Accounting history: A survey of academic interest in the U.S.

              Elliott L. Slocum
and
Ram S. Sriram
GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY
ACCOUNTING HISTORY: A SURVEY OF
ACADEMIC INTEREST IN THE U.S.
Abstract: A number of the reports by academicians and practitioners
in the United States have called for significant change in accounting
education and an enhanced role for accounting history in curricula
and research. However, the survey results reported in this paper
suggest that achieving wider acceptance of accounting history pre-sents
some perplexing problems. Doctoral faculty, especially assis-tant
professors, report less interest in accounting history than non-doctoral
faculty. Although a majority of academicians consider
accounting history research to be acceptable for promotion, tenure
and hiring decisions and a valuable aid to teaching, practitioners,
students, doctoral faculty strongly believe that it is of less value than
mainstream empirical research in accounting. Most academicians
perceive that research in accounting history is not as methodologi-cally
rigorous as other branches of accounting research.
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, numerous study groups have discussed
problems associated with the current model of accounting edu-cation
and research and their relevance to the 21st century. The
issue of relevance gained importance because of the changes in
the business environment, a shift from manufacturing to a ser-vice
economy, the impact of information technology, and
greater communication across geographical boundaries and cul-tures
[Mueller and Simmons, 1989]. Many academicians believe
the accounting education model, which embraces both teaching
and research dimensions, is outdated with little relevance to the
changes taking place in the wider world [Elliott, 1991, Williams,
1991]. Others point out that accounting research produces re-sults
that are too technical and not relevant for practice. Thus
accounting research, often, has very little effect on public or
professional policy [Elliott, 1991; Sunder, 1991].
Submitted June 1999
Revised May 2000
Revised February 2001
Accepted March 2001
Accounting Historians Journal
Vol. 28 , No. 1
June 2001