals whose careers evolved in a specific context. The intention is not to set out what might be generally achievable in a research career, nor to propose specific lines of action or planning in relation to specific systems of governance, since these vary across countries and over time. Rather, the paper draws on these materials to illuminate the more general challenge of preparing for serendipity in a way that goes beyond simple opportunism.
Originality/value
We analyse how researchers' mindfulness of serendipity and the nature of contexts that facilitate serendipity can encourage a productive tension between contractual and reflexive perspectives on governance of academic activity.
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