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This study aims to investigate the selection and use of introductory financial accounting (IFA) textbooks in the context of achieving the objectives of accounting education to provide both discipline-specific skills and liberal education.

This paper adopts a qualitative research design to collect data through semi-structured interviews with 33 accounting educators across Indonesia. This study uses the institutional theory approach to explain how accounting textbooks are selected and used to meet the objectives of accounting education at universities.

The study provides evidence of the adoption of a systematic procedure for the selection of recommended IFA textbooks. The selection was driven by the technical-regulatory objective of providing technical training. This objective also guides the use of the recommended textbooks. In a sense, accounting educators were more concerned about responding to institutional pressures of preparing accountants for work in the accounting industry rather than providing students with a liberal education that promotes critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

This study focuses on the selection and use of IFA textbooks. Further research should examine the contents of various accounting textbooks and obtain feedback from the people involved in the publication of the textbooks.

The findings of this study have important implications for accounting educators. They can use these findings to improve their selection and use of accounting textbooks.

University Accountancy faculty need criteria to assist with the selection of textbooks, to ensure that the subject matter is congruent with the level at which students are taught. Readability is one such criterion. The purpose of this study is to assess the readability of two Managerial Accounting and two Financial Management textbooks, using three different readability evaluation methods.

The sample for the study included 281 Accounting students from an Eastern seaboard university. Each student was requested to complete two passages – one from a Management Accounting textbook and one from a Financial Management textbook. The Gunning Fog Index, Flesch Reading Ease and Cloze Procedure readability evaluation methods were used to measure readability.

The findings suggest varying levels of readability among the textbooks. Results from the Cloze Procedure reveal that three of the four textbooks were being read at the Frustration Level and the fourth marginally above the Frustration Level. The readability formulae returned varying results demonstrating that some of the textbooks were at a level that the students ought to be able to read.

Only two Managerial Accounting and two Financial Management textbooks of many published were assessed, and only three readability evaluation methods were used.

The findings have implications for university faculty, authors, publishers, editors and students.

The readability of Managerial Accounting and Financial Management textbooks used at South African universities, has received scant attention in the literature. The analysis of the readability of the accounting textbooks, presents a synthesis that adds important knowledge in this under‐researched topic.

Despite growing interest in the intersection of supply chain management (SCM) and management accounting (MA) in the academic debate, there is a lack of understanding regarding both the content and the delimitation of this topic. As of today, no common conceptualization of supply chain management accounting (SCMA) exists. The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of the research foci of SCMA in the scholarly debate of the past two decades. Additionally, it analyzes whether and to what extent the academic discourse of MA in SCs has already found its way into both SCM and MA higher education, respectively.

A content analysis is conducted including 114 higher education textbooks written in English or in German language.

The study finds that SC-specific concepts of MA are seldom covered in current textbooks of both disciplines. The authors conclude that although there is an extensive body of scholarly research about SCMA concepts, there is a significant discrepancy with what is taught in higher education textbooks.

There is a large discrepancy between the extensive knowledge available in scholarly research and what we teach in both disciplines. This implies that graduates of both disciplines lack important knowledge and skills in controlling and accounting for SCs. To bring about the necessary change, MA and SCM in higher education must be more integrative.

To the best of the authors knowledge, this study is first of its kind comprising a large textbook sample in both English and German languages. It is the first substantiated assessment of the current state of integration between SCM and MA in higher education.

This study examines 117 verbs associated with 2,872 learning objectives, and 377 questions taken from 24 textbooks across the accounting curriculum. To determine the level of cognitive ability associated with the individual learning objectives I analyzed the verbs based upon Bloom's Taxonomy. To reach across the accounting curriculum I chose texts from Financial Accounting, Intermediate Financial Accounting, Advanced Financial Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Cost Accounting, and Auditing. Results of the analysis found that the authors used verbs at the lower learning levels of the cognitive domain. The verbs used by the author teams depend upon individual preference rather a specific segment of the cognitive domain. In addition, as the student progresses through the accounting curriculum some topics in upper level textbooks use learning objectives at the same level as in introductory level textbooks.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the perspectives of accounting lecturers regarding the contents of accounting textbooks. It focusses on the ideological character of introductory financial accounting (IFA) textbooks prescribed in the first year of accounting degrees in Indonesia.

The ideological analysis is informed by Thompson’s (1990) concept of ideology, which was used in a critical sense to refer to its role in serving unequal power relations. Semi-structured interviews of Indonesian accounting lecturers were utilised to collect data.

In the interviews, the lecturers revealed that the prescribed IFA textbooks focussed on prioritising shareholder interests. The mainstream view among the lecturers was that accounting textbooks realistically exhibited the natural form of accounting, whilst lecturers with an Islamic accounting and finance background notably viewed the character of IFA textbooks as serving an ideological role or permeating propaganda. The latter suggests that alternative worldviews, relevant and nuanced to the Indonesian context, are promoted in accounting education.

The findings presented in this paper should provide a basis for further research into the ideological character of accounting textbooks by analysing the internal structure of accounting textbooks and investigating the broader perspectives of other users and individuals involved in the production of accounting textbooks.

An awareness of the ideological representation of accounting textbooks can provide insights for universities, publishers and policy makers concerned with lecture structure, textbook design and regulation formulation in accounting education.

This is the first paper to empirically explore the ideological character of accounting textbooks prescribed in an Islamic developing country setting.

Although accounting professors around the globe have addressed various social aspects of accounting, very rarely does that research address the concerns of students. This is despite the fact that students are the focus of the educational mission of most universities. In an effort to address this gap, this chapter extends the field of social accounting to an issue critical to students: the cost of accounting textbooks in the United States. Textbook cost is drawing increasing attention from public interest groups and government regulators as costs are growing at a more rapid rate than many other costs, and constitute a significant portion of the total cost of obtaining a higher education degree. For accounting students, these costs are exacerbated by the fact that accounting textbooks are among the most expensive of any major, and they are being revised with increasing frequency – which eliminates students’ ability to buy less expensive used books – often with little or no discernible benefit to students. We argue that in some subfields of accounting – especially managerial/cost and introductory courses – topics are relatively stable, and that frequent textbook revisions are unnecessarily costly for our students, many of whom, along with their families, are making significant financial sacrifices to earn their degrees. In this study, we provide background on the textbook pricing issue, include data from a survey of accounting faculty demonstrating that they consider the revisions too frequent, document the increasing frequency of accounting textbook revisions over recent decades, analyze content in a leading accounting textbook, and discuss options for reducing the cost of accounting textbooks, including following student activists’ lead in advocating for open-source, free textbooks.

A growing share of the literature in the fields of marketing and organizational theory is focusing on the uses of the past. This paper aims to propose an analysis of these uses over the long run and concludes that these uses of the past may themselves be historicized.

The paper uses accounting textbooks published in French from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. This study uses historical and organizational literature to account for observed variations.

Two conceptualizations of the past can be found in the sources from the period studied, depending on the period one considers, each of them leading to a different marketing strategy. In the first one, the past is presented as providing most or even all the value of what is offered in the present, as past experience serves as a stepping stone to a better product. The second conception breaks with these mostly positive views and presents the past as a dangerous routine, from which one must be freed to innovate.

Studying marketing uses of the past over the long run allows us to identify a limited set of possible sales pitches using the past to promote work and to identify the constraints orienting these pitches at any given time.

To conduct a content analysis of the portrayal of Frederick W. Taylor in management and psychology textbooks to reveal differences both within and across disciplines.

Forty‐four textbooks from six sub‐disciplines within management and psychology were content analyzed for the amount and accuracy of the material presented about Taylor and the extent to which key terms were included in these descriptions.

The data show that more information is provided in the management texts and the majority of the information conveyed across disciplines appears accurate.

Not all textbooks were examined within all sub‐disciplines within management or psychology or all sub‐disciplines to which Taylor ostensibly contributed. Future research is needed to determine why Taylor is portrayed differently across texts.

Results have important teaching implications as they reveal how accurately textbooks portray one controversial historical figure and what students are learning. Students might be encouraged to consult original sources and information beyond the text. Textbook authors should be held accountable for the accuracy of the information in their texts and may find the comparison information informative. Instructors may find the results useful when selecting a new text.

This paper depicts variability in how historical figures are depicted in textbooks, which is an important part of management history education.

In Australia, the public sector represents a significant component of the Australian economy and is a major employer across all states and territories. A constant stream of public sector management reforms has occurred over the last decade. These reforms include accrual accounting and budgeting, whole of government reporting, privatisation and contracting out to name a few. This would suggest that accounting graduates applying for positions at government agencies would benefit from some knowledge of these significant reforms. This paper aims to examine the perceptions of accounting academics as to barriers to public sector accounting (PSA) education in Australia and identify strategies for making the accounting curriculum more public sector inclusive.

Two data collection methods were employed in order to attain a comprehensive picture of the state of PSA education in Australia. Telephone interviews were undertaken with accounting academics across a carefully selected range of universities. This selection ensured representation across the core accounting units to gain an indication of the extent of public sector coverage in the core accounting subjects. In‐depth face‐to‐face interviews were then conducted at five universities across five states of Australia to probe further issues that emanated from the telephone interviews.

The findings suggest that in general, there is very limited teaching of PSA in Australian universities' accounting degree programs. Of the universities studied where issues regarding the public sector are emphasised, this is mainly due to a few academics who have a research interest in the public sector and so extend this interest into their teaching and the curriculum.

There are a number of strategies identified to achieve greater coverage of PSA in the curriculum. However, the findings suggest that unless the professional accounting bodies require PSA to be included in courses as part of the accreditation process, then it will be difficult to achieve significant improvement in the nature and extent of public sector exposure. Most interviewees argued that a key factor in increasing public sector coverage would be ensuring that the textbook writers for the core accounting units included more PSA examples.

The public sector in general, and PSA education is a neglected area of research. This study is significant as it highlights that although major public sector reforms have occurred in Australia and worldwide, this has had little impact on the accounting curriculum taught to students.