EDITORIAL
Championing intellectual
pluralism
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),
Locke and Lowe (2008), Williams et al. (2006), and Lee and Humphrey (2006), who write
of their concern at the accounting academe’s research trajectory.
On the one hand, we see the entrenched forces of conservatism attempting to cement
what they regard as acceptable research topics, theories and methodological traditions
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0951-3574.htm
Championing
intellectual
pluralism
5
Accounting, Auditing &
Accountability Journal
Vol. 22 No. 1, 2009
pp. 5-12
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0951-3574
DOI 10.1108/09513570910922980