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This paper compares and contrasts practice-based perceptions of the research–practice gap in the United States (US) with those in Australia.

The current study extends the work of Tucker and Lowe (2014) by comparing and contrasting their Australian-based findings with evidence from a questionnaire survey and follow-up interviews with senior representatives of 18 US state and national professional accounting associations.

The extent to which academic research informs practice is perceived to be limited, despite the potential for academic research findings to make a significant contribution to management accounting practice. We find similarities as well as differences in the major obstacles to closer engagement in the US and Australia. This comparison, however, leads us to offer a more fundamental explanation of the divide between academic research and practice framed in terms of the relative benefits and costs of academics engaging with practice.

Rather than following conventional approaches to ‘bridging the gap’ by identifying barriers to the adoption of research, we suggest that only after academics have adequate incentives to speak to practice can barriers to a more effective diffusion of their research findings be surmounted.

This study makes three novel contributions to the “relevance literature” in management accounting. First, it adopts a distinct theoretical vantage point to organize, analyze, and interpret empirical evidence. Second, it captures practice-based views about the nature and extent of the divide between research and practice. Third, it provides a foundational assessment of the generalizability of the gap by examining perceptions of it across two different geographic contexts.

This study assesses the availability of the fundamental factors required for the application of the Activity‐Based Costing (ABC) systems in the Palestinian governmental hospitals in Gaza Strip. The study results showed that such main factors as higher management directives, the diversity and complication of therapeutic services, the availability of accounting systems, sharp competition and the diversity of supporting activities are actually present in practical reality and represent an infrastructure for the application of (ABC) systems in those hospitals. The study concluded by making several important recommendations. Namely, the establishment of independent departments of cost accounting in the Palestinian governmental hospital supported by qualified human resources. The adoption of ABC systema because they offer more accurate cost data, provide help in planning and control and facilitate good decision‐making. Finally, the turn towards ABC systems should be gradual, step by step, so that it begins at the department level and ends with the whole hospital.