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Article Excerpt
A summary of the recent published research suggests that the "top" academic accounting journals ignore systems and technology research topics. Fortuitously, the core focus of the Journal of Information Systems is exactly the set of accounting-related systems and technology issues (e.g., system controls, financial implications of technology) that are underexplored in both the MIS and accounting research literatures. Accounting systems and technology research, and the Journal of Information Systems, have an optimistic future. Developing accounting systems and technology research demands that researchers both value and promote excellence while simultaneously encouraging diversity.
WHEN THE REVOLUTION CAME
"Information technology is changing everything."
Elliott (1992, 61)
"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
John Lennon, "Beautiful Boy"
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When the revolution came, most academic accountants were busy doing other things. Unlike many revolutions, the technological revolution that forever changed accounting practice (though not accounting research) was not a coup d'etat. The technological revolution was nonviolent, lacking blood and obvious struggle. From a distance, the revolution appeared incremental--even evolutional--and more akin to the coming of the dawn than the overthrow of the Czar in Russia by the Bolsheviks. In fact, unless one was attentive, it was easy to miss the explosive might of the revolution.
Quietly, the technological revolution came in the form of personal computers, spreadsheets, faxes, cell phones, email, online financial reporting, enterprise resource planning systems (ERPs), teleconferences, group systems, expert systems, knowledge management, document imaging, technology start-up companies, and e-commerce. Then, a not-funny thing happened: the technological revolution melted down leaving in its scarred remains thousands of technology start-up company officers and employees, and a host of once-promising start-up companies (e.g., remember Web Van, Kozmo, Napster, or Metricom?). Meanwhile, and in the midst of all of this, most academic accountants did other things.
What "other things"? Recently, Uday Chandra, Sean Peffer, Robert Ramsay, Cynthia Vines, and I attempted to provide some insight into this question. We did so by examining the recent publication content of the top five academic accounting journals. While our sample is unrepresentative of all accounting research, it is highly representative (and for some, is a census) of the publications that matter most to academic accountants' promotions, tenures, and salaries. See the Appendix for a brief description of our methods.
Table 1 summarizes the average percentage of recently published research in the top five accounting journals, classified by topic and method, over recent (though differing) years for each journal. In the spirit of presenting triangulated data, Table 2 (adapted from Postom and Graham [2000])...
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