An Appeal to Support the Rayburn TAR Diversity Initiative
References cited in this "Appeal" are given in the Heck-Jensen Paper at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm

Bob Jensen --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

Introduction

This document is an appeal for you to contact incoming American Accounting Association (AAA) President Shyam Sunder (shyam.sunder@yale.edu) with a copy forwarded to The Accounting Review (TAR) Editor Dan Dhaliwal (dhaliwal@eller.arizona.edu) prior to the AAA's 2006 Annual (August) Meeting in Washington DC.  Hopefully you will support current AAA President Judy Rayburn's TAR Diversity Initiative to broaden TAR editorial policy with respect to expanding both research methods and topic diversity of TAR. TAR is the flagship research journal of the AAA and has enormous impact on doctoral program curricula and academic research across the world. I link here to a recent paper by Heck and Jensen (2006) to bolster Judy's argument for a monumental change in TAR --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm 

Outgoing President Rayburn has some parting comments in support of her TAR Diversity Initiative in the Summer 2006 edition of Accounting Education News --- http://aaahq.org/pubs/AEN/Summer06.pdf

What I term the "TAR Establishment" is the subset of AAA members comprised of TAR editors and referees from leading research universities who make the acceptance decision on papers submitted by TAR and evolved guidelines as to what has a ghost of a chance of being accepted by TAR. Acceptance rates are misleading since accounting researchers who do not conform to a restrictive subset of TAR's research methods and topics are discouraged from even submitting their papers for refereeing. This TAR Establishment also tightly controls the AAA Doctoral Consortium. Virtually no critics of TAR are invited to make presentations at this Consortium. In my opinion the TAR Establishment refuses to debate the issue following the following closure publication:

Watts. R. and Zimmerman and J. L. 1990. Positive accounting theory: a ten year perspective. The Accounting Review 65 (1): 131-156.

President Rayburn took on the TAR Establishment as the centerpiece of her address to the AAA Membership at the 2005 Annual Meeting in San Francisco and in her first newsletter to the AAA membership. My reading of events to date, after a telephone conversation with the current TAR Editor, is that her Initiative will fail unless the AAA membership becomes more vocal in supporting the Rayburn Initiative to change TAR. In fact, the TAR Establishment is now more entrenched than ever except for TAR's change the restrictions on research methods for accounting information systems (AIS) research that has been virtually nonexistent in TAR in recent decades.

The Rayburn Initiative is the culmination of many years of criticism of  TAR's narrow perspective and readership.  In particular, criticisms were raised by various former AAA presidents, particularly Presidents Anthony, Edwards, Zeff, Sundem, Mueller, Ahrens, Bailey, Shultz, Schipper, Mutchler, and now Rayburn. The TAR Establishment over the past several decades brushed off criticisms from the AAA's leaders. I recently co-authored a paper in support of the Rayburn TAR Diversity Initiative. The Heck and Jensen (2006) was resoundingly rejected by TAR with the following reply from a referee of the Heck-Jensen paper:

The paper repeatedly refers to the presidential message (3 times on page 1 and 3 more times on page 2, followed by more references on subsequent pages). With all due respect to the opinions of the office holders of the association opinion does not constitute an argument or evidence. The paper seems to use the opinions of AAA presidents as if they are supposed to be better scholars of accounting than the other members of the Association.

As far as I know the reasons for the low citation rates of articles published in accounting journals remain far from established. While the lack of diversity in topics and research methods is certainly a plausible explanation, there are others. For example the weakness of evidence adduced to support our inferences, and errors in the logic used to derive our conclusions could be another possible reason why few people find what we write convincing, and therefore ignore them. I would think that there many alternative hypotheses that remain to be investigated before we take the opinion of one person on this matter as the truth.

What I find ironic is that this referee is not defending the TAR Establishment. The referee mainly proposes alternative more serious criticisms of the TAR Establishment, i.e., that the published articles themselves may have "weakness of evidence" and "errors of logic." I am not so critical of the papers that are published. I support President Rayburn's contention that low interest in TAR is mainly due to its lack of diversity in research methods and topics.  Aside for many top leaders of the AAA, there are harsh critics of TAR, many of whom provide evidence and more outspoken arguments for greater TAR diversity of research methods. In the Heck and Jensen (2006) paper I focused more on past presidents in order to established how deeply entrenched the TAR Establishment is in the face of some of its own top leaders, especially Judy Rayburn. I also cited some of the more outspoken critics.

This is important because other top academic journals in accounting such as the Journal of Accounting Research have essentially the same lack of diversity in terms of allowable research methods. The reason it is so important is that passing through the gates of acceptance in top accounting research journals is crucial for tenure, promotion, and annual performance evaluations of accounting faculty. It's so important that I would argue that virtually all doctoral programs now focus almost exclusively on educating accounting doctoral students in only the accountics research methods accepted by the TAR Establishment. 

A referee of the Heck and Jensen (2006) paper stated the following:

The paper cites extensively the criticisms of TAR by various people without giving the reader author’s own assessment of these criticisms. The paper laments that broadening of the journal base has not been accompanied by broadening of the criteria for publication in these journals. Indeed doctoral programs have narrowed, reducing the attractiveness of such programs for the potential accounting scholars. The article appears to blame the journal policies for all this. In conclusion, the article quotes from Bender’s analysis of the uncomfortable, somewhat disjointed relationship between scholarship and the public life, and expresses hope that changes in publication and editorial policies of TAR will solve all these ills.

. . .

Then there is the question of the direction of causality. Did the change in research cause the change in editorial policy or the other way round? I am not sure what the author believes the direction of causality was. Different parts of the paper appear to present both views.

Actually I'm not sure whether the chicken or the egg came first. The Heck and Jensen (2006) paper stresses that in the 1960s there was enormous pressure for accounting educators to get doctoral degrees and conduct "rigorous research." In the 1970s and 1980s there was tremendous added pressure for these newly-minted researchers to demonstrate scientific research skills and generate rigorous research even if it was at the expense of relevance as claimed by Zeff and others. I think the TAR Establishment (relying upon Popper's version of positivism) evolved in an effort to force accountics research upon professors and students of accounting. After that, the TAR Establishment became self-sustaining due to the way prestigious research universities dominated policies of AAA publications and editorships.

The TAR Establishment is well-intended in its effort to instill rigor in place of persuasion and anecdotal evidence in accounting research. The problem is that the TAR Establishment relies almost exclusively on scientific methods that are just not conducive to important accounting issues that have enormous problems of model building problems with omitted variables, complex and interactive overlooked assumptions, and non-stationarities. Hence the published TAR papers often focus on trivial hypotheses or uninteresting hypotheses for which there are databases available for mining. Scientific methods discourage discovery research and innovative hypotheses that cannot modeled with mathematics and statistics.

The Heck-Jensen Paper That TAR Does Not Want Published

Jean Heck is a well known finance professor at Villanova who maintains archives of the histories of virtually all finance, accounting, and other academic journals in business. He contacted me out of the blue and requested that I write a paper celebrating the 80-year history of TAR. He volunteered to supply the data and statistical analyses. I subsequently took the Heck and Jensen (2006)  paper in a direction that Professor Heck concluded killed its chances for publication in TAR. But he's a good sport and went along with my decision to submit it to TAR in hopes that my criticisms of TAR might be published by TAR. The paper was flatly rejected by three referees, including one who apparently was afraid put a referee report in writing and communicated with the TAR Editor only by telephone.

The Heck and Jensen (2006) paper makes a case that TAR restricts its articles to "accountics" methods and techniques. At issue is whether scholarly accounting research is too focused on mathematical analysis and empirical research at the expense of research that benefits the general practice of accountancy. The paper is not so much a criticism of accountics itself as it is a criticism that accountics is required for acceptance of virtually every paper submitted to TAR.

Accountics was defined as "the mathematical science of (accounting) values" by Charles Sprague (1887). Professors and practitioners in the AAA's early years hotly debated whether or not accounting was a science until publication of TAR commenced in 1925. Accountics lost out in 1925. For over half of the 20th Century, practitioners were more actively involved in the AAA and looked to professors discovery and profession/practice improvement. The Heck and Jensen (2006) paper identifies three phases in the ensuing 80-year history of TAR:

1. TAR Between 1926 and 1955: Ignoring Accountics
2. Between 1956 and 1985: Nurturing of Accountics
3. Between 1986 and 2005: Maturation of Accountics

Prior to 1955, TAR mainly focused academic research aimed at improving the practice of accounting and education (teaching). Research methods were largely normative and relied a lot on case method and historical research methodology. The Heck and Jensen (2006) paper describes how a "perfect storm" arose in the late 1950s and early 1960s that greatly pushed academic research in accounting toward accountics. Leading schools such as the University of Chicago, Carnegie-Mellon, Rochester, and Stanford broke away from the Harvard tradition of normative/case research and influenced TAR to be restrictive in favor of the scientific methods.

I'm especially aware of this because I was part of the movement toward accountics and built my early research reputation publishing accountics to a point where I preferred teaching statistics and mathematical programming to accounting in the late 1960s and early 1970s --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Published

What's disappointing and inconsistent is that leading universities pushed TAR into scientific methods but did not require that findings be verified by independent replication. In fact TAR and the other leading academic accounting research journals discourage replication by their absurd policies of not publishing replications. They also do not publish commentaries that challenge underlying assumptions of purely analytical research. Hence I like to say that academic accounting researchers became more interested in their tractors than their harvests.

My threads on the dearth of replication/debate and some of the reasons top accounting research journals will not publish replications and commentaries are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm#Relication

Leading accounting professors who lament TAR’s preference for rigor over relevancy include (Zeff 1978; Lee 1997; and Williams 1999). Sundem (1987) provides revealing information about the changed perceptions of authors, almost entirely from academe, who submitted manuscripts for review between June 1982 and May 1986. Among the 1,148 submissions, only 39 used archival (history) methods; 34 of those submissions were rejected. Another 34 submissions used survey methods; 33 of those were rejected. And 100 submissions used traditional normative (deductive) methods with 85 of those being rejected. Except for a small set of 28 manuscripts classified as using  “other” methods (mainly descriptive empirical according to Sundem), the remaining larger subset of submitted manuscripts used methods that Sundem classified as follows:

292      General Empirical

172      Behavioral

135      Analytical modeling

119      Capital Market

  97      Economic modeling

  40      Statistical modeling

  29      Simulation
 

It is clear that by 1982, accounting researchers realized that having mathematical or statistical analysis in TAR submissions made accountics virtually a necessary, albeit not sufficient, condition for acceptance for publication. It became increasingly difficult for a single editor to have expertise in all of the above methods. In the late 1960s, editorial decisions on publication shifted from the TAR editor alone to the TAR editor in conjunction with specialized referees and eventually associate editors  (Flesher 1991, 167). Fleming et al. (2000) wrote the following:

The big change was in research methods. Modeling and empirical methods became prominent during 1966-1985, with analytical modeling and general empirical methods leading the way. Although used to a surprising extent, deductive-type methods declined in popularity, especially in the second half of the 1966-1985 period.

Although the AAA expanded its number and diversity of journals, none of these journals carry as much weight as publication in TAR in university tenure and performance evaluation decisions. As a result, virtually all doctoral program curricula focused on the development of skill sets needed for publishing in accountics journals like TAR. Scientific research skills replaced most accounting content in doctoral programs. Today, doctoral candidates in accountancy must have skills in mathematics, statistics, and scientific model-building areas such as econometrics, psychometrics, and sociometrics. This emphasis has discouraged many young practicing accountants from returning to campus to obtain doctoral degrees. Those with no interest in or aptitude for scientific research have virtually no place to get a quality accounting doctoral degree. Thus, an unwanted consequence of the publishing criteria at top-tier accounting journals has been the narrowing of doctoral program curricula and the decrease in the number of potential doctoral candidates in accounting. Similar happenings have taken place in other business disciplines to the point where business education in the future is at risk according to the AACSB.

In my opinion accounting practitioners lost interest in TAR and other leading accounting research journals because authors are forced by circumstances to apply highly rigorous tests to trivial and/or uninteresting problems in the eyes of the profession. Practitioners no longer seek out TAR for new and clever ideas for professional practice.

In my opinion TAR authors became more interested in their tractors than their findings, as evidenced by almost zero interest in replications of findings. My own contribution to the Heck and Jensen (2006) paper was heavily influenced by a referee report that rejected a paper submitted to Accounting Horizons by former FASB Chairman Dennis Beresford. This paper was actually a luncheon speech given by Professor Beresford the in San Francisco at the 2005 annual meeting the day before President Rayburn announced her TAR Diversity Initiative in a luncheon speech.

When Professor Beresford attempted to publish his remarks, an Accounting Horizons referee’s report to him contained the following revealing reply about “leading scholars” in accounting research:

1. The paper provides specific recommendations for things that accounting academics should be doing to make the accounting profession better. However (unless the author believes that academics' time is a free good) this would presumably take academics' time away from what they are currently doing. While following the author's advice might make the accounting profession better, what is being made worse? In other words, suppose I stop reading current academic research and start reading news about current developments in accounting standards. Who is made better off and who is made worse off by this reallocation of my time? Presumably my students are marginally better off, because I can tell them some new stuff in class about current accounting standards, and this might possibly have some limited benefit on their careers. But haven't I made my colleagues in my department worse off if they depend on me for research advice, and haven't I made my university worse off if its academic reputation suffers because I'm no longer considered a leading scholar? Why does making the accounting profession better take precedence over everything else an academic does with their time?
As quoted in Jensen (2006a) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm#AcademicsVersusProfession

The above quotation illustrates the consequences of editorial policies of TAR and several other leading accounting research journals. To be considered a “leading scholar” in accountancy, one’s research must employ mathematically-based economic/behavioral theory and quantitative modeling. Most TAR articles published in the past two decades illustrate this contention.  But according to AAA President Judy Rayburn and other recent AAA presidents, this scientific focus may not be in the best interests of accountancy academicians or the accountancy profession.

The Heck and Jensen (2006) paper closes with a quotation from Scott McLemee demonstrating that what happened among accountancy academics over the past four decades is not unlike what happened in other academic disciplines that developed “internal dynamics of esoteric disciplines,” communicating among themselves in loops detached from their underlying professions. McLemee’s article stems from Bender (1993).

"Notes from the Underground," by Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, January 18, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/01/18/mclemee

“Knowledge and competence increasingly developed out of the internal dynamics of esoteric disciplines rather than within the context of shared perceptions of public needs,” writes Bender. “This is not to say that professionalized disciplines or the modern service professions that imitated them became socially irresponsible. But their contributions to society began to flow from their own self-definitions rather than from a reciprocal engagement with general public discourse.”

Now, there is a definite note of sadness in Bender’s narrative – as there always tends to be in accounts of the shift from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft. Yet it is also clear that the transformation from civic to disciplinary professionalism was necessary.

“The new disciplines offered relatively precise subject matter and procedures,” Bender concedes, “at a time when both were greatly confused. The new professionalism also promised guarantees of competence — certification — in an era when criteria of intellectual authority were vague and professional performance was unreliable.”

But in the epilogue to Intellect and Public Life, Bender suggests that the process eventually went too far. “The risk now is precisely the opposite,” he writes. “Academe is threatened by the twin dangers of fossilization and scholasticism (of three types: tedium, high tech, and radical chic). The agenda for the next decade, at least as I see it, ought to be the opening up of the disciplines, the ventilating of professional communities that have come to share too much and that have become too self-referential.”

On June 8, 2006 I added the following module to this appeal.

Conclusions

Leading accounting research journal biases for accountics in the past three decades illustrate the process of  Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft where the "process eventually went too far." The Heck and Jensen (2006) paper is highly supportive of President Judy Rayburn's TAR Diversity Initiative. This is important not only for improved accounting research, it's important for expanded curricula of doctoral programs that more closely align academe with the accounting profession much in the same way that schools of law and medicine are aligned with their practicing professions.

For the good of the AAA membership and the profession of accountancy in general, one hopes that the changes in publication and editorial policies at TAR proposed by President Rayburn will result in the “opening up” of topics and research methods produced by "leading scholars." I might add that Paul Williams at North Carolina State University is a long-time advocate of such changes, and I thank Paul for some helpful input to the early stages of the Heck and Jensen paper.

I might also add that the Heck-Jensen paper tops off my long standing threads on the sad state of accounting research at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm#AcademicsVersusProfession
Many problems of accounting research extend well beyond the TAR editorial policies.

One alternative would be to begin an AAA electronic Journal of Accountics specializing in esoteric quantitative research and capital markets studies. This would not preclude some papers on these topics, along with papers using diverse methods on wide-ranging topics, from being published in TAR just like papers that are now submitted to TAR may also be submitted to Section journals if TAR turns them down.

Due to my wife's surgery schedule, I will not be able to attend Judy Rayburn's August 2006 finale as President of the AAA. I hope some of you who do attend will voice your opinions in support of her TAR Diversity Initiative. Communicating your opinions in advance to incoming AAA President Shyam Sunder (shyam.sunder@yale.edu) with a copy forwarded to The Accounting Review (TAR) Editor Dan Dhaliwal (dhaliwal@eller.arizona.edu) might help.

Addendum on June 10, 2006

If top scientists can do it, why can't the American Accounting Association (especially its new electronic publication platform) offer an opportunity for "a peer-reviewed publication that publishes all rigorously performed science, a vibrant online forum that encourages scientific dialogue and debate, and will offer a hassle-free process that gets your work online within weeks"?

From the University of Illinois Library's Issues in Scholarly Communications blog on June 9, 2006 --- http://www.library.uiuc.edu/blog/scholcomm/

As reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education's Blog, and Peter Suber's Open Access Blog, the Public Library of Science appears poised to start the publication of PLoS OPEN. It will be "a peer-reviewed publication that publishes all rigorously performed science, a vibrant online forum that encourages scientific dialogue and debate, and will offer a hassle-free process that gets your work online within weeks." It will "offer multidisciplinary scope, rapid turn-around, open review, and powerful personalization and discussion tools." Additional characteristics (from the PLoS site):

• Inclusive scope. The boundaries between different scientific fields are becoming increasingly blurred. At the same time, the bulk of the scientific literature is divided into journals covering ever more restrictive disciplines and subdisciplines. In contrast, PLoS ONE will be a venue for all rigorously performed science, making it easier to uncover connections and synergies across the research literature.
• Objective peer review. Peer reviewers are routinely asked to comment on whether papers are sufficiently novel or immediate to justify publication. Such subjective judgements can seriously delay the publication of good science. PLoS ONE will concentrate on identifying those papers that are rigorously and technically sound. Such work will be rapidly published and presented for open and continuous review so that the whole community can be involved in judging impact....
• Interactive papers. A paper in a traditional journal is a static marker in an ongoing process. Authors looking back on papers written 6 months or a year ago will see things that they might now have written differently. New data may have arisen to strengthen or alter some of the conclusions. We will provide authors with ways to make those changes and so acknowledge the evolution of their ideas. This doesn't alter the scientific record—the original paper is still the original paper—but authors and readers can build upon it.
• PLoS ONE will offer a new approach to the way that scientific research is communicated. Like all revolutions, this will take time, and the launch of PLoS ONE will only be the first step. New features and functionalities will be continually added to PLoS ONE while existing ones will be applied to an ever-increasing body of literature. We cannot do this alone and want to invite all members of the scientific community to help us shape the development of PLoS ONE and the future direction of scholarly publishing.

Take a look at the prototype and learn more about this new journal at: http://www.plosone.org/

May 23, 2006 reply from Ronald Todd [rltodd@IX.NETCOM.COM]

I don't buy it.

(1) The only purpose of the Doctorate is to reward original research that makes a significant contribution to the body of knowledge. Otherwise you might as well stop with the Masters and be done with it.

(2) The only reason for the University is that it supports original significant research. If your not going to do that we might as well stop the costly tax expenditure and dump them.

May 23, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Ron,

What makes scientific research methodology the only source of new knowledge?

Nearly all of humanities research is aimed at discovering new knowledge with other (non-science) methodologies? There would only be a science division in a university if all new knowledge had to come from science. In fact science methods are very limited in generating new knowledge due to inability of science, unlike a poet or artist, to deal with non-stationary systems and missing or imprecisely understood underlying causation variables.

In fact new knowledge more often arises by accident rather than rigorous scientific research, although science may later be used to test the limits of the new knowledge. The entire realm of the arts is built upon discovery that often precedes science.

If you were to award a Nobel Prize for new knowledge arising from science methods and reported in academic accounting journals, who would get the prize? It would certainly not be Pacioli since Pacioli only algebraically formulated, in the world’s first book of algebra, double entry bookkeeping discovered without science hundreds of years previously.

The problem is that nearly all new knowledge of significance arose from practitioners in industry and public accounting. Examples include ABC Costing and Dollar Value Lifo as noted at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm#AcademicsVersusProfession 

This does not mean that accountics in academic research has been without value. Many studies have been used as a basis for formulating and sustaining accounting standards and managerial accounting practices. The problem is that new knowledge formation, at least that which is allowed to be published in academe, should not be limited to accountics (defined as the mathematical science of values).

Bob Jensen

May 25, 2006 reply from Andrew Priest [a.priest@ECU.EDU.AU]

Here in Australia, our courses are accredited by the professional bodies, CPA Australia and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia. To me this accreditation process has driven, and I suspect with our consent and in a climate of where education is considered of questionable value, us, being the academics to the point where we are providing "technical" courses, not business courses. Not courses which produce a well rounded, lateral thinking, innovative, community and business focused graduate but rather an enhanced bookkeeper.

Regards
Andrew

May 24, 2006 reply from Paul Williams [williamsp@COMFS1.COM.NCSU.EDU]

Bob, Bravo for you. I certainly do support the initiative. Your experience at TAR with your paper coauthored with Jean Heck is so indicative of the problem with diversity at TAR. The reviewer's comments clearly indicate that he/she is totally unfamiliar with a fairly substantial body of literature (much of which is "empirical evidence") that provides some answers to what the reviewer implies we know very little to nothing about.

One wonders how does someone so ill-equipped to review a paper get to do it in the first place? It's because most people who review for TAR are ill- equipped to review anything that requires knowledge of any literature outside the big three US journals. I know from research that I have done that the breadth of knowledge of the persons who dominate the big three US journals is excessively narrow; trained incapacitance. I noted in your paper with Jean you cited my piece in Accounting Forum. I suspect the reviewers of your paper don't even know of the existence of that journal, let alone have read anything in it. Another testament to the thoroughness of the research you do. Diversity is difficult to attain when the gatekeepers are so ill-equipped to consider something different from the standard template research that predominates. It becomes a very primitive sort of process when the criterion is simply, "It doesn't look like what I do, therefore, it must not be any good." The TAR Establishment, as you characterize it, does not see the necessity of knowing what exists in the world beyond the narrow confines of their dogma. A couple of things I would like to add:

1. Please don't repudiate your earlier academic efforts so much. You are to be admired for reinventing yourself in a way more meaningful to you (unlike many of our "leading scholars" who are still doing the same things they did 40 years ago, e.g., are financial ratios good for predicting bankruptcy, as if that is important to what accounting does). But the accountics you did way back when is not the essence of the lack of diversity problem. Mathematics and statistical causal analysis are useful and the work you did then was valuable because the mathematical and statistical work was directed at identifiable accounting "problems." The lack of diversity in TAR now is not simply the fixation on mathematics and statistics.

2. The form of the research is not what creates the persistence. It is that the form of research is wedded to a particular ideology and it is the ideology which is resistant to permitting other voices to speak. As you noted the closure publication was the W&Z ten year perspective. That closure is message, not method. Principal/agent theory and EMH have at their foundation certain obvious value judgements about the proper ordering of society. They are not necessary scientific premises, but are patently political and ethical premises. These are what create the insurmountable barrier to TAR being diverse -- political/economic orthodoxy trumps everything else. (To paraphrase Mark Twain: "It's been said that stock traders are the noblest work of God. Now who found that out?") W&Z work at the William Simon School of Business at Rochester whose namesake was the president of the John M. Olin Foundation for 23 years. The Foundation was a major funder of right wing think tanks. Even a casual reading of Jensen, Meckling, Murphy, et al makes it clear the patent political nature of principal agent theory. That is what the AAA Establishment seems bent on preserving at all costs.

Denny's experience at Horizons makes it clear what the academic structure managed by the AAA is for. The reviewer explicitly states that the purpose of research is to maintain the academic reputation of his school. This is a rather radical instrumental view of research. Imagine that Denny was so naive to believe that research is about using one's imagination and solving accounting problems. Au contraire. It is about creating politically correct academic reputations. And the two people you have asked us to beg to continue the Rayburn initiative are two ideal exemplars of persons who have succeeded under the current AAA regime. I see no evidence in the work of these two people that they are the least bit interested in diversity. They ARE the AAA Establishment; they ARE the problem not the solution. To change an organization there has to be a sustained period of leadership to accomplish that change.

Judy is to be applauded for her efforts, but after this annual meeting she is out of office. The hole she leaves is quickly filled by minions of the AAA Establishment. The structure of the organization produces the anti-bodies necessary to deal with the foreign organisms that occassionally mutate into something that might upset the system, but the immunity mechanisms always kick in. I have observed this organization for a long time. It isn't just a coincidence that Sunder is president elect and Dhaliwal is TAR editor. They are the antibodies that protect the organization from infection by foreign ideas. It is crucial that people understand that it isn't about science, but about ideology. Ideologues don't cotton to diversity. They know the truth. Only when TAR has an editor that will say, "This paper is banal and has nothing to do with accounting and belongs in a finance journal or (more likely) the waste basket," then things may start to change.

But as Nietschze noted, "Nothing counts as knowledge that reduces power." The folks that run it for their reputational enhancement aren't about to share it with others with foreign ideas. (That's why there is no replication and after 35 years of steadfastly producing research with ... "the weakness of evidence adduced to support our inferences, and errors in the logic used to derive our conclusions," we steadfastly persist in doing the same thing; in accounting research nothing succeeds like failure). Things will start to change only when the AAA membership mobilizes itself to throw the bums out. They aren't going to leave because they are such reasonable, learned people respectful of diversity of thought. You have provided us with some specific examples of the kind of "respect" you and Jean received; I have a file filled with lots of other examples. One could forgive if only they had accomplished something to be so arrogant about.

"Tractors are more important than the harvests!" We should have T-shirts printed with that on them and wear them to this year's annual meeting. What a great slogan.

Paul

May 25, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen

Thank you Paul for the scholarly reply and support for President Rayburn's TAR Diversity Initiative. You've been writing and speaking about this problem for decades such that I feel like I'm riding in on your coat tails on this controversial issue.

 I agree with virtually all that you said except I have a bit more hope in Shyam Sunder as incoming President of the AAA. I served on the AAA Executive Committee years ago with Shyam. He's a brilliant economist (more than an accountant) who has the good sense to publish his economic theory papers in top economics journals. This is not common in the TAR Establishment where economic theory papers are often published in the guise of accounting research in accounting journals. Shyam bridges the gap between economics and accounting and will, I hope, see the need for more diversity in research methods and topics in The Accounting Review.

I have some hope that Shyam might take up Judy's cause if prodded by AECM subscribers who contact him in this regard --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR.htm

On the down side, there are many past presidents of the AAA who have tried to buck the TAR Establishment and failed. The TAR Establishment is self-sustaining since years of narrow focus in TAR succeeded in bringing about curriculum narrow focus in literally every accounting doctoral program in the U.S. and in most other parts of the world. Cloned accounting faculty are not capable of submitting non-accountics papers to our three leading U.S. accounting journals and many top journals in other nations as well.

Unfortunately, as Bill McCarthy discovered when becoming an Associate Editor for AIS in TAR, merely changing policy does not mean that there are any non-clones coming out of doctoral programs who can submit quality research that is not in the realm of accountics.

Bob Jensen

May 25, 2006 reply from Paul Williams [williamsp@COMFS1.COM.NCSU.EDU]

Bob, I hope you are right. I share your concern about a whole generation of accounting academics so narrowly trained and focused. Mike Brewster's observation about the AAA meeting in San Antonio that coincided with Andersen's demise that it was the elephant in the room that nobody acknowledged was there. Sad commentary when an academy doesn't have the lexicon necessary to do the post mortem.

Your graph of doctoral output was instructive. We are turning out but a third of the PhDs we did 25 years ago. Even if something does come of Judy's initiative, it will take years to undo the damage that has been to the discipline. Perhaps the behavioral people who have been booted out and have migrated to AOS as their haven in exile will start to integrate with what is going on in the rest of the world (where accounting is a lot more interesting intellectually) with the US academy.

One element of diversity that is important is to have TAR have a more international presence? I'm afraid I will have long been moldering in the grave before that happens.

With all of the rain in NH it's comforting to know that the "wise man" built his house upon the rock. Mountain top homes are good for more than just the view.

Paul

May 25, 2006 reply from Professor XXXXX

Bob,

I wish that I had either the eloquence or the professional standing to make a difference in this debate. I learned long ago not to bother sending my stuff to TAR. A few years ago, when the big proposal to eliminate Horizons and Issues came about, my husband, an organizational theory guy, suggested I write a paper about the whole kerfuffle as an example of trying to enforce a unified paradigm on a broadening field. Why didn’t I? Because I knew it would never get published and didn’t want to tick off the wrong people!

I’m also reminded of an incident with a colleague with a nice YYYYY University degree. Her expertise is in financial accounting, but when it came to teaching financial accounting, she was terrible at it. Not because she was inherently a bad teacher, but because she didn’t know the material. She can mine the data with the best of them, but she’d never actually had to do intermediate II level debits and credits herself before. Sad.

XXXXX

May 26, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi XXXXX

The proposal to eliminate Horizons and Issues incident is summarized at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AAAjournals.htm

Neither eloquence nor professional standing is a prerequisite for contacting Shyam Sunder on this issue. The mere fact that you decided a long time ago to stop sending manuscripts to TAR is an important message.

And don’t sell yourself short. Your posts on the AECM are among the most interesting posts on the list.

Bob Jensen

May 26, 2006 reply from Paul Williams [williamsp@COMFS1.COM.NCSU.EDU]

> May 25, 2006 reply from Professor XXXXX >
> Bob, >
>I wish that I had either the eloquence or the professional standing to
> make a difference in this debate. I learned long ago not to bother
> sending my stuff to TAR. A few years ago, when the big proposal to
> eliminate Horizons and Issues came about, my husband, an
> organizational theory guy, suggested I write a paper about the whole
> kerfuffle as an example of trying to enforce a unified paradigm on a >
broadening field. Why didn't I?
> Because I knew it would never get published and didn't want to tick
> off the wrong people!

 FROM YOUR MESSAGE TO BOB, I WOULD SAY YOUR ELOQUENCE IS FINE. WRITE IT UP! ORGANIZATION RESEARCH IS NOT SO CONSTRAINED BY THE NEED FOR MODELING THE BEHAVIOR OF IMAGINARY PEOPLE. ONLY ABOUT 300 PEOPLE IN THE WORLD READ TAR ANYWAY. I WAS ON COUNCIL WHEN THE ELIMINATION OF THOSE JOURNALS WAS PROPOSED. I WOULD BE INTERESTED IN READING ABOUT IT. IT CAN BE PUBLISHED, TOO.

ONE THING THE AECMers KNOW BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE, AS BOB AND OTHERS DEMONSTRATE IT NEARLY EVERY DAY, IS THE AMAZING CAPACITY WE NOW HAVE TO SEARCH LITERATURES FAR FLUNG AND OBSCURE. THERE ARE MANY JOURNALS BEING MORE AND MORE WIDELY READ (BY OTHER THAN THE AAA ESTABLISHMENTARIANS) THAT ARE VERY INTERESTED IN ORGANIZATIONAL STUDIES. AOS, OF COURSE, BUT CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES (WHICH PRODUCED A SPECIAL ISSUE DEALING WITH THE AAA ESTABLISHMENT, "AAA, INC."), AAAJ, AND SOME AAA SECTION JOURNALS (API OR BRIA, e.g.) AND MANY OTHERS ARE POTENTIAL PLACES. BEFORE THE WEB AND ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING, ARTICLES IN "OBSCURE" OR "NON- PREMIER" JOURNALS LANGUISHED UNREAD. THAT'S NO LONGER TRUE. PEOPLE FIND THESE PAPERS (BOB FOUND MY ACCOUNTING FORUM PIECE, A JOURNAL PUBLISHED IN AUSTRALIA TO WHICH FEW US ACADEMIC LIBRARIES CURRENTLY SUBSCRIBE). I

T'S DISTRESSING THAT SOMEONE LIVES IN A SCHOLARLY COMMUNITY THAT MAKES THAT PERSON FEEL THAT SOME THINGS MAY BE SAID ONLY ANONYMOUSLY. TONY TINKER REMARKED SOME YEARS BACK AT A PAPER SESSION AT THE AAA MEETING THAT BEING A PROFESSOR IS THE MOST PRIVILEGED THING ONE CAN BE BECAUSE ONLY WE HAVE THE FREEDOM TO TELL THE TRUTH. WHEN WE DON'T BECAUSE WE ARE MORE INTERESTED IN OUR CAREERS, E.G., "HITS" IN PRESTIGIOUS JOURNALS, PROFESSORSHIPS, RAISES, THE PEACOCK STRUT AT THE AAA MEETINGS THAT REQUIRE WE PANDER TO PARTICULAR INTERESTS, SOMETHING SIGNIFICANT IS LOST BY BOTH THE PROFESSOR AND THE DISCIPLINE. SO DON'T HIDE YOUR LIGHT UNDER A BUSHEL. YOU HAVE FRIENDS. BESIDES, TICKING OFF THE "WRONG" PEOPLE CAN BE LOTS OF FUN. BECAUSE IF THEY GET TICKED OFF CHANCES ARE THEY ARE JUST EXACTLY THE PEOPLE THAT SHOULD BE TICKED OFF. AS OSCAR WILED FAMOUSLY SAID, "SOME PEOPLE DESERVE TO BE OFFENDED."

Paul

May 26, 2006 reply from Richard C. Sansing [Richard.C.Sansing@DARTMOUTH.EDU]

Well said, Paul! The only thing I would add is that I encourage Professor X^5 to send her article to TAR. Not doing so because "I knew it would never get published" creates a self-fulfilling prophecy and reinforces the very atmosphere that you are trying to change.

Richard Sansing

---Paul Williams wrote (in part):

TONY TINKER REMARKED SOME YEARS BACK AT A PAPER SESSION AT THE AAA MEETING THAT BEING A PROFESSOR IS THE MOST PRIVILEGED THING ONE CAN BE BECAUSE ONLY WE HAVE THE FREEDOM TO TELL THE TRUTH. WHEN WE DON'T BECAUSE WE ARE MORE INTERESTED IN OUR CAREERS, E.G., "HITS" IN PRESTIGIOUS JOURNALS, PROFESSORSHIPS, RAISES, THE PEACOCK STRUT AT THE AAA MEETINGS THAT REQUIRE WE PANDER TO PARTICULAR INTERESTS, SOMETHING SIGNIFICANT IS LOST BY BOTH THE PROFESSOR AND THE DISCIPLINE.

June 1, 2006 reply from Charles Bailey [CBailey2@MEMPHIS.EDU]

I like this idea. When Paul(?) first suggested it, I started thinking about artwork, but without much success. Maybe a race of souped-up tractors while weeds choke the fields? Hard to depict, and I'm no artist. Maybe we need a contest. Anyhow, I'll wear it even if it's not up to my usual JC Penney standards, and count me in if I can help.

While the sartorially-minded Paul naturally thought of T-shirts, would buttons be a good option? They would be cheaper, potentially about as visible, easier to wear, and easier to pass out to interested parties.

Charlie

Paul Williams wrote:

Where can we buy a T-shirt? That is a question now worth some serious consideration. Wouldn't it be a statement if a few hundred AECMers paraded around the AAA convention hotel lobby with those T-shirts....

June 2, 2006 reply from Dan Stone, Univ. of Kentucky [dstone@UKY.EDU]

Hi all,

I am on the AAA publications committee, which is to: "Monitor and coordinate all aspects of the Association's publications."

I welcome your comments (publicly to this list, or by email to me) on the extent to which AAA publications are serving the AAA membership.

Best wishes,

Dan Stone
University of Kentucky (dstone@uky.edu)

June 2, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Dan,

In addition to my concerns about TAR, I think you should carefully investigate whether Accounting Horizons is serving its original mandate.

It seems to me that over the past three years that articles published in Horizons are no different from articles published in TAR in terms of research methods and topics. That was not the original mandate for Horizons. The only exception is the commentary response to proposed standards that appears regularly in Horizons. That commentary serves the original mandate.

The rejection of Denny's paper by Horizons, particularly the reasons for the rejection, reflects the convergence of TAR and Horizons editorial policies favoring accountics.

Thanks,

Bob Jensen

June 2, 2006 reply from Paul Williams [williamsp@COMFS1.COM.NCSU.EDU]

Bob is correct. I was on AAA Council when Horizons was debated and came into existence. Horizons principal champion was Jerry Searfoss; his firm (Deloitte, I believe) provided about $80,000 as initial seed money to subsidize the creation of Horizons. Horizons was to be a journal for academic/practitioner exchange. Denny's rejected contribution was precisely the type of contribution Horizons was created for.

Bob is certainly correct to observe that it has morphed into merely a "dumbed down" version of TAR. It is instructive to compare the editorial boards of early issues of Horizons with the current one. Early on, it was a very mixed bag of people. Now, it has the same character as the ed board at TAR -- same degree school domination, no people from practice, etc. The AAA has only one standard of knowledge.

Re Bob's reference to the Nonaka paper: because practitioners knowledge is of a different sort (but knowledge never-the-less), by AAA standards it is no knowledge at all (not the result of statistical causal modeling of the imaginary world of neoclassical economics), thus, certainly not publishable.

PFW

PG. #390 NONAKA
The chapter argues that building the theory of knowledge creation needs to an epistemological and ontological discussion, instead of just relying on a positivist approach, which has been the implicit paradigm of social science. The positivist rationality has become identified with analytical thinking that focuses on generating and testing hypotheses through formal logic. While providing a clear guideline for theory building and empirical examinations, it poses problems for the investigation of complex and dynamic social phenomena, such as knowledge creation. In positivist-based research, knowledge is still often treated as an exogenous variable or distraction against linear economic rationale. The relative lack of alternative conceptualization has meant that management science has slowly been detached from the surrounding societal reality. The understanding of social systems cannot be based entirely on natural scientific facts.
IKUJIRO NONAKA as quoted at Great Minds in Management: The Process of Theory Development --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/GreatMinds.htm 

June 10, 2006 reply from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

Bob:

In this digital environment, why can not the data sets used in the published research be available for replication by download from a public ftp site?

Richard J. Campbell
School of Business
218 N. College Ave.
University of Rio Grande
Rio Grande, OH 45674
http://faculty.rio.edu/campbell 

June 10, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen

Self praise:
Years ago I spearheaded an effort for authors of AAA publications to make data available to readers. I wanted it to be required, but it ended up being optional. I really have no serious complaints since most authors have complied when data sets are not in the public domain. I thank Bill Cooper who was Chair of the Publications Committee who followed through on this and made it AAA policy. The policy, however, does not require that data be made available in digital media.

My main complaint is with the AAA policy of not publishing replications and commentaries. There is much lower incentive to take the time and expense of conducting replication research if researchers have zero chance of getting research published in a world where publication records make or break career success in academe.

I also want to emphasize that replication normally requires new data sets. For example, some years back The Accounting Review published a behavioral study with a sample size of 25 people. Making the data available helps check for analysis errors. But re-examining the same data set does not constitute replication. Replication in science implicitly assumes new test cases (experimental subjects) in similar testing situations. Robustness tests expand the testing situations.

Bob Jensen

July 27, 2006 reply from incoming AAA President Shyam Sunder to a message from Charles Bailey supporting Judy Rayburn's TAR Diversity Initiative

Dear Charles:
Thank you for taking the time to write. While my personal beliefs are not especially important, I do share many of your concerns. I think the strength and vitality of our Association, accounting academia, and indeed accounting as an intellectual discipline, arises from the diverse ideas and work of each one of us. The wisdom lies not in the office-bearers of the Association who happen to have been asked to serve the membership for a year or two, but in its 8,000 members. As an organization, AAA can and should contribute to society by striving, within its limited capacity, to facilitate expression of thoughtful innovation and lively debate in its forums--printed, electronic, and face-to-face--on intellectual, instructional, and professional issues that concern us.

When a journal rejects my papers (and I have a large collection of those), I am, at first, inclined to blame the editors and the referees. When my papers are accepted, it is obviously because of my own brilliance and not due to their generosity or good judgment. But editors make huge personal sacrifices (basically several years of their lives) for doing essentially a thankless task. They use their personal judgments, and the judgments of our colleagues whose advice they seek in making their decisions. All of us have served in that capacity, and know all too well that our judgments are fallible.

The problem, then, is to devise a system in which we can improve the quality of these judgments--this quality itself being a matter of our collective judgment. I am personally skeptical about the ability of a dozen or so of us, who temporarily serve on the executive committees of the AAA or its sections, to improve upon the judgments made by the respective editorial boards about the specific papers. What the Association and the Sections have tried to do is to specify broader policy for each of their journals.

So the challenge for us is: How do we specify the journal policies to achieve the goals of diversifying the ideas presented and debated in our forums. Looking beyond the tenure of current office holders and the editorial boards of the Association and Section journals, the policy has to be such that it can be meaningfully interpreted by the editors, without making it even more difficult (than it already is) to persuade our esteemed colleagues to take on editorial responsibilities in the future.

However, I read in your note a suggestion of something even more fundamental and important. Our journals, and even our PhD students to an extent, are a mirror. We see in them a faithful reflection of we are, as a collectivity, and don't like how we look. What do we do? Do we break the mirror, or try to fix ourselves? The former is easier, and emotionally satisfying, but ultimately a worthless exercise because it doesn't fool anyone; the latter is hard work, perhaps calling for changes in life-style we academics have gotten used to.

The narrow concerns of our research and our students may just be a reflection of the narrow concerns of us--the professors of accounting. If "the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves," will fixing the journal policies, even changing editors, or over-riding their judgments about individual papers, address the problem. (Life-style changes are not easy--it has taken me more than five years of struggle to cut back on my in-take of carbohydrates, in spite of doctor's orders and continual monitoring through lab tests. I suspect that changes in academic life-style for the 8,000 of us would, if anything, be far more difficult to achieve.)

I am delighted that AAA's President Judy Rayburn has been concerned with the diversity of ideas in our profession, and it is my hope that with her and others' help, the Association will continue to engage in an active exploration of what we (the organization AND its members) should do, going forward. I hope you would find it worthwhile to share the benefit of your ideas and suggestions.

I ended up writing more than I had intended to. But the issues you (and many of our other colleagues) have raised are important, difficult, and deserve serious engagement. Let us find ways of addressing them.

With best regards,
Shyam

July 27, 2006 reply from Charles Bailey [CBailey2@memphis.edu]

Dear Shyam,

Thank you for taking the time to respond in some detail to my rather brief request to support the TAR diversity initiative. I will take the excuse to reply to some of your comments and perhaps vent a bit more.

First, although you speak from great experience, I am skeptical that the editorial position at TAR or other academic journals is a thankless task, as I'm sure the activity is highly valued at research universities. It may be the highest honor that one's peers can bestow. I've thanked editors sincerely for their guidance, and I'm sure the acknowledgments seen in footnotes are often sincere. The activity must be extremely rewarding for those with either a love of research or a need for power.

Given that "secondary" outlets exist in the form of the sectional journals, TAR should perhaps be dedicated to groundbreaking material and new ideas--which surely must emanate from various methodologies and disciplinary areas. And such seminal ideas also are unlikely to take the form of extremely "rigorous" tests of exceedingly narrow questions.

There are two damning symptoms of accounting research overall that I did not mention originally, although I'm sure you know the criticisms. The first is the unwillingness to publish replications. "Rigorously" derived findings too quickly become received wisdom, and friendly research "consistent with" initial findings is warmly received. The second is that practitioners don't look to us for new ideas.

You raise the "chicken or the egg" question: "Our journals...are a mirror. We see in them a faithful reflection of [who] we are, as a collectivity, and don't like how we look." Bob Jensen discusses a similar criticism that a TAR reviewer raised to the Heck and Jensen paper, and says "I think the TAR Establishment (relying upon Popper's version of positivism) evolved in an effort to force accountics research upon professors and students of accounting. After that, the TAR Establishment became self-sustaining due to the way prestigious research universities dominated policies of AAA publications and editorships." I tend to think the problem indeed originated with the journals (as the more powerful party) and the solution might well start there. Without micromanaging the editors' decisions, it seems to me that the membership through its leaders can and should set explicit policies as to the scope of the journal.

My assertions above may sound contentious. However, I do hope that a productive and collegial dialogue will ensue. Coincidentally, independent of Judy's initiative and without any conscious political purpose, two caouthors and I have conducted an extensive survey of academic researchers, and the paper will be presented at 2:00 on Tuesday at the DC meeting:

July 27, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Charles,

Thank you for forwarding this response.

To me it indicates that the TAR Establishment is dug in deeper than Hezbollah.

No mention is made of replication, which needs our T-Shirts or buttons that “Academic accounting researchers are more interested in their tractors than their harvests.”

However, Shyam does make some concessions. Perhaps President-Elect Gary Previts can make a few more concessions. However, I think there will be peace in the Middle East before the TAR positivists are driven out of their bunkers. Doctoral programs are virtually positivist clones at this point, and I see little hope for President Rayburn’s TAR Diversity Initiative without some artificial insemination to create some diversity in our leading accounting research universities.

However, Shyam does make some concessions. Perhaps President-Elect Gary Previts can make a few more concessions. However, I think there will be peace in the Middle East before the TAR positivists are driven out of their bunkers. Doctoral programs are virtually positivist clones at this point, and I see little hope for President Rayburn’s TAR Diversity Initiative without some artificial insemination to create some diversity in our leading accounting research universities.

Bob Jensen

July 27, 2006 reply from j.gangolly@albany.edu

Bob,

I think we all are barking the wrong tree.

There is nothing wrong in TAR being the premier outlet for financial reporting research of the positivist kind (I think many positivist philosophers would, however, hardly be proud of TAR achievements).

What is bothersome is TAR hijacking the AAA flag in being called the premier AAA journal. That, however is true, probably not by intention but by historical accident and the foolhardiness of us less exalted mortals.

Asking TAR to change its stripes is like asking the Hezbollah to have an affirmative action program for those of Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, or Hindu persuasion.

I had suggested earlier two reforms:

1. Permit section affiliate membership to those who do not have a compelling interest in being members of rest of AAA. This would automatically serve as quality control devices by parent discipline oversight (econometricians/finance oversight of financial reporting research, social science/Computer science oversight of information systems research,...).

2. Have a standardised nomenclature for all AAA journals as the other societies have (eg., TAR would become AQAA Journal on Financial Reporting, JIS would become AAA Journal on Information Systems,...).

Respectfully submitted,

Jagdish

July 28, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Jagdish,

Judy Rayburn renewed a movement, as the 2005/2006 President of the AAA, to diversify TAR in an effort to increase its quality and readership worldwide. I fear that her initiative will fail unless more pressure is brought to bear by a membership itself that has largely remained silent rather than actively support her dying effort.

Actually we have a diverse set of accounting research journals available for specialties financial reporting, managerial accounting, auditing, tax, systems, etc.

The problem is that universities have explicit or implicit rankings of "journal quality" that is largely dictated by research faculty in those universities. These rankings are crucial to promotion, tenure, and performance evaluation decisions. Unfortunately accounting accountics researchers have what I consider unbalanced power in creating those quality rankings, and they have designated the top four or five accounting research journals to all be accountics/positivist journals that do not have sufficient diversity according to many of the past AAA Presidents and especially Judy Rayburn --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR.htm 

What disturbed me about Shyam Sunder's reply is the implication that Judy Rayburn's TAR Diversity Initiative will water down quality of TAR as if no quality research can be done using more diversified research methods on more diversified topics. More diversity should in fact increase the number of submissions to TAR and, thereby, increase the competition for acceptance by TAR.

TAR is the only AAA accounting research journal designated in the top five research journals by accountics researchers. Hence, by not having diversity of topic and research methods, many potential specialists outside information economics and capital markets studies have virtually zero chance of publishing in TAR and the other four "leading" accounting research journals.

There have been all sorts of alleged externalities associated with this lack of diversity in TAR. Firstly, all accounting doctoral programs generate mostly accountics clones. This discourages many auditing and tax practitioners from returning to campus for doctoral studies unless they are more interested in science than accounting. It also discourages students in doctoral programs from specializing in auditing, tax, managerial accounting, and systems.

This has also led to a different type of doctoral student. Many of our doctoral graduates have little knowledge of or interest in accounting. They are finance and economics wolves hiding under accounting sheepskins. Many have little knowledge about the topics they are forced to teach in undergraduate and masters accounting programs.

This lack of TAR diversity further divides academic accounting researchers from practitioners who now have almost no interest in TAR (unlike the first fifty years of TAR) and no longer look to academe for research that benefits their practices.

What I am saying is that TAR has a long history, before computers and capital markets research, of being the flagship research journal of the American Accounting Association. It was hijacked by accountics positivists in a perfect storm outlined at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm 
I know about this hijacking because I was one of the pirates.

Judy Rayburn renewed a movement, as the 2005/2006 President of the AAA, to diversify TAR in an effort to increase its quality and readership worldwide. I fear that her initiative will fail unless more pressure is brought to bear by a membership itself that has largely remained silent rather than actively support her dying effort.

 Please lend your support to her effort --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR.htm 

Bob Jensen

July 28, 2006 reply from Alexander Robin A [alexande.robi@UWLAX.EDU]

Two quotes from a couple of Bob Jensen's recent posts:

"Of course we knew students are obsessed with grades." (from the RateMyProfessors thread)

"The problem is that universities have explicit or implicit rankings of "journal quality" that is largely dictated by research faculty in those universities. These rankings are crucial to promotion, tenure, and performance evaluation decisions." (from the TAR thread)

These two issues are related. First, students are obsessed with grades because universities, employers and just about everyone else involved are obsessed with grades. One can also say that faculty are obsessed with publications because so are those who decide their fates. In these two areas of academia, the measurement has become more important than the thing it was supposed to measure.

For the student, ideally the learning is the most important outcome of a class and the grade is supposed to reflect how successful the learning was. But the learning does not directly and tangibly affect the student - the grade does. In my teaching experience students, administrators and employers saw the grade as being the key outcome of a class, not the learning.

Research publication is supposed to result from a desire to communicate the results of research activity that the researcher is very interested in. But, especially in business schools, this has been turned on its head and the publication is most important and the research is secondary - it's just a means to the publication, which is necessary for tenure, etc.

It's really a pathetic situation in which the ideals of learning and discovery are largely perverted. Had I fully understood the magnitude of the problem, I would have never gone for a PhD or gotten into teaching. As to what to do about it, I really don't know. The problems are so deeply entrenched in academic culture. Finally I just gave up and retired early hoping to do something useful for the rest of my productive life.

Robin Alexander

July 28, 2006 reply from Paul Williams [williamsp@COMFS1.COM.NCSU.EDU]

I surely support the diversity initiative, but 30+ years of observing the AAA manage the U.S. academy has provided me with more than sufficient empirical evidence (allegedly the "best" kind, but faith usually is the trump) that it is just so much more rhetoric designed to placate the punters who provide the subsidy that supports the "politically correct academic reputation system" we have in the U.S. Diversity will not happen until the "hegemony" of the radical, neoliberals is broken. I am presenting a paper at AAA as well (with my two colleagues Greg Jenkins and Laura Ingraham). Ostensibly about what has happened to "behavioral accounting research" over the past 30 years, it is really about the relentlessness of this fundamentally political idea allied with the most powerful schools within the AAA to drive out of the accounting academy anything resembling something different. The data show an astonishingly closed system -- a monoculture whose exclusive inbreeding is unique in academia. The kinds of discussions we need to be having were we truly serious about diversity would resemble something like the following (from Alan Nelson, "Are Economic Kinds Natural?" Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, v. 14, 1990, pp. 129-130):

"If, however, we are prepared to admit that the theory (general equilibrium theory) cannot be applied with great success even to a specially chosen domain, then I think we should be less inclined to see a deep divide between modern capitalist societies and other human societies. If there is no such divide, and if all the other suppostions I have been entertaining are well founded, then economics is not universal and does not express relations among natural kinds and their properties. This is stronger than claiming that economics sometimes gets it more or less right (when applied to modern capitalistic societies) and sometimes gets it wrong (when applied to other societies). It is claiming that economics never gets it really right because commodity is not a natural kind. If commodities are not natural kinds in any society, there cannot be empirical science about them. If I am right, we should not think of economics as a false theory about things that are in the world; its lack of success is, instead, inevitable because the things that it is supposed to be dealing with are not there."

Discussions of such tenor are common in genuinely scholarly discourse (and in many accounting journals not sponsored by the AAA), but when is the last time we observed any thoughtful discussion about foundations in The Accounting Review? This is particularly surprising given that after 35 years of empirical research, we don't know any more than we did 35 years ago! The more financial accounting research we have done, the worse financial reporting has become. It's no small achievement to have an inverse relationship between the amount of research that is done and progress in understanding the phenomenon being researched. How we fail to see the irony in monotonously propounding unregulated "market" solutions for everything that inevitably lead to more regulation (Sarbanes-Oxley). That, in itself, should be something that occupies some of the conversation. Testing other people's bad theories badly hardly seems a worthy endeavor for a so-called learned profession. What could we lose if we tried something different?

As dismally bad as the discourse of neoclassical economics is as a predictive and explanatory "science," (and even worse as a moral discourse fit for a so-called profession) it is the only type of discourse that the U.S. accounting academy permits in its journals. Every accounting phenomenon requires a neoclassical economic explanation (even behavioral research is now largely behavioral finance with its monetarist roots). If you think this is an overstatement, simply consult what type of discourses receive the notable and seminal contribution awards. Every Seminal contribution award has gone to a Friedmanite perspective on the world. There are, of course other perspectives, intellectually, morally, and empirically more compelling. When these others are afforded space in The Accounting Review, then we might be making headway in achieving diversity. Of course, it is likely too late for the U.S. Who will train Ph.D. students in diverse ways? A quarter century of educating only economists (who were smart enough to see that selling themselves as an accounting researchers pays a lot more than selling themselves as economists) in accounting Ph.D. programs doesn't bode well. There is no longer any diversity in the community; it has been homogenized out by the very educational system (and journals) that we now want to reflect diversity (this is Trevor Hopper's take on the U.S. academy per our conversation at the recent IPA in Cardiff - - the patient is terminal -- it's already brain dead; Judy's initiative is too little, too late). As Nietzsche observed, "Nothing counts as knowledge that reduces power." You want diversity in The Accounting Review? Appoint Charlie Bailey editor! Charlie is a capable scholar who has read more widely in the social sciences than many of the recent editors. Suppose that will happen? It was a "political solution" that brought us to this sorry state (think JAR and JAE aren't patently political); only a political solution has any hope of bringing us out. Of course, it may be that we aren't really interested in understanding; all we want is a system for identifying who the cleverest people are so we know to whom to give the academic honorifics (including some rather silly salaries compared to what some real scientists are paid).

PFW

August 20, 2006 message from Dan Stone, Univ. of Kentucky [dstone@UKY.EDU]

Several events at this year's AAA meeting are relevant to the issue of reforming The Accounting Review (TAR) and the AAA journal governance processes:

1. Anthony Hopwood's Plenary Session Presidential Scholar talk: "Whither Accounting Research?" will apparently be published in The Accounting Review. (Unfortunately, I was presenting at this time and missed Anthony's presentation -- though I heard rave reviews of it.)

2. Joel Demski and John Fellingham Plenary Session talks on: "Is Accounting an Academic Discipline?". Joel and John's talks are available at Joel's website: http://bear.cba.ufl.edu/demski/Is_Accounting_an_Academic_Discipline.pdf 

3. I was on a panel session related to the 25th anniversary of the ABO section and spoke about: (a) the absence of technology and systems research in TAR, (b) the failure of TAR to represent the research conducted by the AAA membership, and (c) the need for reform of journal governance processes in the AAA. My slides are available at the ABO section website:
http://aaahq.org/abo/Papers/Dan Stone's Presentation - Systems.pdf

Did I miss any events at this year's annual meeting that are relevant to this issue? If so, I would appreciate learning about them.

An observation: Following from Paul William's excellent and extensive work on the sociology of accounting knowledge and publication, Anthony H (U of Chicago), Joel D (U of Chicago), John F (UCLA), and I (Univ. of Texas) are all graduates of "elite" Ph. D. programs. Yet, all of us are publicly speaking to the need for reform of accounting research and publication processes. Perhaps this is an example of situational irony?

Best,

Dan Stone
Member -- AAA publications committee

August 20, 2006 reply from Jagdish S. Gangolly [j.gangolly@ALBANY.EDU]

Bob,

I found both Fellingham and Demski addresses quite illuminating and revealing.

I found the Fellingham piece telling us how accounting can be a glorious academic discipline if only we look around us in the university and learn from other disciplines, howsoever farfetched the connection may seem.

I found the Demski piece telling us all things that are wrong with us. I agree with his conclusions.

I also found Demski's conclusions quite damning, depressing, and in my opinion, very true:

_______________________________________________
"We are at present a troubled enterprise. Our research is largely derivative, bifurcated and far from foundational. Our textbooks are intellectually embarrassing. Our intellectual contribution to the academy has asymptoted to nil. The care, feeding and deepening of our intellectual foundations has been ceded to regulators. Our responsibility is not to do well or to prosper in this culture, it is to do good.

Mutiny is the only path I see at this point. It is time to strike out, to change the game, to ensure accounting has an honorable presence in the academy."

Joel Demski
_______________________________________________

However, I do hope the pendulum does not move to the other extreme where accounting at universities is divorced from practice, accounting at universities is divorced from the profession, and textbooks are written for analytical rigor to trump reality.

What is needed is really balance between various research modes and a tolerance for things that we do not agree with. All intellectual disciplines do that, but we do not. I shall limit myself below to just one point apparent from both addresses: the pathetic state of accounting research and the asymptotic nature of its contributions to science and the society.

Since Fellinham address keeps harping back on Physics, let me speak about an episode I spoke about on AECM many years ago. I had to contact a wellknown Physics Professor in our university (to make arrangements for his economist nephew visiting us on sabbatical from a prestigious British university). When I met him in his office I found him in the midst of heated arguments (with a colleague in Chemistry) over a pile of mainframe computer printouts (the kind with holes on both ends of wide papar). When I asked him what the fuss was about, he told me they were arguing about some experimental results that showed some anomalies in the mathematical model of the phenomena they were studying. The argument was over how the mathematical (analytical) model should be altered to take into account the anomalies observed. What a beautiful way for the analytical and experimental scientists to collaborate to advance the discipline?

And then was my experience at DC interviewing candidates for faculty vacancies in our department (we have six vacancies). Almost all candidates were in Financial Accounting, an area where our need is least; for we can hire for half the money excellent instructors to cover the classes AS TAUGHT CURRENTLY to cover twice as many students. I asked each candidate (all of whom were doing what nowadays is called "archival" market based research) how they obtained their hypotheses. I was trying to find out if they were based on some formal model that they were trying to test. Of the 21 candidates we interviewed, only one answered that the hypotheses were based on a formal model. And many of them were from wellknown schools.

What a pathetic state of affairs! If you do not have a mouse trap to kick around to improve, how can you improve your theories? Descriptive vs. prescriptive arguments do not hold water, since even descriptive research is trying to find a model of the phenomena that describes reality. Empirical research can not be folksy and scientific at the same time. Also, if you have no mousetrap to take potshots at, there is no learning involved other than folksy tales (many of which may even be tall).

We academic accountants have learnt well to circle our wagons so that our wages are optimised, but we have no freight (intellectual capital) to protect, and considering the paucity of doctorally qualified folks, not many people to protect either. The academic accounting emperors need new clothes!

Respectfully submitted,

Jagdish

August 21, 2006 reply from Ed Scribner [escribne@NMSU.EDU]

Watch for Jagdish’s forthcoming TAR articles, “Revenue Recognition in Hilbert Space,” “Nothing New Under the Sun: The Purchases Journal as a Moebius Strip,” and “Cooking the Books Over a Bunsen Burner.”

Ed

August 21, 2006 reply from Paul Williams [williamsp@COMFS1.COM.NCSU.EDU]

Jagdish, et al, I listened to Demski and Fellinghams' talks and, like you, I found myself agreeing with Joel about the state of our discipline. But I also found, once again, the astonishing denseness of his dogmatism that the irony of his remarks completely escaped him. Every critique he offered he explained in terms of classic economics asserting with dogmatic certainty that these things were TRUE, when in fact, none of them are true. The mutiny he calls for is a mutiny against a system he was instrumental in creating.

Anthony Hopwood's speech was brilliant and revealing because he reminisced about being at Chicago with Beaver, Demski, etc. I call your attention to the Seminal Contribution to Accounting Literature winners --- there are only four. Certainly in U.S. doctoral programs, PhD students might be expected to be influenced in their studies by the Seminal Contributions (what physics student is unfamiliar with Einstein). The awards have gone to:

1986: Ray Ball: Chicago class of 1972 and Phil Brown: Chicago class of 1968.

1989: William Beaver: Chicago class of 1965

1994: Joel Demski: Chicago class of 1967 and Gerald Feltham, Berkeley class of 1967

2004: Ross Watts: Chicago class of 1971 and Gerald Zimmerman, Berkeley class of 1974.

All of the seminal works have a Chicago author and from the same era (this certainly qualifies in Harriette Zuckerman's terms as a "school"). This time period also corresponds to the Law and Economics movement (Coase) and the creation of right wing think tanks (e.g., the Hoover Institute at Stanford, the Heritage Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation [whose president for 23 years was William Simon, namesake of the business school at Rochester]).

What I find bewildering is how we in the U.S. academy refuse to see the essentially political (not scientific) nature of the dominant academic discourse. Dogma is not conducive to creativity. If all of our "scientific" work has to produce the same politically correct conclusions, is it any wonder that it becomes banal and tiresome? (Note the Wildman Medal winning work with the sarcastic "did the government get it right?" in the title -- have we ever seen a paper in accounting that sarcastically asks whether the "market" got it right?). Andrew Abbot (chaos of disciplines) notes the tendency in academic disciplines for them to become dogmatic such that eventually academic debates become more and more arguments over technicalities and methods because arguments over foundations are too disruptive and dangerous. When those foundations consist of political dogmas, it should be no surprise that the state of academic discourse would reach the state we are in now.

If Demski is lamenting the state of the academy, then one would have expected in his speech a rather loud and heart felt mea culpa. As Hopwood noted: Accounting is a practice and as a practice we can talk about it any way we like. For too long we have not been free to talk about it any way we like.

For this diversity initiative to have traction, we must jettison this obsession with "rigor" as the most important virtue accounting scholarship can have (which recalls Robert Heilbroner's famous observation that "Mathematics brought great rigor to economics, unfortunately it also brought mortis").

What we need is to value "imagination" over rigor. Let's start to value imaginative work (some phantasmagoric accounting?) even if it isn't "rigorous" enough. We claim ownership of one of the oldest practices associated with civilization. Why should we feel self-conscious about our "rigor" from upstart disciplines that have plenty of problems of their own (note the recent observation from none other than Milton Friedman "...economics has become increasingly an arcane branch of mathematics rather than dealing with real economic problems"). As Jadgish noted in an earlier email concerning the white paper on SFAS 123R (of which old Milt was a signatory), Ijiri is so underappreciated.

Interestingly, the argument in the white paper (which cannot be dismissed as cavalierly as some think) is based on a root metaphor for accounting of "accountability." Accounting from its origins in Sumaria has been about civic administration. Its structure inherently creates some responsibility for someone whenever it chooses information to produce. To paraphrase Ed Arrington, accounting never produces information without also issuing a warrant for someone's arrest. So it should be careful in what information it presumes to produce. Law and justice are perhaps as much the province of accounting as economic efficiency (whatever that means). At least let's people explore these possibilities and share their explorations with others who might find what they've created to be interesting.

Just because something isn't interesting to Joel Demski doesn't mean it isn't interesting.

August 21, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen

When the accounting profession was becoming tinderbox in the 1990s and early 2000s, one truly noteworthy accounting professor, badly infected with a vocational virus, was on the streets trying to install fire alarms and sprinklers. When scandals eventually burst into flames that consumed Andersen and cost other auditing firms billions in damages, one professor stood out at Ground Zero fighting the flames while the academic information economists in accounting academe fiddled with Shannon's bits, qubits, and quantum superposition and quantum parallel processing.

Question
Who was that professor down on the streets of NYC warning us about Andersen before it imploded?

If you want to learn more about the joys of learning how to fiddle in academe while Rome burns, I highly recommend the a recent paper entitled "Quantum Information and Accounting Information," by J.S. Demski, S.A. FitzGerald, Yiji, Ijiri, Yumi Ijiri, and H. Lin, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Volume 25, July/August 2006, pp. 435-464.

Seriously the above paper is a great research paper. I'm not trying to put down the research of the TAR Establishment. I'm merely trying to praise other types of doctoral program role models like Professors XXXXX and YYYYY who are infected with the "vocation virus" and whose writings will probably never pass muster for The Accounting Review controlled by the TAR establishment.

Hi Jagdish,

I recently sent out an "Appeal" for accounting educators, researchers, and practitioners to actively support what I call The Accounting Review (TAR) Diversity Initiative as initiated by last year's American Accounting Association President Judy Rayburn --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR.htm
In August 2006 Joel Demski spoke in favor of TAR Establishment that silently but adamantly resists the spirit of Judy's initiative. Even if TAR itself ultimately succumbs to populist pressures, the TAR Establishment will continue to push for an elitist circle of accounting researchers not infected by "vocational viruses."

Although you, Jagdish, picked two of the revealing quotations from Joel Demski's August 2006 address to accounting professors, I think you should've quoted his concluding remarks that are truly most depressing to me:

Statistically there are a few youngsters who came to academia for the joy of learning, who are yet relatively untainted by the vocational virus. I urge you to nurture your taste for learning, to follow your joy. That is the path of scholarship, and it is the only one with any possibility of turning us back toward the academy.
Joel Demski, "Is Accounting an Academic Discipline? American Accounting Association Plenary Session" August 9, 2006 --- http://bear.cba.ufl.edu/demski/Is_Accounting_an_Academic_Discipline.pdf

I read the term "statistically" to mean that there will only be miniscule proportion of "youngsters who come into academia for the joy of learning." Although Joel is still my good friend, I find such concluding remarks astoundingly elitist, arrogant, and insulting. Supposedly the overwhelming remainder of the young accounting researchers, in his opinion, enter into academia for (blue collar?) vocational drudgery and find no joy from learning. If that's the case, a vocationally diseased majority will never get tenure in leading research universities because they will never be able to publish their research in the top accounting research journals tightly controlled by editorial boards (the TAR Establishment) that do not publish research papers infected by vocational viruses.

Over the past 40years, nearly 100% of academic accounting researchers in academe were immunized against vocational viruses by virtually all doctoral programs in accountancy in the United States and elsewhere. If tainted by a vocational virus such as the case-method virus, these researchers could never get their diseased work respectably published in TAR or other leading journals.

Why aren’t law schools and medical schools more up in arms about vocational viruses creeping into their top researchers? Why is the accounting profession viewed by elitists as more parochial and vocational?
 

Presumably a leading scholar like Katherine Schipper succumbed to a vocational virus and lost the "joy of learning" when she joined the board of the FASB. Maybe there's still hope for her as she finds her way back to the path of Demski's vision of the academy now that she's off the FASB and presumably recovering from the vocational virus. But poor Professor Mary Barth may still be finding no joy of learning since she took on duties as a board member of the IASB. Presumably there can be no "joy of learning" in academic accounting like there is in academic law or academic medicine.

 

What's wrong with Joel's vision of the accounting academy?

If I'm reading Joel's remarks properly, he rants that "accounting is not an academic discipline." Therefore, academics in accounting must go outside accounting for the "joy or learning" and the joy of making esoteric  contributions to the academy. What's wrong with his message is that it inspires top accounting researchers to devote their prime time and considerable talents trying to impress an academic constituency of professors in other departments, particularly in the departments of finance, economics, mathematics, statistics, and psychology. In doing so, accounting professors strive to solve the vexing problems facing those disciplines rather than serious problems of accountancy and auditing and other specialties of the accounting profession.

Years ago Yuji Ijiri told me that he would willingly give his life if he could derive an elegant proof to a theoretical problem in mathematics known as the Four Color Map Theorem --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_map_problem
I think Yuji devoted a substantial amount of his time and talent over the years in trying in vain to derive an elegant proof to this theorem which was generally believed to be true but defied elegant proof by the best mathematical researchers in the world. Striving to find such a proof to this and other mathematical theorems became Yuji's "joy of learning" that diverted his attention from many problems of the accounting profession. If he'd succeeded my former major professor would've become famous as a mathematician. The fact that he was an accounting professor in a college of business would've been incidental and hardly worthy of mention. In fairness much of Professor Ijiri's varied research over the years has had Accounting Hall of Fame-level impact on accounting researchers, although the accounting profession itself has not paid much attention to his writings.

 

Joel admits that "Our (academic accounting)  intellectual contribution
to the academy has asymptoted to nil."

We would all be much more impressed by the TAR Establishment if TAR's publications were esteemed by the academy. It was terribly embarrassing to Joel and the TAR Establishment when AAA President Judy Rayburn proclaimed that TAR in recent years failed in the to impress the academy itself as well as a professional (vocational) constituency  --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm

 

What academic researcher has had the noteworthy impact
on the accounting profession and the world of business?

John Fellingham correctly points out that there are many academic journals for accounting research. These journals do provide an outlet for researchers who Joel Demski claims (I think incorrectly) are taking the place of truly academic scholars. In fact Joel goes so far as to allege that  "accounting scholars have largely disappeared from the scene, and are replaced by conditional, adjective laden, tribal specialists."

Have accounting researchers who significantly impacted the business, accounting, and auditing profession truly lost the "joy of learning" when they became infected by "vocational viruses?"  I think Harvard's Bob Kaplan and his colleagues who published a great deal of largely case-method research found some joy in learning and some joy in having significant impact on the accounting profession and the business world.

This leads me four square into confronting Professor Demski with a question about who are the ideal role models for what he calls "youngsters who came to academia for the joy of learning." His ideal role models most likely are those, including himself, who have the most publications in TAR over the past 20 years. In particular, the current role models would be the ones listed in Table 4 of http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm I doubt that Joel's preferred doctoral studies role models include anybody with well-known reputations in the accounting profession and/or world of business itself.

Although I greatly respect those Table 4 accounting research role models, none of them emerges as my one true hero, one whose research greatly impacted the profession even though it had zero chance of being published in the leading academic accounting research journals. My hero is an accounting professor whose research sometimes had immediate and significant impact on the security prices. My hero is an accounting professor who courageously and repeatedly pointed out instances where auditors acquiesced to client pressures to silently and significantly depart from GAAP while writing clean audit opinions. At a time the large auditing firms were patting each other on the back with great fanfare about their lofty auditing professionalism, independence, and integrity, my hero was an accounting researcher who uncovered audit failures and auditor frauds and complicity. He correctly forewarned the audit profession's fall from grace and pending demise of such firms as Arthur Andersen.

Why I truly lament is that, to my knowledge, no accounting doctoral program in the world holds up Dr. Abraham Briloff as a role model "who found a joy of learning" from detailed analyses of published financial statements and joys of exposing professional malpractices long before accounting firms eventually paid billions of dollars in settlements for malpractices and breakdowns of professionalism --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud001.htm#others

Companies Professor Briloff criticized for misleading accounting reports experienced an average drop in share prices of 8%. The following is Table 1 from a paper entitled "Briloff and the Capital Markets" by George Foster, Journal of Accounting Research, Volume 17, Spring 1979 --- http://www.jstor.org/view/00218456/di008014/00p0266h/0
 

TABLE 1
Articles of Briloff Examined

	Article	Journal/Publication Date	Companies Cited That Are Examined in This Note
1.	"Dirty Pooling"	Barron's (July 15, 1968)	Gulf and Wesern: Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV)
2.	"All a Fandangle?"	Barron's (December 2, 1968)	Leasco Data Processing: Levin-Townsend
3.	"Much-Abused Goodwill"	Barron's (April 28, 1969)	Levin-Townsend; National General Corp.
4.	"Out of Focus"	Barron's (July 28, 1969)	Perfect Film & Chemical Corp.
5.	"Castles of Sand?"	Barron's (February 2, 1970)	Amrep Corp.; Canaveral International; Deltona Corp.; General Development Corp.; Great Southwest Corp.; Great Western United, Major Realty; Penn Central
6.	"Tomorrow's Profits?"	Barron's (May 11, 1970)	Telex
7.	"Six Flags at Half-Mast?"	Barron's (January 11, 1971)	Great Southwest Corp.; Penn Central
8.	"Gimme Shelter"	Barron's (October 25, 1971)	Kaufman & Broad Inc.; U.S. Home Corp.; U.S. Financial Inc.
9.	"SEC Questions Accounting"	Commercial and Financial Chronicle (November 2, 1972)	Penn Central
10.	"$200 Million Question"	Barron's (December 18, 1972)	Leasco Corp.
11.	"Sunrise, Sunset"	Barron's (May 14, 1973)	Kaufman & Broad
12.	"Kaufman & Broad--More Questions?	Commercial and Financial Chronicle (July 12, 1973)	Kaufman & Broad
13.	"You Deserve a Break..."	Barron's (July 8, 1974)	McDonald's
14.	"The Bottom Line: What's Going on at I.T.T." (Interview with Briloff)	New York Magazine (August 12, 1974)	I.T.T.
15.	"Whose Deep Pocket?"	Barron's (July 19, 1976)	Reliance Group Inc.

And because he embarrassed the profession when it was riding high, Professor Briloff was persecuted relentlessly.

"The AICPA's Prosecution of Dr. Abraham Briloff, Some Observations," by Dwight M. Owsen, In the Public Interest, Spring 1999 --- http://aaahq.org/PublicInterest/newsletr/spring99/item07.htm

Embarrasses the Profession
Some observers of the profession will undoubtedly see the AICPA investigation and trial of Dr. Briloff as a groundless, mean-spirited, partisan attack on one of the great accounting educators and writers of our time. The attack itself wastes the public confidence that the AICPA has built up with great effort and millions of its members’ dollars. Moreover, the AICPA persecution is embarrassing the profession among those whose goodwill we need in order to practice: creditors, investors, preparers, the general public and, unfortunately, our many competitors. This story made it to the New York Times business section.

More alarming is that this may be providing a powerful, misguided example to our already fierce competitors. These include bankers, insurance agents, lawyers, management consultants and system consultants, who, in special circumstances, might be able to do a better job in our attest function. This is excepting the fact that business and the public still trust us more. If actuaries, attorneys, bankers, computer analysts, economists (remember Federal Chairman Greenspan’s recent comments about weakening banking accounting standards), financial analysts, insurance agents, management consultants and others, by themselves or in conjunction, do at least as good a job of auditing as CPAs in certain circumstances, our auditing monopoly could be threatened. They could also hire CPAs themselves and again convince Congress to end the CPA monopoly on attestation services for financial statements. It is the good image of the profession that keeps these others legally out of our business.

Role of a Profession’s Prophets Public persecution of our moral iconoclasts takes the ethical high ground away from the profession and makes us vulnerable to the other professions represented in Congress, who see our attest function as the Trojan Horse into their profession. The public, especially the investment community, is likely to see Dr. Briloff as more creditable that his AICPA persecutors. This fact alone should have warned the AICPA off a long time before this. In addition, while ethics critic to the profession, he may temporarily aggravate some. Many practitioners have come to the conclusion that accounting is more effective, relevant and much more profitable because of Dr. Briloff’s more than 50 years of critical conscience for the profession. His exquisite prose—almost poetry—and his stature in taking on the largest economic actors have done much to convince government policy makers not to intervene in the private self-government of the profession.

The Management of the AICPA This persecution of Abraham Briloff also puts the honor and management skills of our profession in question. Much of our very profitable consulting business builds on the costly but necessary quality of our auditing assignments that Briloff’s criticism did so much to elicit. Moreover, AICPA persecution of its critics means that most members will perceive that they will not likely be able to express their concerns without retaliation, much less get their concerns acted upon.

I might add the after 1999 the AICPA's reputation took a nose dive and Professor Briloff was exonerated by the armies of lawyers and the SEC that came calling on large CPA auditing firms and their clients --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm

I wonder if Professor Briloff managed to find some "joy of learning" across his many years of accounting research?

I wonder if Professor Briloff is truly sorry about once being infected with a "vocational virus?"

The sad part is that because the TAR Establishment controls the accounting doctoral programs, Professor Briloff will never be held up as a role model for academic accountants.

He will never be invited to speak at an Accounting Doctoral Student Consortium that does not recognize diversity in accounting research.

He will never be admitted into the Accounting Hall of Fame even though he's probably the most famous accounting professor on the planet.

When the accounting profession was becoming tinderbox in the 1990s and early 2000s, one truly noteworthy accounting professor, badly infected with a vocational virus, was on the streets trying to install fire alarms and sprinklers. When scandals eventually burst into flames that consumed Andersen and cost other auditing firms billions in damages, one professor stood out at Ground Zero fighting the flames while the academic information economists in accounting academe fiddled with Shannon's bits, qubits, and quantum superposition and quantum parallel processing.

It was Professor Briloff down on the streets of NYC warning us about Andersen before it imploded?
If you want to learn more about the joys of learning how to fiddle in academe while Rome burns, I highly recommend the a recent paper entitled "Quantum Information and Accounting Information," by J.S. Demski, S.A. FitzGerald, Yiji, Ijiri, Yumi Ijiri, and H. Lin, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Volume 25, July/August 2006, pp. 435-464.

Seriously the above paper is a great research paper. I'm not trying to put down the research of the TAR Establishment. I'm merely trying to praise other types of doctoral program role models like Bob Kaplan and Abe Briloff who are infected with the "vocation virus" and whose writings will probably never pass muster for The Accounting Review controlled by the TAR establishment.

August 22, 2006 reply from Jagdish S. Gangolly [j.gangolly@ALBANY.EDU]

Bob,

I must apologise I did not respond to your recent appeal, for I did not want to pen something in the heat of the moment. I wanted to hear all the arguments before I had a position to take.

I must say, most of our arguments have been skewed in one direction, but that is natural -- we are the outsiders trying to get in (some of us like I have just about given up trying to get in, for we see no advantage being "in", and would in fact feel claustrophobic being in a dark crowded very small environment). Now that I have studied the postings, I will state what is on my mind.

Reflecting our own binary (debit/credit) heritage, we have cast just about every issue in a binary fashion:

1 'pesky vocational virus' vs. 'ivory tower virus' (my own 2cents), 2 analytic vs, synthetic (empirical) research, 3 'joy of learning' vs. 'joy of earning' (my own 2 cents), 4 academic vs. vocational discipline, 5 self-confident posture vs. self-doubting posture (asymptoticity of contributions), 6 academe's in volvement in its environment or the Town vs. Gown controversy.

To this, I shall add three more items:

7 Lack of or lack of attention to "challenging problems (Ijiri's idea), 8 the distinction we need to make between research and scholarship, 9 the dire need for thinking rather than tinkering.

My own position is predicated on the genetic metaphorical idea that monocultured crops are vulnerable to pathogens (remember the disappearance of the American chestnut due to the fungal blight subsequent to reduction of genetic diversity due to extensive logging?). In a sense, we all might be looked upon as the blight upon the establishment whose gene pool is depleted.

1. 'pesky vocational virus' vs. 'ivory tower virus':
I think it is naive to think that we all must be either vocational, academic, or suffer from a relevant bipolar disorder. A healthy academic must have the flexibility of mind to absorb cues of all kinds to be creative and productive. This is especially important as the practice of accounting (without which there is no theory to talk about) is getting more and more multi- (or rather inter-)disciplinary. So long as an academic, I should in fact invite both the pesky viruses. Without them, there is no buildup of immunity. For the academicians in accounting exposed to only the ivory tower virus for long will likely cause them to be delusional when exposed to the vocational virus; and the academicians exposed to just the vocational virus for long will make them hallucinogenic when exposed to the ivory tower virus.

I think an important lesson that we all should have learnt from the recent postings is the virtue of diversity in thinking.

2. Analytic vs, Synthetic (empirical) research:
I have studied a few disciplines, but in none other than accounting is the guillotine that separates the two is so sharp. In most sciences, the two modes coexist in a synergistic way, and we should emulate them. In the social sciences too the two have coexisted to mutual benefit (I gave the example of Homan's theory on Small Groups in Behavioral Sociology in my previous posting).

3. 'Joy of learning' vs. 'Joy of earning':
I have often wondered what would happen to the accounting academia if there were a precipitous drop in the going salaries to bring then to the levels in other disciplines. Would there be a drop in just the supply, or also a drop in quality? I know of too many disciplines where the economic incentives are pathetic, and yet they attract brilliant minds (history, anthropology, and in fact most humanities come to mind).

4. Academic vs. Vocational discipline:
This is the most ridiculous of the dichotomies. Is it conceivable to have a vocational discipline in accounting devoid of academic content? Or is it possible for us to indulge exclusively in navel gazing without any considerations of accounting practice? In my opinion, we have created a greasy totem pole where the ones who have reached the top are true "academics". In my opinion, it is high time we stopped such arrogant thinking bordering on the pernicious.

Without healthy respect between the derogatory moniker 'vocationalists' (we should really call them professionals for what they are) and academicians, accounting as an academic discipline will disappear.

5. Self-confident posture vs. Self-doubting posture:
We have the folks who have reached the top of the greasy pole (with ample help from the social networks) supremely confident looking down upon the rest of the crowd, and at the same time sermonising about the asymptoticity of contributions.

Revolutions and mutinies do not happen from the top. Coups do. King of England had no reasons to mutiny against the East India Company (I said King deliberately, for Queen Victoria had a more benevolent attitude towards the heathens in India). Mutinies, if they happen, must happen from the bottom. Else it will just be a change of the guard at the top.

6. Town vs. Gown controversy (town being the profession and Gown being us): I find this dichotomy also to be counterproductive. We should emulate the professions of medicine and law in how they have learned to live (and thrive) in the environment.

7. Challenging problems:
Ijiri pointed out a long ago the possibility of existence of challenging problems in Accounting. Unfortunately no one (other than Ijiri) has given much thought to them. I guess it is easier to do regressions. People are drawn to fields like Physics and mathematics, in spite of lack of incentives mainly because of the challenging problems that excite brilliant minds.

8. Research vs. Scholarship:
A few years ago I was on a university committee on the selections on Presidential/Chancellor's prizes/medals for excellence in "research". Towards the end of the meeting, one Professor (I think from the humanities) challenged us to think why we reward research but not scholarship. I think we need to study how much accounting has suffered because of privileged status that research has over scholarship.

9. Tinkering vs. Thinking:
The few papers I have read in accounting (specially in Financial Accounting) for the past years have been almost exclusively of the tinkering kind. I think it is difficult to reverse the trend, since the incentive reward system at most schools reward tinkering more than they do thinking. Put in economist's terms, it is more efficient to tinker than to think.

To be frank, I am pessimistic about the future. The fact that the profession routinely ignore our work, and we routinely deride the profession speaks volume for our stubbornness. I am glad that I am at the relatively tail end of my career. If I were to start now, perhaps I would be some where else.

These are indeed sad days for academic accountants.

Respectfully submitted,

Jagdish

August 22, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Jagdish,

It will take some time to digest your long and thoughtful reply.

After an initial scanning of your reply to Demski's disdain for accounting researchers who become infected with a "vocational virus," it just dawned on me how grateful I am that medical school researchers are especially prone to such a virus. Perhaps what accounting researchers discover really is irrelevant to the world, but it would bother me greatly if medical school researchers were immune to vocational viruses.

Perhaps it is Joel's vocational virus disdain that justifies leading accounting journal policies about not publishing replications. If there's no connection of accounting researchers with the accounting profession I guess we're less interested in whether accounting research discoveries can be replicated. Joel wins on this one!

Natural blondes are going extinct. It's a published fact --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm#Replication 

Bob Jensen

August 22, 2006 reply from Paul Williams [williamsp@COMFS1.COM.NCSU.EDU]

Bob and Jagdish,

I have a similar reservation as Bob to Jagdish's thoughtful and articulate reply. I recall Carl Devine saying many times more than once that what accountants do matters. It might be the case that what we do has more consequences for the welfare of people than physicians who, at least, publicly proclaim "First, do no harm." Accounting practitioners make no such declaration. The situation isn't improved by an academy comprised of frustrated mathematicians or statisticians (either not smart enough to actually be mathematicians or clever enough to know that mathematicians and statisticians are paid about a third of what accountants are) who want accounting only to be about solving "puzzles" that have the tractability of those in mathematics or the natural sciences. That is a luxury we can ill afford.

As the Russian mathematician who yesterday won the Fields Medal for proving Poincare's conjecture opined the last time anyone could get him to speak, "What I do is of no interest to the public." [He is also an exemplar of doing something for the joy of it: he didn't show up to collect his prize nor will he likely show up to collect the million dollars offered to the person who provided the first proof].

Unfortunately, what accountants do is of interest to the public, whether they know it or not. Tom Lee's recent paper in API makes the argument from John Searle's social constructivest perspective that accountants write many of the "constitutive rules" that decide the constitution of the society in which we live and how it product gets distributed. That is an awesome responsibility that was given to the accounting profession largely by historical accident and one which it has never taken seriously enough.

If religious scholars sat around issuing incoherent rules of conduct based on some made up religious law one could escape the inanity or oppressiveness of it by leaving the church. But when the FASB does it, how do you escape? Leave the society? Unfortunately, some of Jagdish's arrogant "experts" at the top of the greased pole slide down and go to the FASB or SEC or other such places and make public policy. That's a sobering thought.

Bob Jensen's threads on the sad state of academic accounting research are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm#AcademicsVersusProfession