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This paper aims to offer an insight into the emergent qualitative methodological profile and its distinctive contribution to accounting and management scholarship, particularly reflecting upon the contribution of Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management (QRAM).

It examines the range of qualitative methodologies employed in the research published across the ten years of QRAM and analyses the methodological discourse and its contribution to the armoury available to qualitative researchers. In association with these methodological developments, the paper offers a critique of the articulated role of theory in contemporary accounting and management qualitative research.

A wide range of qualitative methodologies are found to be in evidence, with considerable scope for further adoption and development of some. Methodological exposition papers are found to be a significant contribution in the past decade and include methodological framework building, methodological applications, methodological critiques, and methodological development exemplars. Alongside methodology, the dual role of theory as either informing or reflecting methodology is presented.

The paper provides a critical analysis and consideration of qualitative methodological literature development in the last ten years of accounting and management research literature, particularly reflected in QRAM. It identifies dominant methodologies in use, as well as opportunities for expanding the methodological menu in accounting and management research. Furthermore, it classifies groups of methodological papers and their contributing perspectives, as well as addressing the often-vexed relationship between theory and methodology.

After a clarification of definitions important in methodological discussions, a brief history of early methodological thought in economics and political economy is presented. The development of “orthodox” methodology is traced, and the fundamental assumptions underlying neoclassical economic methodology are enumerated. Philosophical positions – both critical of and sympathetic to the orthodox assumptions – are presented. In addition, the advantages and disadvantages of various heterodox positions are surveyed. Throughout the paper, methodological justifications for the emphasis on primarily deductive, complex mathematical models in contemporary economics as practiced in the USA – especially in light of the relevance and importance of primarily verbal, interpretive methodologies in the realm of applied and policy‐oriented economics – are examined.

This essay is a review of the recent literature on the methodology of economics, with a focus on three broad trends that have defined the core lines of research within the discipline during the last two decades. These trends are: (a) the philosophical analysis of economic modelling and economic explanation; (b) the epistemology of causal inference, evidence diversity and evidence-based policy and (c) the investigation of the methodological underpinnings and public policy implications of behavioural economics. The final output is inevitably not exhaustive, yet it aims at offering a fair taste of some of the most representative questions in the field on which many philosophers, methodologists and social scientists have recently been placing a great deal of intellectual effort. The topics and references compiled in this review should serve at least as safe introductions to some of the central research questions in the philosophy and methodology of economics.

This essay begins with an examination of the differences between natural reality and social reality, but along lines different from those of the traditional Methodenstreit. The aim is to clarify the methodological implications of these differences, which appear essential to proper motivation of the objectives, purposes, and the very existence of social economics. The analysis pays a particular attention to identifying some procedures useful in formulating general principles and, more broadly, to achieve some robust notions notwithstanding the growing intensification, in modern society, of innovation. A main result of the research is that it permits an unambiguous distinction between the aspects that express necessity and those that can be the object of choice in the organization and development of economic and social systems, and a peculiar treatment of ethical‐ideological aspects.

This chapter presents a conceptual framework and methodological guide for researching the process of public management policy change in the Latin America region. It provides an explicit the methodological approach for case study research on this topic. The focus on the Latin America region is due to the sponsorship of the Inter-American Development Bank, which desired an explicit methodological guide for conducting research on public sector management reform. While the chapter is specifically geared to this purpose, it also exhibits a distinctive general approach to a large class of case study research designs. This class includes instrumental case study research about processes, incorporating variants that are rich in narrative, explicit in their explanatory framework, and comparative (Barzelay, 2002).

The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate the centrality of the tabula rasa concept of self for the medical model of homeless service provision. Using four years of ethnographic data analyzed with a grounded fractal methodology, we illustrate the logical interconnections between the particular phenomena of homeless service institutions and broad cultural contexts. While social science has been somewhat critical of the medicalization of homelessness, its shared supposition about the self has relegated it to structural critiques that offer little to the currently homeless and those who want to help them. In contrast, we illuminate a path toward the development of an alternative pedagogy of individualism that is more directly responsive to the problematics of the medical model of homeless service provision.

The economic science is again in a crisis and a new solution prolegomena to any future study in economics, finance and other social sciences has just been published by the International Institute of Social Economics in care of the MCB University Press in England. The roots of the major financial and economic problems of our time lie in an open conflict between theory and practice. In the 1930s and before the conflict was between classical theory and given realities. In the 1990s the conflict appears between the now prevailing modern, Keynesian theory and the actual realities. In addition during the twentieth century a great argument developed between the two schools of thought, argument which is not yet settled. In one sentence, the prolegomena tried and was successful to solve the conflict between theory and practice and the big doctrinal dispute of the twentieth century. It was a struggle of research and observation over half a century between 1947 and 1997.

Multivariate latent growth modeling (multivariate LGM) provides a flexible data analytic framework for representing and assessing cross-domain (i.e., between-constructs) relationships in intraindividual changes over time, which also allows incorporation of multiple levels of analysis. Using the chapter by Cortina, Pant, and Smith-Darden (this volume) as a point of departure, this chapter discusses important preliminary data analysis and interpretation issues prior to performing multivariate LGM analyses.

This paper aims to address the reporting of validation and evaluation criteria in qualitative management accounting studies, which is a topic of critical debate in qualitative social science research. The objective of this study is to investigate the ways researchers have reported the use of evaluation criteria in qualitative management accounting studies and whether they are associated with certain paradigmatic affiliations.

Building on the work of Eriksson and Kovalainen [Eriksson and Kovalainen (2008) Qualitative Methods in Business Research. London, Sage], the following three approaches are examined: the adoption of classic concepts of validity and reliability, the use of alternative concepts and the abandonment of general evaluation criteria. Content analysis of 212 case and field studies published during 2006 to February 2015 was conducted to be able to offer an analysis of the most recent frontiers of knowledge.

The key empirical results of this study provide partial support for the theoretical expectations. They specify and refine Eriksson and Kovalainen’s (2008) classification system, first, by identifying a new approach to evaluation and validation and, second, by showing mixed results on the paradigmatic consistency in the use of evaluation criteria.

This paper is not necessarily exhaustive or representative of all the evaluation criteria developed; the authors focused on the explicit reporting of criteria only and the findings cannot be generalized. Somewhat different results might have been obtained if other journals, other fields of research or a longer period were considered.

The findings of this study enhance the knowledge of alternative approaches and criteria to validation and evaluation. The findings can aid both in the evaluation of management accounting research and in the selection of appropriate evaluation approaches and criteria.

This paper presents a synthesis of the literature (Table I) and new empirical findings that are potentially useful for both academic scholars and practitioners.