It is hardly a new observation that much research that is published in contemporary accounting research journals can be subject to the accusation of constituting methods in search of problems to solve, treatises concerning how many angels fit on the head of a pin, and elegantly appointed solutions leading up blind alleys. The accounting research community has become so concerned with establishing the international credibility of our discipline in the eyes of the predominantly scientific university community, that many of our colleagues expend their efforts in demonstrably applying increasingly sophisticated mathematical and statistical methodologies to the study of issues that are of ever lessening scope and importance to the community at large. Of course by now, readers of critical or interpretive research traditions will be shaking their heads in comfortable and knowing agreement. Such a reaction is premature. Those of us who work in these latter methodological traditions suffer the same risks of disconnection from dialogue with and contribution to issues of significant public interest. Our methodologies are often poorly articulated, our language deliberately mystifying, our concerns ethereal, and our critiques destructive. Both positivists and qualitative researchers in the accounting discipline run considerable risks of engaging in a dialogue that is inaccessible to the community, and that often addresses issues of marginal importance. And the result? We end up sponsoring a “talkfest” in which we impress (or offend) each other, unbeknown to the world that trudges by outside our monastery walls.

The Public Interest Section of the American Accounting Association has both an opportunity and an obligation to sponsor the research and teaching of those who have a concern for the accounting discipline to engage the issues of historical and contemporary concern to business, government and community. It is within our scope of activity and interests that many of the issues of major public concern lie today. While some interest groups have sprung up (even within the AAA) to address some specific agendas, it is in the Public Interest Section where the full scope of interrelationships between such issues can be addressed in a cross-disciplinary environment. It is arguably within our brief, that many of the most challenging, exciting and high public profile issues of the day currently reside. This is not to exclude our championing of those issues which currently receive inadequate attention from legislators, the accounting profession, and the media!

Let me put some flesh on the bones of this argument, by highlighting some areas that require our attention. One major area of great community concern in many countries is that of environmental protection and remediation. It has become a matter of tremendous public, government, and now corporate focus. The accounting profession has been, as is its usual practice, extremely tardy in devoting attention and resources to investigating and formulating policy regarding corporate social accounting and disclosure. Only in recent years have we begun to see a research literature in this area beginning to evolve. A massive amount of work remains to be done. Academia is way behind practice in addressing developments in environmental strategy, environmental audit, environmental management and environmental accounting. We have an opportunity to contribute to these developments through constructive critique, field research, theoretical framework development, and applied investigations.

Related to environmental accountability and disclosure matters is the whole area of social responsibility. This was the subject of quite a deal of research in the 1970s and 1980s and is now experiencing a resurgence of interest and concern. Social responsibility accounting and disclosure encompasses such areas as energy usage, product safety, employee health and safety, employee training and development, equal opportunity and affirmative action, gender and ethnicity, community relationships and welfare. Indeed, environmental impact has traditionally been a subset area within this broader social responsibility remit. Clearly there are some potential areas of interest from the above list with the AAA Gender Section, and we should be considering how we can communicate across the two sections in furthering accounting research and teaching agenda in that area. The potential contribution from the Public Interest Section lies in its addressing issues such as gender within a broader social responsibility framework that draws upon related areas such as ethnicity, equal opportunity and employee training and development. Of all sections, with our broad “public interest” issues remit, we should be providing a co-operative, cross-disciplinary venue through which the research community can address such matters.

Another area that clearly still falls within the Public Interest Section remit is the issue of ethics—corporate, governmental and professional. With the corporate collapses and scandals of the 1980s particularly, in many countries the question of corporate ethics codes and disciplinary procedures, along with the accounting profession’s relationship to ethical breaches, became a focus of media and community attention. As part of the accounting profession’s response, the AAA introduced a program to develop ethics cases and teaching in university accounting programs. The need for research in this area continues. The question of corporate ethics again crosses over with subject areas such as corporate social and environmental responsibility. These latter areas have prompted further re-examinations of corporate values and ethics in the 1990s. From an accounting and disclosure point of view, we clearly have an opportunity to make a contribution, both critical and constructive.

While the AAA has its Government and Nonprofit section, again there is a valuable contribution which can be made to research and debate in public-sector accounting change, particularly with respect to the shape of “new public management” (also known as the new managerialism) and its impact on community. The critical and field research literature investigating public sector change and its impacts has been burgeoning, particularly in countries such as the U.K., Australia, New Zealand (arguably the most aggressively changing environment), and across Europe. Of high priority issues in legislative chambers and the media, for example, are questions of downsizing, outsourcing, commercialization and privatization of public sector activities and services. Evaluation of costs/returns to the community, the investigation of impacts on service delivery, issues of access to public sector services by disadvantaged groups, and the impact of accounting upon performance measurement and objectives construction are but a few of the many contentious issues currently being debated. The Public Interest Section has a clear remit to address the public interest impacts of these very major developments in public sector organizations that are currently happening in many countries.

Finally we have an opportunity to sponsor examinations of the history of our discipline as it explains or affects the accounting impact on the public interest today. All too often, our theoretical and empirical studies of public interest issues are conceived ahistorically, thereby risking misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the intentions and forces underlying practices and problems currently under the microscope of public debate. Precious few historical studies emerge in AAA-sponsored conferences and publications, and yet, in premier accounting research journals around the world that address issues of public interest, we see a strong tide of historical studies being published in recent years. Historical research offers us a potentially potent weapon for enhancing our understanding of how things came to be the way they are, and for demonstrating the intersection between accounting and public interest issues.

Our commission is therefore broad as it is far reaching. It arguably embraces some of the “hottest” topics of international community and governments’ concern today. The relevant issues are often those that are being largely ignored or marginalized by both professional and academic accounting bodies. Yet they are the very issues that are generating close media scrutiny, public debate and legislation. Both present and future members of the Public Interest Section have an opportunity and obligation to enter the arena. If we do not, others will surely take our place!

Back to Table of Contents