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This chapter describes the development of a two-course sequence, which explicitly breaks down the silos between the accounting and finance disciplines. A descriptive narrative demonstrates how these courses integrate introductory courses in general business, managerial accounting, financial accounting and finance, and are taught freshman year. The courses are based around an 18-chapter Instructional Narrative about a fictitious company, Windspark, which evolves from a start-up service business in the wind turbine industry to a retailer of parts and then a manufacturer. Topics are introduced as the entrepreneurs in the Instructional Narrative require business knowledge. Individual faculty members teach an entire course, rather than teams comprised from different disciplines. A diagnostic quiz at the beginning of the second course tests students’ understanding and retention of material in the first course. The vast majority of students pass the diagnostic quiz on the first try. Despite its rigor and difficulty, the sequence has coincided with a significant uptick in students choosing to major in finance and accounting. This sequence demonstrates the feasibility and replicability of teaching a truly integrated introductory accounting and finance course sequence. Greater coordination and cooperation between disciplines is possible, with measurable benefits for students.

Ethical leadership is of great interest in the accounting profession. After numerous ethical and moral leadership failures over the last two decades, where accounting professionals played a significant role in the fraudulent behaviors that impacted individuals, businesses, and the economy as a whole, the profession has renewed its focus on promoting ethical behavior. To date, research contributing to improving ethical behavior in the accounting profession has been minimal. A plethora of research has identified the deficiency of ethical reasoning and conduct in accounting students and professionals but has provided minimal recommendations on how to improve the status quo. Earlier studies have also found that values based, ethical and transformational leadership behaviors contribute to leader effectiveness in the accounting and business professions. What has not been studied or identified are the specific ethical and transformational leadership behaviors that should be sought or developed in professionals that would improve the ethical conduct and effectiveness of accounting leaders. This study seeks to address the gap in the literature by using neuro network analysis to understand the individual components of ethical and transformational leadership that result in leaders that are more effective in the profession. It concludes that in this study of 212 accounting professionals, ethical leaders that: (a) communicate openly, (b) are trustworthy, (c) consider and support their subordinates’ interest and (d) are altruistic, with a selfless concern for the well-being of others and transformational leaders that encourage their followers to think creatively are innovative are more effective leaders.

This chapter includes a citation analysis of the first 16 volumes of Advances in Accounting Education: Teaching and Curriculum Innovations (henceforth, Advances in Accounting Education). Using this analysis, we identified the top 20 articles of the 195 articles published. This analysis provides an understanding of the relative contribution and impact of the papers published in Advances in Accounting Education, and the information provides past authors with a measure of how their contributions compare with the contributions of other authors. Also, this analysis may be valuable for potential contributors who are developing a research topic in that it will enable them to identify the types of articles that have traditionally had the greatest impact.

We also identify the top 30 authors of the 383 who have published in the journal. This analysis not only gives feedback to the authors listed, but also helps accounting education researchers identify authors whose work may be relevant to their interests.

We report the research categories (issues) and methodologies used for all articles published from 1998 to 2015 in Advances in Accounting Education. We also compare the research issues and research methodologies used in Advances in Accounting Education to those in the Journal of Accounting Education and Issues in Accounting Education for the period 2006–2015. Authors considering submitting a manuscript to one of these journals can use this information to determine which journal might be the best fit for their work.