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EDITORIAL Championing
intellectual
Championing intellectual pluralism
pluralism
5
Lee Parker
University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia, and
James Guthrie
University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

Abstract
Purpose – This editorial seeks to argue for intellectual pluralism and adventurous enquiry in an era
of status badging of publication venues and institutions and to review AAAJ’s role, strategies and
international recognition in this context.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper is an editorial review and argument.
Findings – The paper acknowledges pressures towards a North American inspired unitary
neo-classical economic view of the accounting world and related badging of higher education
institutions and research publications globally. It identifies the community of accounting scholars
including AAAJ with wider and more pluralist philosophies and research agendas.
Research limitations/implications – The paper offers scope and associated recognition for
researchers prepared to take up and address a wide array of theoretical perspectives and research
issues of global significance.
Originality/value – The paper provides important empirical data and research network information
to scholars in the interdisciplinary accounting field of research.
Keywords Accounting research, Communities, Universities
Paper type General review

Introduction
As founding editors of AAAJ, we continue to seek out the new and different,
championing the challenge to the traditionalist mainstream accounting research
journal orthodoxy. Ours is a “mainstream” home for the community of
interdisciplinary, qualitative and critical accounting scholars. We remain true to our
original mission of providing a leading international interdisciplinary accounting
research journal to the communities of accounting research, teaching and practice
development.
As we stated in our twentieth anniversary editorial (Parker and Guthrie, 2007), our
concerns are the commercialisation and anti-intellectualism sweeping through
universities and the higher education system globally. Universities no longer focus
on scholarly enquiry, but rather on performance redefinition and measurement,
favouring fiscal and economic factors, revenue generation, organisational growth and
market power. We share many of the recently expressed views of Hopwood (2007), Accounting, Auditing &
Locke and Lowe (2008), Williams et al. (2006), and Lee and Humphrey (2006), who write Accountability Journal
Vol. 22 No. 1, 2009
of their concern at the accounting academe’s research trajectory. pp. 5-12
On the one hand, we see the entrenched forces of conservatism attempting to cement q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0951-3574
what they regard as acceptable research topics, theories and methodological traditions DOI 10.1108/09513570910922980
AAAJ into the all pervasive journal and university rankings developed by publishers,
22,1 accrediting bodies and governments and slavishly followed by universities and their
academic cohorts. On the other hand, we see plentiful evidence of a counter-offensive
by growing academic research communities, particularly of the interpretive,
qualitative and critical traditions. These research communities are establishing
bridgeheads of published research that address subjects of emerging importance to
6 world communities, embrace change, engage lived experience in the field, and welcome
the task of grappling with the complexities of the organisational and institutional
worlds rather than repeatedly modelling them and abstracting from them.
As business schools and accounting departments grapple with ratings and
rankings, journal rankings appear to have become more important than the article and
scholarly knowledge (Gray et al., 2002). The commodification of academic endeavour
into the counting of articles and journal rankings has created severe tensions in the
balance between academic scholarship, community spirit and individual academic
instrumental actions (Parker et al., 1998). With evaluation and an audit culture
pervading in many universities and countries, the outlet, rather than the research and
its outcomes is elevated to a privileged position (Guthrie et al., 2004).
Despite global pressures for conformity with a mythical US style economic research
ideal; AAAJ reflects a determined pursuit of multiple alternative research paradigms
by Australian, British, European, sympathetic American and other researcher groups.
Consistent with its historical tradition, the accounting and the accounting research
disciplines must remain resolutely pluralist, if we are to have any significant and
relevant future at all. In addition to supporting and publishing accounting research
across the pluralist spectrum, as editors, we prioritise the task of establishing and
reinforcing the credibility and standing of the scholarship published in AAAJ. We owe
this duty to our readers, our authors, our editorial board, and to the accounting
research community. To this end, we now offer a review of AAAJ’s mission, strategies,
community of scholars and corpus of work.

AAAJ focus and profile

It is pertinent to remind all our readers and contributors that AAAJ remains dedicated
to the advancement of accounting knowledge through interdisciplinary, critical and
historical perspectives (see, Guthrie and Parker, 1988). It focuses on research into the
interaction between accounting/auditing and their socio-economic, institutional, and
political environments. The research it publishes is informed by a wide range of
scholarly traditions, including sociology, philosophy, political science, history,
anthropology, psychology and economics. In 2009, AAAJ enters its twenty-second
year of publication, having established itself as a leader of interdisciplinary accounting
research publication internationally. AAAJ now maintains a recognised profile as a
leading publisher of interdisciplinary and critical accounting research, encompassing a
spectrum of methodological and theoretical schools of thought.
It is instructive to review at this point in AAAJ’s history, several particular areas of
scholarship that AAAJ has pioneered and championed since its first issue (Guthrie and
Parker, 1988).
(1) Social and environmental accounting – AAAJ published several of the first
articles in this area and continues to lead the accounting literature in the social
responsibility and environmental sustainability field. Examples include:
 .
“Corporate social reporting: emerging trends in accountability and the social Championing
contract”, Rob Gray, David Owen and Keith Maunders (Vol. 1 No. 1, 1988). intellectual
.
“Chronicles of wasted time?”, APIRA 2007 plenary paper by David Owen pluralism
(Vol. 21 No. 2, 2008).
(2) Public sector accounting – AAAJ has taken a critical and innovative view of this
area, and published seminal papers. Examples include: 7
.
“Changes in the public sector: a review of recent ‘alternative’ accounting
research”, Jane Broadbent and James Guthrie (Vol. 5 No. 1, 1992).
.
Their follow-up 20 year review, “Public sector to public services: 20 Years of
‘contextual’ accounting research”, Jane Broadbent and James Guthrie (Vol. 21
No. 2, 2008).
(3) Management accounting – AAAJ has been a leader in interdisciplinary field
based research in management accounting, consistently publishing qualitative
as well as quantitative research in this area. Examples include:
.
“Field research in management accounting and control: a review and
evaluation”, Lourdes Ferreira and Kenneth Merchant (Vol. 5 No. 4, 1992).
.
“Strategic management accounting: how far have we come in 25 years?”,
Kim Langfield-Smith (Vol. 21 No. 2, 2008).
(4) Accounting for intellectual capital – AAAJ has led the development of this
research literature, supporting the field at the earliest stages of its emergence.
Examples include:
.
“Sunrise in the knowledge economy: managing, measuring and reporting
intellectual capital”, James Guthrie, Richard Petty and Ulf Johanson (Vol. 14
No. 4, 2001).
.
“Problematising intellectual capital research: ostensive versus performative
IC”, Jan Mouritsen (Vol. 19 No. 6, 2006).
(5) NGO/non-profit sector accounting – AAAJ has built a strong reputation for
accounting research in the increasingly important sectors. Examples include:
.
“God’s fund managers: a critical study of stock market investment practices
of the Church of England and UK Methodists”, Niklas Kreander, Ken
McPhail and David Molyneaux (Vol. 17 No. 3, 2004).
.
“Theorising accountability for NGO advocacy”, Jeffrey Unerman and
Brendan O’Dwyer (Vol. 19 No. 3, 2006).
(6) Accounting history – AAAJ has, from its very inception, published the
international leading authors in this field, promoting interdisciplinary and
theoretically informed research spanning interpretive and critical theory
traditions. Examples include:
.
“Critical and interpretive histories: insights into accounting’s present and
future through its past”, Garry Carnegie and Christopher Napier (Vol. 9 No. 3,
1996).
.
“Innovation, convergence and argument without end in accounting history”,
Stephen Walker (Vol. 21 No. 2, 2008).
AAAJ (7) Accounting communication – AAAJ has been unique in its consistent
22,1 publication of communication research, which has been largely neglected in the
accounting research literature, and yet represents a fundamental element of the
accounting role. Examples include:
.
“Readability of annual reports: western versus Asian evidence”, John Courtis
(Vol. 8 No. 2, 1995).
8 .
“Language, translation and the problem of international accounting
communication”, Lisa Evans (Vol 17 No 2, 2004)
(8) Accounting research methodology – AAAJ has been unique among accounting
research journals in maintaining a special section of the journal devoted to
methodological insights, publishing leading edge papers that explore advances,
particularly in qualitative methodology and theorising applications in
accounting research. Examples include:
.
“What counts as ‘theory’ in qualitative management and accounting
research? Introducing five levels of theorising”, Sue Llewellyn (Vol. 16 No. 4,
2003).
.
“Photography and voice in critical qualitative management research”,
Samantha Warren (Vol. 18 No. 6, 2005).
AAAJ’s tradition of championing new and emerging fields of accounting research has
a strong future with a range of commissioned AAAJ special issues due to be published
in the next few years. These include the following subject areas: accounting and
subalternity; accounting and the visual; accounting for politics – power, strategy,
accountability; accounting for cities; sustainability accounting; French philosophers
and social theorists’ and accounting research; and climate change and greenhouse gas
accounting.

The AAAJ APIRA Conference

AAAJ now boasts a long history of convening one of the leading international
interdisciplinary accounting research conferences – The Asia Pacific Interdisciplinary
Research in Accounting (APIRA) conference, on a triennial basis, in agreed rotation
with the European Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Accounting and the New York
Critical Perspectives on Accounting conferences. APIRA conferences include Sydney
(1995), Osaka (1998), Adelaide (2001), Singapore (2004) and Auckland (2007). It attracts
the leading interdisciplinary accounting scholars from around the world: Auckland
APIRA 2007 hosted 300 registrants with 200 paper presentations, six plenary papers
presented by international professors, with 50 academics attending its emerging
scholars’ colloquium. Sydney will see the sixth conference return in 2010 and planning
for that event is well underway.

AAAJ and Emerald accounting and finance journals

In 2003, Emerald published just two journals in accounting. Since then, and with the
direct influence and support of the AAAJ editorial team, Emerald has launched one
journal (International Journal of Managerial Finance), and acquired seven others (Asian
Review of Accounting, Accounting Research Journal, Journal of Applied Accounting
Research, Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, Journal of Human Resource
Costing & Accounting, Pacific Accounting Review and Qualitative Research in Accounting Championing
& Management). Six of these journals are edited in Australia or New Zealand, and all intellectual
have been strongly supported and encouraged by the AAAJ editorial team.
In a world of rankings and ratings, which encourages generalist rather than pluralism
specialised research, it is great to see AAAJ not alone in its thinking. These journal
editors are conscious of operating in an international accounting scholarly world,
where established journals with longer histories and well supported academic 9
communities have dominated. It is appropriate that AAAJ and its community supports
these accounting journals and also encourages high quality scholarship and diversity
in ideas, approaches and research focus.

AAAJ editorial board and operations

Our publishers have strongly embraced our vision and as the accounting academe has
grown over the past 20 years, so also the page count in AAAJ has grown. Now we can
boast one of the highest page counts amongst any accounting academic journal. This
means we can accept high quality scholarship from new frontiers of accounting
knowledge, take risks with special issues and promote emerging scholars’ work.
Since 2008, AAAJ has been publishing eight issues per year. Each volume includes
one or two special theme issues with international guest editors. These special issues
have been highly successful, with thousands of downloads, and attracting high quality
papers and strong competition for space. Issue themes are designed to push the
boundaries of the discipline and to encourage new fields of research.
AAAJ maintains its commitment to publishing full length articles and
commentaries. In addition it continues to publish its methodological insights section
and its literary section, presenting short prose and poetry that challenges, critiques and
reflects on the organisational world of business, the profession, government and work
in general. The AAAJ editorial board continues to annually select a paper to be
awarded the AAAJ Mary Parker Follett Award for Excellence. The awards have, in
recent years, gone to scholars from around the globe.
The AAAJ editorial board now numbers over 70 academics from countries around
the globe, ranging from long established senior scholars to the next generation of
emerging researchers. Editors and associate editors are drawn from leading scholars
across Australia, UK, Europe and North America, while executive and editorial
advisory board members are drawn from the UK, Europe, Japan, North America and
Australia. All are leading and highly published scholars across their subfields of
accounting and auditing. Papers submitted to AAAJ are subject to double blind
refereeing by two referees, and where deemed appropriate by the editors (for at least a
third of papers submitted). AAAJ also draws on the services of an ad hoc referee
community of over 200 scholars internationally. The time from paper acceptance to
final publication is generally 12 months, and the journal’s acceptance rate is currently
less than 15 percent.

AAAJ’s international recognition

There are various means by which the quality of scholarly work and journals can be
assessed (see, Gray et al., 2002). As AAAJ editors, it is important to communicate these
to the international scholarly community. In the following we provide several
examples, including citations, esteem indicators and usage[1].
AAAJ Citations
22,1 According to www.Harzing.com and its Publish or Perish software (which uses Google
Scholar data), AAAJ has a H-Index of 37, which is one of the very highest scores on this
index achieved to date by refereed accounting research journals internationally.
AAAJ’s most cited articles have also had significant impacts according to Google
Scholar (see below for top five). This compares favourably with other leading
10 accounting research journals. Currently, the most cited articles (and country where
authors are located) published in AAAJ are:
.
R. Gray, R. Kouhy and S. Lavers (UK), “Corporate social and environmental
reporting: a review of the literature and a longitudinal study of UK Disclosure”,
1995.
.
D. Hackston and M.J. Milne (NZ), “Some determinants of social and
environmental disclosures in New Zealand companies”, 1996.
.
R. Laughlin (UK), “Empirical research in accounting: alternative approaches and
a case for ‘middle-range’ thinking”, 1995.
.
C. Deegan (Australia), “The legitimising effect of social and environmental
disclosures-a theoretical foundation”, 2002.
.
C.A. Tilt (Australia), “The influence of external pressure groups on corporate
social disclosure: some empirical evidence”, 1994.

Esteem indicators
In recent esteem indicators, AAAJ has been rated among the top accounting research
journals internationally, such as the top “A” ranking from Italian AEIA list (2008). In
recent academic research, AAAJ has been highly esteemed as highlighted in several
illustrations in the following.
. V. Beattie and A. Goodacre’s four metric-based UK rating of accounting research
journals (Accounting & Business Research, Vol. 36 No. 2, 2006, pp. 65-91) ranked
AAAJ sixth overall in accounting research journals internationally.
.
In A. Lowe and J. Locke’s study of accounting journal quality (British Accounting
Review, Vol. 38 No. 2006, pp. 321-341), AAAJ was ranked by Australian and New
Zealand academics as 7th overall.
. K. Merchant and W. Van der Stede’s study of field based research in accounting
(Behavioral Research in Accounting, Vol. 18, 2006, pp. 117-134) rates AAAJ in the
top three accounting research journals publishing field research studies in the
accounting discipline.
.
T. Tinker’s accounting journal assessment study by critical and interdisciplinary
accounting researchers and journal article reviewers (Accounting Forum, Vol. 30,
2006, pp. 195-208) rates AAAJ in the top two journals for interdisciplinary and
critical accounting research worldwide.
.
K.C. Chan, C.R. Chen and L.T.W. Cheng’s ranking study of European business
school and authors’ accounting research output (Accounting & Business
Research, Vol. 36 No. 1, 2006, pp. 3-17) includes AAAJ in its sample of “19 leading
accounting journals”.
 .
A. Lowe and J. Locke’s study of UK academics’ rankings of accounting research Championing
journals (Accounting, Organisations and Society, Vol. 30 No. 1, 2004, pp. 81-98), intellectual
rated AAAJ 9th overall for quality, and within that rated it fourth in terms of
critical/interpretive analysis. pluralism
.
V. Beattie’s study of UK financial reporting research and publication
(British Accounting Review, Vol. 37 No. 1, 2005, pp. 85-114) report AAAJ as
being the seventh most popular research journal amongst UK accounting 11
academics (in terms of the frequency with which they publish their work in
the journal).
.
In journal rankings survey by A. Ballas and V. Theoharakis (Contemporary
Accounting Research, Vol. 20 No. 4, 2003, pp. 619-644), AAAJ is ranked in
Australia/New Zealand as the 5th highest ranked accounting journal.

Usage
In 2008, AAAJ’s articles were downloaded over 200,000 times, a generational change
from 1988 when 100 copies of AAAJ were published. AAAJ is available on subscription
to 2,000 institutions worldwide. Indeed AAAJ is now subscribed to by 98 per cent of the
Financial Times top 100 Graduate Business schools in the world.
The top articles in AAAJ’s publication history, via downloads, as at October 2008
are shown in Table I.

In conclusion
Once again we wish to express our profound gratitude to our publishing house,
Emerald, and especially to AAAJ’s managing editor, Simon Linacre, who has been both
a visionary and a vital driving force behind AAAJ and its success. We also thank our
Editorial Board members, ad hoc reviewers and special issue guest editors for their
ongoing contribution to the advancement of AAAJ’s mission. We promise not to allow
AAAJ to become a conservative and predictable conventional repose for work that is
published purely for status badging purposes.

Article title Authors (and country where located)

“Conceptions of corporate social responsibility: Brendan O’Dwyer (The Netherlands)

the nature of managerial capture” (16, 2003)
“Corporate social and environmental reporting: a Rob Gray, Reza Kouhy and Simon Lavers (The
review of the literature and a longitudinal study of UK)
UK disclosure” (8, 1995)
“Introduction: the legitimising effect of social and Craig Deegan (Australia)
environmental disclosures – a theoretical
foundation” (15, 2002)
“The selling of ethics: the ethics of business meets Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark (The USA)
the business of ethics” (8, 1995)
“The ethical, social and environmental Carol A. Adams (Australia)
reporting-performance portrayal gap” (17, 2004) Table I.
AAAJ We are about opening up new fields of inquiry, addressing neglected issues,
consolidating the fields AAAJ has pioneered, challenging the status quo, employing
22,1 innovative methodologies, experimenting with the novel and taking risks. Watch this
space!

Note
12 1. Accessed October 2008, further details available at: http://info.emeraldinsight.com/products/
journals/journals.htm?PHPSESSID ¼ 70sof127qkcaobqb0gp6sciev1&id ¼ aaaj

References
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Guthrie, J., Parker, L. and Gray, R. (2004), “Requirements and understandings for publishing
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Corresponding author
Lee Parker can be contacted at: lee.parker@unisa.edu.au

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