Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Volume 1. 1989
Printed in USA
Behavioral Accounting in
Retrospect and Prospect*
Anthony G. Hopwoodt
London School of Economics and Political Science
ABSTRACT
This introductory essay comments on the four subsequent reviews of the
behavioral accounting literature. The essay emphasizes the factors that
have been implicated in the emergence of the behavioral accounting
literature, the cumulative progress that has been achieved and the need for
further work. Accepting the diversity of the human sciences, the discussion
also notes the problems that can emerge when one perspective is used to
encapsulate the perspectives and approaches of another. Hoping that in the
future behavioral accounting researchers will be able to articulate a more
mature intellectual stance, the essay elaborates on some of the ways in
which this might be achieved.
Often the economists whose work was drawn upon in these contexts had more complex
views of the organizational and social possibilities for economic calculative practices
such as accounting. Accounting writers tended only to utilize the more techn ical
aspects of such works, however, ignoring the often quite rich and subtle insights into
their organizational and social functioning.
interest in accounting. By the late 1960s the external pressures for the
reorientation of American business schools were starting to result in a
new generation of accounting scholars.
Seen in such terms, the origins of both the new behavioral and
economic research traditions in accounting were very similar. Neither
represented a mainstream. Both were viewed with suspicion in many
circles, at least initially. It is worth remembering that one of the most
significant of the new economic papers (now honored by the American
Accounting Association) was rejected by The Accounting Review, only
to be published in the Journal of Accounting Research,* a journal
which owed its origin to the same set of institutional changes. From
these related origins, however, the behavioral and economic research
traditions were to diverge, albeit never completely. There are times
such as now when a certain complementarity of interests exists in a
few areas, and in times past the decision rationality of an economic
perspective has provided an influential basis for behavioral research.
The divergence, moreover, was seemingly not to be an even one
because an economic approach to accounting was quite rapidly in a
position where many could perceive it as the mainstream research
orientation of the accounting academic community.
The reasons for the nature and form of the divergence have not been
explored in any systematic manner and all the subsequent reviews of
the behavioral research literature are silent on this point. In all
probability, quite a number of interesting factors were involved.
The new economic tradition was initially established in relatively few
institutions, in large part because the necessary configurations of
intellectual influences for efficient capital market based research were
themselves in relatively short supply. The institutions were themselves
prestigious ones, occupying central and influential positions in the
accounting academic community. Moreover, so focused, the research
tradition became more easily susceptible to the orchestrating rationality
of economics, a discipline that strictly polices both intellectual
innovations and its own boundaries. Quickly resulting in complex
empirical work and statistical testing, the new body of research also
provided a seemingly more meaningful haven for the growing number
of accounting academics who had a quantitative orientation. The
perspective also was emerging in accounting at a time when modes of
economic rationality and theorizing were becoming of more general
significance in institutional and social governance. In contrast, as the
review papers themselves demonstrate, behavioral research emerged
in a wide variety of institutions. It was thereby subjected to a diversity
*Editor's note #1: The paper being referred to is Roy Ball and Philip Brown, "An
Empirical Eva luation of Acc ounting Incom e Numbers," Journal of Accounting
Research (Autumn 1968), pp. 159 -178.
*Editor's note #2: The reader may find the following useful reading in regard to the
argument presented by Hopwood:
Charles Christenson, "The Methodology of Positive Accounting," Accounting Review
(January 1983), pp. 1-22.
Ross L. Watts and Jerold L. Zimmerman, "The Demand for and Supply of Accounting
Theories: The Market for Excuses." Accounting Review (April 1979), pp. 273-305.
Ross L. Watts and Jerold L. Zimmerman, "Towards a Positive Theory of the
Determination of Accounting Standards," Accounting Review (January 1978), pp.
112-134.
the substance of the research still bedevils the area, although in this
respect it certainly is not unique.
As should be quite clear, I have adopted a specific stance in
commenting on the views articulated by Burgstahler and Sundem. My
rationale for doing this is an internally orientated one for the
behavioral and organizational accounting area, although not a
defensive one. It is important for behavioral and organizational
researchers in accounting to receive, ponder on and, on suitable
occasions, act on the views of outsiders. The field should not be
isolated. Nor should it be seen as being isolated. Equally, however, I
think that it is extremely important for behavioral and organizational
researchers to be conscious of the nature and specificity of their own
endeavors, of the intellectual traditions upon which they draw and of
the positions which they occupy or should attempt to occupy within
the spectrum of the diverse human sciences. Indeed, if I am critical of
behavioral accounting researchers it is that they do not live up to this
ideal. Too many appear to be unaware of their own intellectual
position. Too few can relate their research interests to substantive
developments in the human sciences. Insufficient attention is given to
increasing at least their awareness of their epistemological position
and the roles which can be attributed to the research endeavor.
If behavioral accounting research were to invest more in appreciat -
ing its own nature and position, I think that it would be a stronger
field. It could then listen with sympathy and understanding to the
views of outsiders. It could have a sounder appreciation of their
relevance or not for its own endeavors. It even might be able to extend
its own appreciations to complement and intersect with those
emanating from w ithout, in the process even developing some
understandings of the organizational and social preconditions that
give rise to an interest in the economic and its translation into modes
of economic calculation, such as accounting.
inquiry require not only new research skills but also "considerable
expertise in identifying appropriate behavioral concepts and applying
these concepts to specific situations." That is a point that cannot be
emphasized sufficiently. Research orientated case studies can never be
atheoretical exercises in mere description and to assume that they can
be is to risk wasting the quite considerable theoretical sophistication
that all the reviewers of the area admit has developed in recent years.
Whether the task is seen as a descriptive one, the telling of a story or
an indepth explanation of the embedding of accounting in the contexts
in which it operates, it must be recognized that the resultant analysis
is one which emerges through a particular conceptual lens. There is no
such thing as mere description or just "telling it as it is." Descriptions
of necessity appeal to categories, distinctions and linguistic emphases
that provide them with a specificity and a partiality. However implicitly
the process may occur, accounts of accounting are always based on
prior understandings and emphases. Like Caplan, I think that
researchers need to realize this and, on this basis, to attempt to make
such interpretative frameworks as explicit as is possible, even using
them proactively to trace out particular insights into the functioning
of accounting in practice.
It should not be necessary to reiterate such points, but with all the
current excitement about the possibilities for case research, this
fundamental point is often overlooked. The emphasis can easily be
placed almost exclusively on establishing the legitimacy of the exercise
rather than on its intellectual bases and the contexts it of necessity
creates for an infusion of theories into practice.
Already there are some signs of the dangers that might arise from
such an unproblematic stance. In investigations of the relationships
between cost accounting and new manufacturing technology, for
instance, there are some indications of what could emerge from such
an unreflective perspective. Without care, too accounting orientated a
view is likely not only to focus on the accounting topics of old
irrespective of their significance in the overall context in which they
now operate, but also ignore the ways in which new technologies can,
rather than must, change the very contexts in which accounting
operates. The present accounting emphasis often fails to locate the
accounting changes in the context of the often quite major shifts
occurring in organizational forms as a response to both technologies
and markets. There seemingly is often a failure to realize the
significance of the ways in which new technologies and market
pressures individually and jointly can provide a focus for changes in
modes of organizational control and thereby the functions attributed
to particular information flows, including that of accounting. As a
result, case study analyses can sometimes seem to o partial, too
implicated in the previous accounting order, too readily supportive of a
technical, important though that may be, the texts can only constitute
the equivalent of the bricklaying and plumbing manuals of the
accounting craft. Giving little or no insight into how the technical
elements are mobilized and brought together in an orga nizational
context, they can never provide a more managerially orientated design
approach to accounting that might constitute the equivalent of an
accounting architecture. That is not to deny the necessity for the
accounting equivalents of the bricklaying and plumbing crafts. Such
technical skills are absolutely essential. On their own, however, they
remain very partial in a world where accounting intersects with the
processes of organizing in complex and variable ways. Constrained as
such skills are, they can never provide a basis for the evaluation,
diagnosis, design and reform of organizational accounting systems,
factors that form an important part of the managerial as distinct from
the technical task. Indeed, that is why new bases of expertise are
arising alongside accounting in organizational and consultancy
settings. New skills are emergent and behavioral and organizational
understandings are even sometimes informing them. More could be
done, however, and that could be facilitated if the educational texts
through which we attempt to train the accountants of the future could
at least start to reflect some of the understandings of the present
rather than only those of the past.
The continuing isolation of the management accounting textbook
writer from the world of accounting practice makes me pessimistic of
the likelihood of substantial change, at least in the foreseeable future.
The problems in the financial accounting area are no less seve re. In
both cases, the narrowly defined technical orientation represents a
major constraint on the wider recognition and potential of research
understandings. With these in mind, I am sure that this topic is
worthy of further consideration by members of th e Accounting,
Behavior and Organizations Interest Section.
CONCLUSION
If it is true that Becker originated the term "behavioral accounting"
in 1967, the birth of a new specialist journal is indeed a fitting
occasion on which to celebrate its 21st birthday. *
In the intervening years, progress has been real, possibly more than
many realize. That, however, is no reason for complacency. Difficulties
and problems, as well as challenges, remain, many of very real
significance. In facing the future, researchers in t he area need to
continue to learn from the experiences of the past, improve upon them
and carry on conceiving of new possibilities for enriching our
appreciation of the ways in which accounting functions in a behavioral
and organizational context.
In doing so, perhaps some greater recognition of the very progress
that has been achieved makes now an appropriate time also to reflect
on how the field of study is perceived from without. The Burgstahler
and Sundem review illustrates that there are many nonbehavi oral
researchers who still have quite a profound uncertainty about the
area.
In part, this is justifiably based on specifit worries and concerns
with particular methodologies, conceptual formulations and studies.
One also senses that the worries go deeper than this. Often it seems as
if the area itself gives rise to a frustration, if not an anxiety.
The reasons for this remain far from clear. There are those who
might be tempted to see the problem in psychological terms, possibly
pointing to a prevailing intolerance of ambiguity and diversity in the
accounting academic community, but that fails to acknowledge what
is ambiguous and what is not. A fascination with, and therefore a
prioritization of, the technical might also be relevant at this level.
I, however, am more inclined to put the emphasis in part, at least,
not only on the significant contextual factors which sustain and
reinforce concerns with the economic but also on an intellectual
orientation that seemingly wants to delimit and restrict the proble ms
with which the research agenda can grapple. Somehow it really does
seem that many academic accountants have great difficulty position -
ing themselves within the broader community of the human sciences
rather than being only the guardians of a specific technique. That in
itself is revealing, however. If it were to be the case, it might well
suggest that one problem with behavioral and organizational research
in accounting is that it is possibly quite correctly seen as being capable
of providing a basis on which not only to question accounting but also
to do so in a way that starts to shift the autonomy of accounting
technique, making it a less independent phenomenon. And that could
be very threatening to many.
'Editor's note #3: The volume went to press in 1988.