Description
The purpose of this paper is to expose the impact of the shortage of senior academics,
particularly professors, in Australian accounting schools, to relate the way one school addressed this
shortage through a mentoring scheme, and to challenge existing institutional arrangements.
Accounting Research Journal
A green drought: the challenge of mentoring for Australian accounting academics
Helen Irvine Lee Moerman Kathy Rudkin
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Helen Irvine Lee Moerman Kathy Rudkin, (2010),"A green drought: the challenge of mentoring for
Australian accounting academics", Accounting Research J ournal, Vol. 23 Iss 2 pp. 146 - 171
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A green drought: the challenge
of mentoring for Australian
accounting academics
Helen Irvine
School of Accountancy, Queensland University of Technology,
Brisbane, Australia, and
Lee Moerman and Kathy Rudkin
School of Accounting and Finance,
University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to expose the impact of the shortage of senior academics,
particularly professors, in Australian accounting schools, to relate the way one school addressed this
shortage through a mentoring scheme, and to challenge existing institutional arrangements.
Design/methodology/approach – This is a contextualised qualitative case study of a mentoring
scheme conducted in an Australian accounting school. Data collected from semi-structured interviews,
personal re?ections and from Australian university web sites are interpreted theoretically using the
metaphor of a “green drought”.
Findings – The mentoring scheme achieved some notable successes, but raised many issues and
challenges. Mentoring is a multifaceted investment in vocational endeavour and intellectual
infrastructure, which will not occur unless creative means are developed over the long term to
overcome current and future shortages of academic mentors.
Research limitations/implications – This is a qualitative case study, which, therefore, limits its
generalisability. However, its contextualisation enables insights to be applied to the wider academic
environment.
Practical implications – In the Australian and global academic environment, as accounting
professors retire in greater numbers, new and creative ways of mentoring will need to be devised.
The challenge will be to address longer term issues of academic sustainability, and not just to focus on
short-term academic outcomes.
Originality/value – A mentoring scheme based on a collegial networking model of mentoring is
presented as a means of enhancing academic endeavour through a creative short-term solution to
a shortage of accounting professors. The paper exempli?es the theorising power of metaphor in a
qualitative study.
Keywords Mentoring, Accountancy, Academic staff, Australia, Schools, Qualitative research,
Metaphors
Paper type Research paper
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1030-9616.htm
The authors acknowledge, with appreciation, the funding from the Commerce Faculty at the
University of Wollongong, which made possible the mentoring scheme, and, in consequence, this
paper. They are also grateful to the ?ve mentees who participated in the scheme, to the mentor,
to all the people who shared their insights through interviews and to the anonymous reviewers of
this paper.
ARJ
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Accounting Research Journal
Vol. 23 No. 2, 2010
pp. 146-171
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1030-9616
DOI 10.1108/10309611011073241
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While farms across Australia have started showing a green tinge again thanks to recent
rainfall, experts say crops are still on a knife’s edge [. . .] The green tinge in Australia’s
paddocks is one of nature’s ironies, and they’re calling it the “Green Drought” (Cowan, 2007).
1. Introduction
This paper is a contextualised qualitative case study interpreted through the theoretical
lens of metaphor (Llewellyn, 2003). The choice of a drought metaphor, particularly a
“green drought”, was chosen because of its accessibility and impact and because it
coincided with our understanding and interpretation of the current situation facing
university accounting schools. Eschewing the “characteristic distrust of rhetorical or
?gurative language” (Walters-York, 1996, p. 46), we harness the power of metaphor to
“theorize experience” (Llewellyn, 2003, p. 667). The “green drought” speaks vividly of a
situation that, while it is dif?cult and threatening, is temporarily lightened by a
short-term solution, which provides a certain relief but does not eliminate the problem.
One Australian farmer, who also sits on Australia’s National Water Commission,
observed that in a drought situation, after a good shower of rain, “while the rolling green
landscape looks pretty for citysiders”, further rain is needed very quickly. If that rain
does not eventuate, the chances of producing a “sustainable cropor a sustainable pasture
become less”, because the plants do not have any “subsoil moisture” to sustain them, and
are in real danger of “simply dying” (Cowan, 2007).
The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, it exposes the “drought” of
senior accounting academics, particularly professors, in Australian accounting schools,
highlighting the consequent lack of mentoring of younger academic staff. Second, it
relates the story of a mentoring scheme for junior academics conducted at our Australian
university, identifying it as a temporary mentoring “greening” of the academic
landscape. Third, it identi?es an ongoing “green drought” mentoring situation, with
sustainability implications not only for our school, but for other accounting schools in
the Australian tertiary sector.
The drought of senior accounting academics in Australia is arguably due to a number
of factors. One of these is the global shortage of academics, which has seen a marked
increase in recruiting competition and mobility within the sector (Plumlee et al., 2006;
Healy, 2007, 2008a). In the Australian context, the “rapid ageing of the academic
workforce” provides a “fundamental challenge” to universities’ ability to maintain their
“intellectual infrastructure” (National Tertiary Education Union, 2007, p. 29).
The Bradley (2008, p. 10) report, commissioned by the Australian Government,
identi?ed this as a signi?cant problem:
[. . .] higher education institutions face their own workforce shortages of major proportions.
Academic staff are approaching retirement age in signi?cant numbers. There is a shortage of
younger academics to take their places. This situation re?ects global competition for
high-quality staff and the relative unattractiveness of academic salaries and conditions,
particularly compared with those offered by the private sector. This will require concerted
action on many fronts to ensure that Australia has access to suf?cient high-quality academic
staff to educate new generations and conduct international-class research.
The impact of an ageing academic workforce, increased casualisation, and the need
to increase “the stock of people with higher degrees by research” in order to “replace the
large group of ageing academics and to expand Australia’s research and innovation
workforce” (Bradley et al., 2008, p. 11) mean that the future quality of Australian
The challenge
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accounting schools is under threat. Even allowing for a minimum of eight years for
an academic to complete necessary training, junior academics will not be able to replace
lecturers and researchers who have “30 to 40 years experience” (Healy, 2008a).
Accounting has been identi?ed as one of a few disciplines under “most pressure” from
the current academic shortage (Healy, 2008c). This paper argues that this situation is
exacerbated by the shortage of trained accountants in Australia[1] and the consequent
prevalence of employment offered to graduate accountants, where rewards are much
more immediate than in academic life (Healy, 2008c). In this environment, Australia’s
eight research-intensive universities[2] are more likely to be able to attract and retain
world-class researchers, since they are more likely to have the resources and
“understand [the] need to provide the facilities and collegial environment to support
great quality research” (Healy, 2008c). However, within all Australian universities,
whether in the top eight or not, there is a need for resources, facilities, and a collegial
environment in order to attract professors. Undoubtedly one feature of this “collegial
environment” is the mentoringcapabilityof a school. Inorder to increase the number and
quality of younger academics to replace retiring academics, and to extend universities’
research capabilities, it is crucial that senior academics create a culture in which their
younger colleagues can be mentored.
Most of the literature on the shortage of academics, particularly accounting
academics, is gathered at a macro-level, but there has been a call for further
“disaggregated analysis”, by “university, and by present patterns of PhD research”
(Healy, 2008a). This paper provides a micro-view, documenting the situation at one
accounting school. It is our contention that in Australian universities, many schools
of accounting are experiencing a severe academic drought due to a shortage of senior
accounting academics. This situation may be temporarily alleviated by a “good shower
of rain”, i.e. a mentoring scheme such as the one conducted at our university,
but ultimately more concerted mentoring and a depth of academic maturity is required if
academic endeavour is to be sustained. The effect of this drought, therefore, raises
potentially profound sustainability issues. In the short term it results in a paucity of
quality research output from accounting schools, including training and supervision of
early career and junior academics. Academics, at their best, embody a thirst for
knowledge and an intellectual quest within an academic community that shares
inspiration and socialisation. In the longer term, without the contribution of senior
academics with a mentoring “heart”, that community enters a drought mode.
Despite being in a top Australian regional university[3], our school[4] had
experienced a period of one year without a full time resident accounting professor by the
time the visiting research mentor arrived. While it is acknowledged that those other than
professors can be effective mentors, the mentoring literature traditionally de?nes the
mentoring process as a relationship between two individuals, one of whom has a
powerful senior role in the organisation (Bozinelos, 2006, p. 362). In the university sector,
the professorial role legitimates a claim to seniority and leadership in the discipline.
If this is exercised responsibly, academics enjoy the bene?ts of mentoring that assist
them in career advancement and provide intrinsic rewards.
In response to the lack of mentoring assistance from a professor in our school,
we developed a publication mentoring scheme, the main features of which are described
inAppendix1. Anexperienced, international accountingprofessor was invitedto mentor
junior academics over several months, with a view to the submission of their papers
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to academic journals. The mentoring scheme built on our awareness of the need for
publication-speci?c mentoring, and used a Faculty Grant to develop the nascent idea of a
visiting academic mentor into a de?ned process. The focus on submissions to ranked
journals ful?lled two needs. First, given the emphasis in academic life on publishing,
particularly with the Australian Government’s plans at the time to introduce a research
quality framework[5] it would enable junior academics to move into the publishing
arena with the help of a mentor experienced in academic publishing. Second, it enabled
us to specify achievable short-term outcomes, which were a requirement of the
competitive Faculty Grant process. Despite the success of this mentoring scheme and its
consequent “greening” of the academic landscape, we realised that this was not a
long-term solution to the dearth of senior accounting academics. While there were some
bene?ts to the mentees, structurally nothing changed. When the scheme concluded, the
school still had a dearth of senior accounting academics, speci?cally a professor, who
could supply the research guidance we believed was needed in the school. It became
apparent to us that the appointment of senior staff and the development of new ways of
mentoring were crucial issues in meeting the challenge of sustainable, authentic,
long-term academic endeavour.
The following section of the paper describes the theorising power of metaphor in
qualitative research. Mentoring literature is then explored, to establish the importance
and variety of academic mentoring models in ensuring intellectual development and
rejuvenation. The paper is then structured in accordance with its threefold focus.
The “drought” exposes the dearth of professors and consequent lack of mentoring
potential in Australian universities. The “greening” relates the story of the mentoring
scheme and its impact. The “green drought” challenges the sustainability of rigorous
academic achievement in the light of a chronic shortage of quali?ed, experienced senior
accounting academics, focusing on the need to build a cooperative mentoring culture.
It represents a synthesis of the context, the experience and our re?ections on the scheme.
The conclusion establishes the major contributions of the paper, identi?es its
limitations, and proposes possibilities for further research.
2. Qualitative research and metaphor
Qualitative research acknowledges the contextual nature of inquiry (Glesne and
Peshkin, 1992), and qualitative case studies in accounting cover a wide range of
purposes, research sites, methods and theories. Although qualitative case studies may
be presented without a stated theoretical basis, underlying assumptions and beliefs
always inform the research (Roberts and Scapens, 1990; May, 1994; Laughlin, 1995;
Llewellyn, 2003), so that observation is “never unstructured” theoretically (Tinker, 2005,
p. 105). Accounting researchers have been urged to make use of “existing theories,
metaphors and prior case studies in a less constrained way than has hitherto been
considered appropriate”, since a theoretical framework “adds to the value of empirical
enquiry” (Humphrey and Scapens, 1996, p. 88).
Llewellyn (2003, p. 665) identi?ed metaphor as the ?rst of ?ve levels of theorising
in qualitative research, a powerful means of assisting people to address “ambiguity,
contradiction or paradox” in dealing with life. Metaphor provides a satisfying means
of making concrete an impression or belief formed in the conduct of qualitative
research, avoiding the problem of squeezing empirics into a “predetermined theory”,
and making a useful contribution in developing a theory of “social practice”
The challenge
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(Humphrey and Scapens, 1996, pp. 91-2). “Practical adequacy” becomes the gauge of
whether theory is appropriate in a contextualised setting (Llewellyn, 2003, p. 665).
Despite the fact that metaphor is “a basic structural formof experience throughwhich
human beings engage, organise, and understand their world” (Llewellyn, 2003, p. 667,
citing Morgan, 1983), its power is both under-recognised and under-used (Llewellyn,
2003). Far frombeing a mere rhetorical device, the “macroscopic metaphorical model” is
increasingly recognised as playing a powerful role in accounting and organisations
(Walters-York, 1996, p. 45). The adoption of a metaphor constructs a social reality,
de?ning a problem in a particular way and implying a solution (Walters and Young,
2008). Personal investing has been portrayed as a motoring experience (McGoun et al.,
2007); the development of a conceptual framework either as having “conceptual
underwear” (Page and Spira, 1999) or being a quest for the holy grail or “hunting a
snark” (Page, 2005); and stock options have been portrayed in a metaphoric progression
from good “useful tools” to bad “trickery” (Walters and Young, 2008, p. 828).
This paper applies metaphor to a contextualised qualitative study of accountants in
action, with a particular focus on accounting academics in action. The research site is an
accounting school within an Australian university. The mentoring scheme was
activated through shared structures that existed at a particular time and place (Usher,
1993). The data consists of documentation about the mentoring scheme, interviews and
our own personal re?ections. In addition, archival data are used to explore the
Australian and global context in which accounting academics work. Both the mentoring
scheme and its institutional context were socially constructed by government policies,
PhD programmes, staf?ng levels, retention policies of individual universities and
over-arching power and workload dynamics.
The notion of documenting the mentoring scheme developed as the scheme
progressed and we became aware that we were “complete membership participant
observer” (Parker, 2003, p. 342) who had a number of “membership roles” (Lightbody,
2000, p. 159). As organisers, we were deeply embedded in the process, not just “watching
people in their own territory” (Kirk and Miller, 1986, p. 9), but being a part of it. Our role
as mentoring scheme organisers was in addition to our pre-existing relationships with
the mentees as colleagues and, in some cases, research students. As we took on a
researcher role, we became the “researched”, by consciously and continuously re?ecting
on our own experience (Irvine and Gaf?kin, 2006; Watson, 1995) and the impact of our
presence on the research site and processes (Pratt, 1986) as participant observers
(Parker, 2003; Lightbody, 2000). Hierarchical and organisational factors necessitated
some distance between us as “researchers” and the “researched”, and we were
particularly conscious of the power differential between senior and junior academics.
We tried, as much as possible, to overcome this by conducting the scheme in a formal,
professional manner, with well documented correspondence and minutes, and by
re?ecting constantly on the process and its implications. Consequently, we encouraged
the mentees to give their honest opinions, assuring con?dentiality in accordance not
only with the requirements of our ethics agreement, but in order to maintain the trust
(Irvine, 2003) that had been built up through the conduct of the mentoring scheme.
In total, we conducted ten interviews, the interviewees being all the mentees,
the mentor, anassociate professor andthree other professors[6]. Inaddition, inour role as
the “researched”, each of us provided our own re?ections on the mentoring scheme.
Interview questions were semi-structured, tailored to the position and experience
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of the interviewees. Appendix 2 outlines the questions we asked the mentees and the
mentor, and the issues we as organisers re?ected on when documenting the scheme.
Several sources of data were used in the course of the mentoring scheme, as documented
in Appendix 3. These were archival data collected fromuniversity web sites, interviews,
re?ective summaries from the organisers and documentation associated with the
administration of the grant and the conduct of the scheme.
The way data were synthesised and analysed is detailed in Appendix 4. Summary
data about academic staff in Australian accounting schools was presented in chart form
(Figure 1). The drawing together of data from interviews and re?ections represented a
communal discovery, which allowed the construction of new knowledge (Bruner, 1990).
The green drought metaphor was one we adopted towards the end of the mentoring
scheme in response to our re?ections about the process and its long-term effects.
It facilitated the “think-ability” and “action-ability” (Walters and Young, 2008, p. 809) of
the mentoring scheme, bringing us to a deeper appreciation of the complexity and
ambiguity of mentoring. What became apparent to us was that the mentoring scheme
was a short-term solution, undeniably of value to the mentees who participated
enthusiastically in the programme, but relying on us to followup and provide additional
mentoring at the conclusion of the scheme. The strikingly vivid and appropriate
metaphor of a green drought, together with the three purposes of the paper, to expose,
relate and challenge, determined the categories and sub-categories by which data were
collated and categorised using NVivo. As a result of our analysis of data, our
understanding of mentoring relationships deepened.
3. Mentoring
Amentor has beendescribedas “a wise andfaithful counsellor” (Hanno, 1999, p. 331), or a
person who serves as “a guide or sponsor [. . .] who looks after, advises, protects, and
takes a special interest in another’s development” (Sands et al., 1991, p. 175). In a
professional sense, a mentor is somebody with experience who provides knowledge,
support and encouragement to a less experienced person (Katz and Coleman, 2001).
Kram (1985) described mentoring in an organisational setting as an interpersonal
relationship where a junior, less experienced person is guided by a senior, more
experienced person. This is facilitated by organisational agents, who broker the
mentoring process (Kram, 1985). It is recognised that while such a relationship can
presuppose a one-way ?ow of expertise and resources (McGuire and Reger, 2003),
in practice a complementary relationship develops where both mentor and mentee
Figure 1.
Distribution of Australian
accounting professors
between “Group of 8”
and other universities,
August 2007
Professors/Emeritus
professors/associate professors
“Group of 8” Australian
Universities
Other Australian
Universities (30)
41%
59%
The challenge
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experience growth opportunities (Kram, 1985). In any mentoring relationship, a mentor
must undertake more than a training role, by creating a reciprocal relationship of
inspiration and trust (Kunselman et al., 2003). Thus, while the traditional apprenticeship
mentor relationship is often conceived as desirable for PhD students, their own
conceptualizations of the supervisor-student relationship have been demonstrated to
depend on demographic and academic characteristics (Rose, 2005).
Changes in the workplace have been identi?ed as necessitating a move away fromthe
dyadic relationship of mentor and mentee to multiple mentors with diverse skills to
facilitate development (de Janasz and Sullivan, 2004). Mentoring can, therefore,
be conceived in a number of different ways. The primary mentoring model is the
traditional, hierarchical approach, with an informal dyadic relationship between two
people of unequal knowledge and in?uence (Bozinelos, 2006), or a more formal model
such as a competency or apprenticeship model, where work-related training is provided
(Watty et al., 2006). A mentoring relationship can be seen also as working two ways,
where learning takes place initially as a “transactional” process, but ultimately as a
“transformational” process in which “teacher and student collaborate, exchanging
information useful to both and making the learning mutually enriching” (Connell, 2007,
p. 229, citing Daloz, 1986, 1999; Galbraith, 1991).
Another alternative is a collegial mentoring model, as practised in a teaching
professional development programme in Canada (Coupal, 2004). Support was provided
to teachers who problem-solved in “learning communities”, gaining a sense of
empowerment and support from mentors (Coupal, 2004, pp. 591-2). One documented
feminist model is co-operative in a similar way, with each person being both teacher and
learner (McGuire and Reger, 2003). The mentoring relationship could also be a network
that enhances the development of the prote´ge´’s career, meeting his or her needs in
different ways at different career phases (Chandler and Kram, 2005). Alternatively, a
networking group could co-mentor, working together to share their experiences and
expertise (Sadler, 1999). This model is recognised as being relevant in the changing
academic environment (Sorcinelli and Yun, 2007), where a network of mentors (de Janasz
and Sullivan, 2004), “faculty-to-faculty mentoring” (Benson et al., 2002), and
“multidimensional support” (Kogler-Hill et al., 1989) are effective for academics in
developing skills and networks. This is different from the traditional “top-down,
one-to-one relationship inwhichanexperienced faculty member guides and supports the
career development of a newor early-career faculty member” (Sorcinelli and Yun, 2007).
Mentoring models involving a prescriptive approach accommodate the four stage
mentoring process identi?ed by Kram (1985), where mentors and mentees move from
initiation, through cultivation, to separation and eventually rede?nition. An empirical
study based onKram(1985) four stages highlighted the needfor a “dynamic context” ina
mentoring relationship (Bouquillon et al., 2005, p. 253). This would apply to mentoring in
any of the models, from hierarchical through to co-operative or collegial.
Thus, mentoring in an organisational setting involves three players: a mentor,
a mentee and the organisation(s) in which they are situated. The bene?ts of mentoring
are experienced by all of these. In the case of mentees, professional identity is enhanced
(DobrowandHiggins, 2005), andthe mentee is situated ina favourable or privilegedlight
(Bozinelos, 2006) in relation to their long-term career (Kunselman et al., 2003). Mentored
individuals have been demonstrated to experience superior career advancement and
achievement, higher salaries, greater stability and satisfaction in employment and less
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work related stress (Crocitto et al., 2005; de Janasz and Sullivan, 2004). Mentoring meets
the emotional, therapeutic, personal satisfaction, social or intellectual needs of mentors
(Cox, 2000), and provides an opportunity for a person in mid-life to pass on skills and
expertise (Kram, 1985). In the case of the organisation, social capital is built (Bozinelos
and Wang, 2006).
While there is a plethora of literature on mentoring in both industry and education
(Bouquillon et al., 2005; Bartlett, 2003), there is a dearth of research on mentoring
relationships in diverse cultural contexts (Bozinelos, 2006), particularly in universities.
In academe, mentees obtain the advantages of being connected with senior academics in
their ?eld. They have a partner and an advisor in achieving academic publications, and
obtaining advice about how to develop scholarship and strategise their research
endeavours. The relationship can also informtheir teaching and generally support their
“intellectual, professional and personal development” (Kunselman et al., 2003, p. 21).
Most mentoring literature with a university focus, deals primarily with mentoring for
teaching (Watty et al., 2006; Barkham, 2005; Brockbank and McGill, 1998) rather than
publishing. However, there is some academic literature on mentoring for publications.
Bartlett (2003) reported on a multi-constituency mentoring approach, whereby
academics in a research-intensive university trained carefully selected, gifted
undergraduate science students to perform research tasks, a form of mentoring that
required the students to make a contribution to speci?c projects. de Janasz and Sullivan
(2004) identi?ed the need for academics seeking to publish to develop mentoring
relationships with mentors other than their dissertation supervisors, and advocated the
process of “signalling” to match with other scholars. Amentoring induction programme
in Israel involved practical research support for academic staff in a teacher training
college (Katz and Coleman, 2001). Sadler (1999) described a collegial mentoring
approach, where academics worked together to accelerate their publishing.
The mentoring process requires working with “truth, integrity and authenticity” and
is enhanced when there is time for re?ection on that process (Barrett, 2002, p. 279).
Effective mentors will possess the quality of leadership as determined by their
self-re?ection and regulation, motivations, authenticity, honesty, competence and
a willingness to share their knowledge and experience. Accordingly, these attributes
may not appear until the mentor has reached a level of personal and professional
maturity, and, in academic circles, an established publishing reputation. The next
section highlights the problems that have arisen when there is a lack of potential
mentors who embody these characteristics.
4. The drought
There is a well-documented shortage of PhD-quali?ed academics, not only in Australia
(Matchett, 2008; Lebihan, 2008; Healy, 2008b, c), but world-wide (Healy, 2007)[7]. This
will undoubtedly have negative consequences for accounting schools, academics and
students, and ultimately, for the accounting profession and business. While these
concerns are not of recent origin (Boedecker and Morgan, 2006, p. 2, citing Pierson, 1959;
Boedecker and Morgan, 2006, p. 3, citing Gordon and Howell, 1959), an American
Accounting Association report in 2004 predicted that the situation would worsen over
the next few years (Plumlee et al., 2006).
In Australia a growth in demand for business education (Mather and Lebihan, 2008)
and an ageing academic workforce expecting to retire within the next decade
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(Healy, 2007) has prompted “the most severe academic shortage yet”, especially in
accounting and ?nance (Mather and Lebihan, 2008, p. 30). This shortage of research
trained academics prompted the Commonwealth Government Inquiry into Research
Training and Research Workforce Issues in Australian Universities, which includes both
the contributions and challenges in retention of suitably quali?ed staff (Commonwealth
of Australia, 2008). A submission to this inquiry highlighted the fact that “Australian
universities are likely to lose between a ?fth anda third of their staff inthe next decade or
so” (Commonwealth of Australia, 2008, p. 123).
In relation to business schools, there are many expectations of senior faculty, over
and above their contribution to research and scholarship, teaching and professional
leadership. For internationally accredited schools, they are vital for the maintenance of
accreditation standards, and because of their valuable role in mentoring junior faculty in
research training and scholarship (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of
Business (AACSB), 2003). As the number of accounting professors is often inadequate to
provide this service, those who do make themselves available are frequently
overloaded[8]. Professors are nowrequired to obtain and manage grants, as well as carry
heavy governance responsibilities. Decreased resources in the form of tenured staff,
coupled with increased workloads (de Janasz and Sullivan, 2004), allow considerably
less time for quality mentoring to take place, and, potentially, result in less inclination to
mentor on the part of over-worked professors.
Data were gathered from the web sites of 38 Australian Vice Chancellors’ Committee
universities[9] across six states, two territories and one Australia-wide university.
It revealed the relative paucity of accounting professors. A total of 926 accounting
academics, there were 92 professors (10 per cent), many of whomwould have signi?cant
governance responsibilities as heads of schools or academic programmes. While the
?gure of 10 per cent does not seemunreasonable, it should be noted that professors were
not spread evenly across universities. Several universities, including ours, had no
resident full-time accounting professor at all, while others were well staffed with
professors. The prevalence of accounting professors seemed to depend on the strategic
vision and resource capabilities of universities, with Australia’s premier universities
better endowed, and able to set a high standard for professorial appointments, while
regional universities struggled to attract well quali?ed professors. Figure 1 shows that
41 per cent of Australian accounting professors were attached to the prestigious
“Group of 8” universities, with 31 other Australian universities sharing the remaining
59 per cent.
Consistent with reported evidence, all three accounting professors interviewed
identi?ed a current shortage of professors in Australian and overseas accounting
schools. It was acknowledged that within any business-oriented discipline, there was
always competition with industry for personnel:
[. . .] salaries are fairly low in the public sector, and a lot of people are already in debt by the
time they ?nish a ?rst degree, by the time they’ve done a Masters, professional accountancy
exams, it doesn’t make sense for them to enter at a low salary in the academy. So the crisis is
perpetuated by broader policies as well.
The rewards in the private sector are attractive but universities must share the blame
with poor management and retention strategies combined with increasing workloads
(Lane, 2008). In addition, a shortage of professors gave well-endowed universities a
competitive edge since they could afford to pay higher salaries.
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That there was a dearth of academic mentoring was acknowledged, with one
accounting professor stating:
[. . .] it seems that there is really a shortage of mentors and perhaps a lot of good people are
retiring.
There was agreement between all accounting professors about the leadership role a
professor should play, which included the mentoring of junior academics. In this role,
an accounting professor, it was suggested, should “profess” something:
[. . .] in other words, have a commitment to a particular philosophy [. . .] which she or he then
encourages the people who work with her or him to work collaboratively towards [. . .] I think
a professor should, as a senior member of a department or a school [. . .] encourage people to
develop their own philosophies and their own [. . .] interests which would gear their research,
improve their teaching, and just generally help them to be more ful?lled, satis?ed and
effective academics.
According to one of the accounting professors interviewed, this ideal of research
leadershipandmentoringwas not the experience of manyjunior academic staff. The lack
of accounting professors was by no means the only reason. It was believed that many
factors prevented some accounting professors from ful?lling this role. One that this
professor identi?ed, with sadness, was what was perceived to be the inadequate quality
of some scholarship, which had little “breadth of vision” or “intellectual inquiry”,
rendering some senior academics incapable of ful?lling the ideal of “true academics and
true academic leaders”. This attitude, the interviewee suggested, percolated “right down
to the junior colleagues”, and “right down to the students that are involved”. In addition,
the increased emphasis in Australian accounting schools on entrepreneurial and
grant-winning activities meant that accounting professors bore heavy workloads.
These institutional emphases, according to a professor from another discipline,
reinforce current reward systems, so that academic careers are based on “developing
your personal CV, so there’s nothing in it for them[professors]” in relation to mentoring.
Key performance indicators, it was suggested “do not say ‘help young people’”, but
rather say “earn lots of grant money, publish lots”. Consequently, this professor
believed, “many people even refuse to supervise [research] students, because they think
it’s too much burden”. That professor went on to suggest that:
[. . .] it’s damaging to any school not to have senior people [. . .] but also having senior people
doesn’t guarantee they’re going to work with you, right, so there’s many problems in
academia just having physically a professor in your unit doesn’t mean they’re going to be
valuable. But of course, in the optimal case, you’d want to have the senior person that shares
their experience with junior people.
Our motivation for organising the mentoring scheme arose from the lack of an
accounting professor in our school, and emanated from a resolution at a school meeting
that some form of mentoring scheme be developed. With just one retired Emeritus
Professor and one Associate Professor, who was also the Head of School, the possibilities
for meaningful mentoring within the school were severely limited. A consequence
was that certain leadership responsibilities, including the responsibility for nurturing
junior academic staff, fell to staff who had not yet been able to establish their own
academic credentials, thus limiting their potential for advancement. This shortage was
re?ected in the observations of two of the mentees:
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I’ve worked considerably with (X). I’d also worked a little bit with (Y) but I don’t think apart
from that I didn’t really have any access to any other senior academic.
This, our School doesn’t have a lot of senior staff.
[. . .] we don’t have many senior staff. This is our problem [. . .].
Consistent with the views of the accounting professors, the mentees recognised that
senior staff were busy and over-loaded, and therefore, they were reluctant to approach
them for mentoring assistance. At the same time, they recognised that they shared
some of the responsibility for seeking out help:
[. . .] we should take more advantage of the senior staff and, you know, I could be just lazy and
say, you know, I just don’t want anyone to see my work.
An accounting professor observed that sometimes junior academics were reluctant to
seek out or “pester” professors or other senior academics, since they were the ones who
had “the power in terms of hiring, ?ring, promotions, loadings, all those sorts of
things”.
Given the shortage of accounting professors and the mentoring opportunities that
are being lost, there are severe implications for the development of junior academics as
they attempt to master academic research skills and build a portfolio of publications.
One of our organising group identi?ed assistance with this aspect of research as
essential for junior staff:
[. . .] the publication of journal articles is a step in career and also the academic life which is
separate from the PhD process and I can see the need for a separate program or relationship
network to develop “professional skills”.
The following section outlines the school’s response to the drought of the mentoring we
believe is so essential to the academic life.
5. A green tinge
The mentoring scheme initiated in the school developed from a nascent idea[10]
suggested at a research planning day and coincided with a faculty funding opportunity
to invite a visiting academic. The necessity for academics to conduct research with
tangible outcomes was an explicit requirement of workload models and an implicit
expectation for career development. The original idea for the scheme was based on a
traditional form of mentoring where the mentor, as a more experienced, possibly
senior person, supports and guides a less experienced or junior person (McGuire and
Reger, 2003).
From the outset, the scheme had very clearly de?ned objectives and a prescriptive
approach, partly due to the grant funding requirements. An accounting professor with a
prestigious international reputation was invited to mentor a small group of ?ve junior
accounting researchers. The objective was for each mentee to achieve a Department of
Education Science and Training (DEST)[11] recognised publication submission.
In addition, the mentor presented seminars to the academic community at the school,
faculty and university and modelled mentoring for school staff.
As summarised in Appendix 1, the process began with an invitation
to junior accounting staff on continuing or ?xed contracts to submit a complete
scholarly paper to us, as organisers. We evaluated the submissions and provided initial
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feedback to the mentees, who were also encouraged to submit their papers to an
academic accounting conference in order to obtain some additional feedback. The
selected papers were then sent to the mentor, who provided comments to the mentees
and suggestions for improvements in preparation for his visit to the school. The
mentees were required to make a commitment to be available over a two week period
for individual and group meetings with the mentor during his visit later in the year.
After the mentor’s visit, the mentees had a three month period to incorporate
comments and submit their papers to journals they had targeted on the mentor’s advice.
An unexpected bonus was the opportunity for us to take the mentees to a dedicated
research facility for three days, in order to provide a space for them to work,
uninterrupted, ontheir papers, andwhere we were available to provide assistance. Given
the family commitments of some of the mentees, this was an extremely valuable few
days, described by one of themas “my period of regeneration”. The mentor committed to
providing further assistance with reviewers’ comments.
All participants involved in the scheme had expectations of working toward
publication of a scholarly paper. The mentees were all current PhD students or
post-doctoral researchers struggling with the different demands of writing a journal
article as opposed to a thesis. The actual process of working with the mentor was
important for the mentees as it assisted them to gain valuable experience and guidance
on how to publish in addition to the exposure to a different perspective from a
well-established international researcher:
[. . .] [it was] a good opportunity to have access to somebody who [. . .] was well published and
could perhaps provide me with some ideas and some guidance about developing the paper.
The discipline of committing to a timeframe and a prescribed process of deadlines was
motivating, especially in an academic environment where teaching loads and student
numbers were signi?cant. In terms of career development, the mentees were able to
acknowledge the role research plays in terms of promotion and career progression.
However, for some mentees, research was seen primarily as an employment-related
expectation rather than an academic lifestyle.
The mentor, on the other hand, was focussed on giving back to the academy and
building the next generation or new crop of academics to develop a community of
scholarly intent. His self de?ned role as a kind of “intellectual conversation” maker
playing a part in assisting emerging scholars to “make their mark” was a dominant
theme. The mentoring process was thus extended beyond a publication to the
preparation and building of future scholars. However, the thought of working with a
senior academic created a level of anxiety for some staff, mixed with the excitement and
awe of working with a mentor who was so highly regarded.
The mentees adhered to the guidelines of the scheme and displayed a high level of
commitment to the process. As a tangible and expected outcome of the scheme, three
mentees presented their papers at an international conference, and one presented at an
Australian conference. In addition, three mentees submitted their papers to a journal by
the mentoring scheme deadline, one continued to re?ne the paper, and the ?fth mentee,
whose paper was not publishable by the end of the mentoring scheme, later worked with
two of us on a new project and eventually submitted it to a journal. To date, there have
been four submissions to journals as a result of the mentoring scheme. Three of these
have been either published or accepted for publication, and one is still waiting for
feedback from reviewers.
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Apart from the expected outcomes of the scheme, other intangible bene?ts were
identi?ed. One mentee was invited by the mentor to work on a collaborative project, and
all mentees were introduced to a professor with a high international reputation,
affording them networking opportunities. These opportunities became evident when
three of the mentees attended an international conference also attended by the mentor,
shortly after his visit to the school. The opportunity for an introduction to accounting
academics from other institutions was a welcome con?dence-builder for the junior
researchers.
Within the school and university community, the mentees and we as organisers were
pleasantly surprised to discover each other’s research interests and to be exposed to
different ideas for research and also for teaching. It was a privilege to work with such
dedicated and hard-working colleagues, and we were aware that the scheme had
facilitated a relationship between ourselves and the mentees that had not previously
existed:
[. . .] and now I don’t think they feel scared to come to us and say “could you read my paper”
and it never occurred to me that they would never do that [. . .].
The mentoring scheme not only provided opportunities for the mentees but also for us
as organisers. The Faculty Grant was instrumental in moving the scheme from an idea
to a reality, and an added bonus was that being a competitive process, we gained
valuable experience in grant writing. The application process also forced us to identify
and resolve issues and potential dif?culties in advance. The bene?ts of the mentoring
scheme included increased con?dence, networking, skill building and the exposure to
and challenge of new ideas:
The grant process was a joy. I loved the meetings because I learnt so much about process,
getting things done, being bold to step out, make decisions and stick with them, wrestle
obstacles out of the way instead of being paralysed by them.
The mentoring scheme created a space in which we could think about ourselves, the
mentor, mentees and the school as a community of scholars, a place where relationships
and networks were strengthened. For the mentor it provided an opportunity to
contribute to the academic community and to reinforce an existing relationship with our
school. The mentor described himself as somebody who, “if someone is willing to run
and explore some ideas”, was “happy to run with them”.
On re?ection, we identi?ed areas for improvements in the mentoring scheme. One of
these was the idea of instigating a structured reading program in theoretical aspects of
accounting research. This would offer the potential for deeper cross disciplinary
theoretical insights and understandings, with potential linkage to higher level theory
and social systems. Exposing the mentees to ideas from other branches of the social
sciences has the potential to enrich their accounting research. The mentor observed
that:
[. . .] a lot of accounting writings tend to borrow from other branches of social sciences. And,
so in some ways, though it is useful to look at accounting journals to see how somebody has
deployed or modi?ed some particular ideas, but I think it is useful to go back and read the
originals. I don’t know how many people have gone back and read the original chapters,
maybe, from Marx, or from Adam Smith, or Foucault, or whatever. You know, these things
could be helpful.
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A mentee expressed appreciation of this approach:
[. . .] it also opened my eyes as well because when I chat with him [the mentor] I get a new
idea, it is a new way of seeing things. There are so many ways of doing a piece of research
and the same material you can see it in a different angles and different ways.
The application of these readings to speci?c accounting research issues would entail
further synthesis of concepts and theories. This would reinforce the need for the
guidance of a mentor:
[. . .] theories have to be crafted, whether it’s, you know, Foucault or Marx or somebody else
has written something. But we can’t just exactly pick it out and plonk it in our writings.
We’ve got to play around with it, knock it about, modify it.
Generally, apart from an initial group meeting with the mentees, we had organised for
the mentor to meet with them individually during his visit. However, he suggested that
the mentoring scheme would be enhanced by having more group sessions in order to
create a social dynamic:
[. . .] let’s read a paper, and in 2-3 [days] we meet, or read a journal article, and then between
us, even if somebody’s not fully read it, or somebody’s only partially been through the article,
between us we can manage to get more out of it.
I would have liked to spend a bit more time, and perhaps if some of the activities could have
been a little more structured [. . .] that was dif?cult in some ways, because the mentees were at
different stages as well.
Given the diversity of personalities, life experience, cultural backgrounds and status of
the mentor and mentees, the mentoring scheme worked remarkably well, not only
academically but on a personal level for the majority of the participants. The responses
and levels of participation of the individual mentees gave us fresh insights into
mentoring dynamics and our own participation. The process challenged us to refocus
our preconceptions of mentoring and opened up new possibilities of what mentoring is
and can be for sustainable academic endeavour.
Initially, our perceptions of mentoring were based on the traditional model, where a
mentor and mentee “found” each other and embarked on a long-term relationship that
produced mutual bene?ts, particularly for the mentee. This mentoring relationship is
shown in Figure 2 as the “traditional (dyadic) mentoring model”.
The mentoring scheme was devised as a means of providing a short-term mentoring
relationship, geared towards a speci?c academic output, the submission of an article to a
peer-reviewed journal. As organisers, we intended to broker this traditional relationship
between the mentor and the mentees, providing a conduit through which resources and
expertise could ?ow, and providing the opportunity for mentor and mentees to develop
their own relationships. While this was not planned to be an ongoing process, it was
nevertheless consistent with Kram (1985) identi?cation of organisational agents and
their role in providing mentoring opportunities for employees. As highlighted earlier in
the paper, one of the mentees was able to establish an ongoing relationship with the
mentor. This mentoring model is shown in Figure 2 as a “team (triadic) mentoring
model”.
As the mentoring scheme progressed, the dynamics changed from what we had
originally conceived, to the model shown in Figure 2 as the “collegial (networking)
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mentoring model”. We, as organisers, played a much greater role in the outworking of
the mentoring scheme, becoming peer mentors, for a number of reasons:
.
Because we were already colleagues with existing relationships with all the
mentees, we were the natural point of contact.
.
As a group of three organisers, we effectively mentored each other as we
developed the scheme.
.
We were mentored ourselves by the mentor, informally. He took a great interest
in the scheme and in our contributions, and we re-established and strengthened
our relationship with him as we liaised and participated in some of the research
activities during his visit.
.
After the mentor left, we continued to work with the mentees on their papers,
as discussed above, by taking them away to a writing retreat.
.
As mentioned earlier, two of our group worked with one of the mentees on
another research project after the scheme had concluded.
The ongoing bene?ts of this “collegial” model of mentoring are still being experienced.
For example, one of the original mentees joined the organising group in the second
iteration of the mentoring scheme, and two of the original mentees have now formed a
research partnership. In addition, we have an ongoing relationship with the mentor
which has proved to be an encouragement in our own academic endeavours, and a way
of widening the population of colleagues who ultimately bene?ts from the scheme.
This mentoring scheme operated in the Australian university environment,
one which poses challenges for the future of academic endeavour. It provided “greening”
to the academic landscape at our university, but we came to the realisation that,
ironically, it was a “green drought” (Cowan, 2007).
6. A green drought
The instigation of a government inquiry into the Australian academic workforce
(Commonwealth of Australia, 2008) and the AACSB’s (2003) report both reinforced the
Figure 2.
Mentoring models
Mentor
Mentee
Traditional
(dyadic)
mentoring
model
Collegial
(networking)
mentoring
model
Mentor
Mentees
Mentoring
scheme
organisers
Mentees
Mentor
Mentoring
scheme
organisers
Team (triadic)
mentoring
model
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shortage of research trained staff who were able to ful?l the role of research leadership in
business schools. This systemic problem in academe can be addressed with solutions
such as mentoring schemes and adjunct professorships or new strategies for
employment and retention (Mather and Lebihan, 2008). However, some of these
solutions are short term, and may not provide universities with the sustainable research
scholarship that is enhanced through long-term mentoring relationships. While the
scheme referred to in this paper was judged to be successful, and it was conducted again
the following year, ongoing general research mentoring is also required, rather than just
speci?c publication-focused mentoring.
This challenge is expected to increase in the years ahead, and to become a “critical
issue”, according to one accounting professor interviewed. He highlighted the potential
impact of the retirement of current accounting professors over the next ?ve to ten
years, and observed that this would cause a “major problem”:
[. . .] a lot of the people who are in that next level are still looking for mentoring and leadership
[. . .] and they’ll be thrust into the leadership, but they won’t have the skills to then mentor
people below them.
The mentoring scheme was viewed very positively by one professor:
[. . .] [the mentoring scheme] was a very proactive way of ?lling a gap in your School, where
you don’t have any senior people, so I was very impressed. And what I particularly liked is
that you had structure in place that we could reproduce, so really it wasn’t speci?c to
accounting. Your idea was essentially reproducible in any other school [. . .].
“Green drought” solutions, while effective in the short term, limit the ability of
individual academics to transfer knowledge from the environment to the organisation’s
structure, since ultimately decisions about professorial appointments and research
expectations are institutionally determined. This is a sentiment reinforced by the
AACSB’s (2003, p. 26) recommendation that the dearth of research trained staff is “not
amenable to quick ?x strategies”.
The “greening” that occurred as a result of the mentoring scheme is by no means a
panacea for the ongoing drought of accounting professors. The shortage of academic
staff, mentioned earlier, together with the dominance of the resource-rich group of eight
universities, makes recruitment and retention of accounting professors an ongoing
challenge for smaller universities. An accounting professor identi?ed the mentoring
scheme as “obviously a step in the right direction”, but pointed out a danger:
The only danger I see, if I may be presumptious to say, is that if you get one person coming in,
you get that person’s perspective, and then that person goes away again and what happens?
So it’s different from developing from within and [. . .] encouraging the school to develop.
You’ve got someone who’s come in with experience in publishing and research lends their
expertise and is very helpful and supportive. They may direct the mentees down directions
which once that person’s gone, the mentees feel at a bit of a loss about how to proceed.
The mentoring scheme also exposed some challenges about what is involved in being an
accounting researcher, and has stimulated some further insights about the development
of a collegial mentoring culture, which by no means replaces the need for professors
with a mentoring “heart”. As was so aptly pointed out in the interviews we conducted,
institutions may have a plethora of senior staff, who for one reason or another,
are unable to provide the type of mentoring leadership required to foster a community
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of research scholars. One accounting professor identi?ed the important role of
professors in mentoring, and observed that there were “de?nitely not enough professors,
given the amount of staff we now have”. He observed further, that:
[. . .] what I think has been one of the dilemmas in Australia and probably overseas as well,
although I don’t have that experience, but in Australia I would say most of the universities’
professors, through a variety of reasons, have not had the time to undertake those tasks. I
think a lot of their time has been taken up with managing minutae of funding and teaching
allocations and all sorts of tasks in a very very dif?cult environment.
The result of this, in his opinion, was that “there are a few institutions where the
professors still do the role I think they are supposed to do, but I think they are fewand far
between”. Thus, while it is acknowledged that in Australian accounting schools there is
a shortage of professors, the problem is not just in the number of these staff, but in the
extent to which they are able to provide academic leadership.
7. Conclusions
As a contextualised qualitative research study, this paper exposes the dearth of
accounting professors, not only in Australia, but globally. It relates the story of a
unique mentoring scheme developed within one accounting school in response to this
shortage. It also challenges the ability of Australian accounting schools to provide the
academic nurturing required by junior academic staff in order to achieve research
sustainability.
This mentoring scheme departed from the traditional mentoring model of a
mentor/mentee dyadic relationship, to introduce a triadic approach, with our organising
team brokering, in a discrete way, the relationships between the mentor and a group of
mentees. This then developed into a collegial mentoring relationship, characterised by
overlaps and ?uidity. This is suggested as a desirable way in which to nurture junior
academic staff and create a mentoring culture, where multiple mentors can be of bene?t
in various ways to a number of colleagues. This in no way negates the need for an
experienced academic mentor, but rather extends the traditional mentoring model.
The paper makes three contributions. First, it responds to the assertion that metaphor
is under-appreciated and under-used in qualitative research (Llewellyn, 2003). Second, it
explores the notion of mentoring, expanding traditional perceptions of what is valuable
in nurturing junior academics by suggesting a range of helpful mentoring models.
Third, by exposing the drought of professors in Australian accounting schools, it invites
debate about the impact of the current situation in accounting academe. Accounting
schools will need to ?nd new and creative ways of mentoring early career and junior
academic staff, while at the same time recognising the need for the longer-term
sustainability of academic endeavour.
As a study of one mentoring scheme, in one university, there is no claim to
generalisability. This paper makes no attempt to extend the “green drought” metaphor
to the other levels of theorising proposed by Llewellyn (2003), but this could be done.
Issues of power, gender, policy, new public management, university funding
and staf?ng issues could be explored to differentiate or “cut up” experience, concepts
could be employed to “explicate practices”, and settings could be theorised to explain
“relationships between social phenomena in context”, employing Llewellyn (2003)
second, third and fourth levels of theorising. As to Llewellyn (2003) level ?ve “grand”
theory, the ongoing tide of globalisation, issues of power or politics or the entrenched
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impact of neo-liberalism could be employed to interpret the current state of accounting
academe. This paper, however, does not deal directly with such issues, instead
demonstrating the power of the “green drought” metaphor to create “new and unique
meaning, insights, similarity, relations (and) [. . .] perspectives in which the evoked
systems of associated implications play a central role” (Walters-York, 1996, p. 53).
The use of the “green drought” metaphor acknowledges current realities, re?ects on
the institutional environment in which Australian universities operate, and provides
powerful insights into the current shortage of accounting professors. In a drought
situation, a shower of rain can “green” the environment, giving the illusion that the crisis
is over. The danger is that this illusion will suspend action that would address the core of
the issue.
Notes
1. The shortage of accountants in Australia is well documented, and evidenced by
the Australian Government’s attempt to increase the number of immigrant accountants
(Birrell, 2006). This undoubtedly has an effect, over time, on the ability of accounting schools
to recruit suitably quali?ed academics.
2. Australia’s premier universities include the well established “sandstone” universities of
Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Tasmania, Queensland and Western Australia. Another
classi?cation of the most prestigious Australian universities is the “Group of 8”, which
includes these six sandstone universities and also the University of New South Wales and
Monash University (Group of Eight Australia, 2009).
3. Our university was well ranked. In 2007, it was for the second time listed in The Times
Higher Education Supplement Top 200 World University Rankings. It was at the time one of
only two universities nationwide to achieve top-tier rankings in every discipline category of
the Australian Government’s Learning and Teaching Performance Fund for 2008; it received
?ve stars in six key areas of the 2008 Good Universities Guide (University of Wollongong,
2009).
4. The school was one of three in the faculty, and at the time of the mentoring scheme, consisted
of 31 academic staff. With no professor, and one associate professor, the rest of the staff were
senior lecturers, lecturers and associate lecturers. While an excellent research reputation had
been established over many years, nevertheless at the time, in-house mentoring resources
were very limited.
5. The Howard Government’s Research Quality Framework plans have been replaced by the
Rudd Government’s Excellence in Research for Australia exercise (Excellence in Research
for Australia, 2009).
6. These three professors were chosen for their knowledge of the wider academic environment
in which our school operated. One was a professor who exercised authority at faculty level,
one was the professor at an accounting school in a prestigious Australian university, and one
was a recently retired accounting professor.
7. While there are undoubtedly some well published accounting academics who do not have
PhDs, the emphasis now is that a PhD is essential to an academic career. An AACSB report
con?rmed the current shortage of PhD-quali?ed business-school academics in both the US
and internationally, and predicted a shortage of more than 3,000 within 5 years and nearly
6,000 in ten years (AACSB, 2003, p. 14).
8. McGuire and Reger (2003) acknowledged that a shortage of mentors in some institutions is
damaging for traditional mentors.
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9. Data were current at 31 August 2007, the time at which interviews were conducted. In some
cases, “adjunct” professors were listed. These are not included in the ?gures. These ?gures
are intended only to give a general impression, due to staf?ng changes and movements, and
ambiguity about the role of some listed academics.
10. The idea of an invited mentor to assist in a publication process was not new. In the 1980s,
following the restructure of the tertiary sector in Australia, one of the “new” universities,
faced with the requirement to boost staff research activity, had employed a senior accounting
academic to conduct a successful research publication mentoring programme.
11. DEST was a federal government department responsible for publication metrics in the
higher education sector in Australia at the time of the mentoring scheme.
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Appendix 1. Mentoring scheme outline
(1) Submissions were invited in October 2007 from early career researchers who were on the
staff of the School. Applicants were required to meet eligibility and submission
requirements:
.
Eligibility requirements. applicants must be Lecturers levels A or B; applicants may
be full time or part time continuing staff of the School or on a ?xed term contract.
.
Submission requirement. an accounting paper on which the applicant is a single
author or the lead author. The paper must be capable of being developed for
submission to a conference or journal.
(2) Applicants were required to commit to the following actions:
.
to submit a completed paper to the organisers by 1 March 2007;
.
on acceptance into the scheme, to send their paper to the mentor by April 2007;
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to be available for consultation with the mentor, by arrangement, during his visit
between Wednesday 20 June and Tuesday 3 July 2007;
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to be willing to work on the paper during this two week period; and
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to submit the completed, revised paper to a journal by 31 October 2007, under the
advice of the mentor.
(3) Selection of applicants was to take place in April 2007. Applications were assessed by a
panel comprising the three mentoring scheme organisers, in consultation with the
mentor. A standardised evaluation form was used.
(4) Applicants were encouraged to submit their paper to one of two designated accounting
research conferences, to be held in July 2007, Accounting and Finance Association of
Australia and New Zealand Conference and the Asia Paci?c Interdisciplinary Research
in Accounting Conference.
(5) The mentor was to undertake the following during his two week visit to the School in
July 2007:
.
the mentoring of selected staff by assisting with the focus of their papers, targeting
appropriate journals and providing editorial advice;
.
the delivery of a seminar to the Faculty and University community; and
.
the delivery of a seminar to Faculty postgraduate students.
(6) Following his visit to the school, the mentor was to continue to follow up mentees by
assisting with journal reviewers’ comments.
Appendix 2. Sample interview questions
Questions for mentees
(1) What was your understanding of academic mentoring before the scheme?
(2) Was there any anxiety for you? In what way?
(3) What were your expectations of the mentoring scheme?
(4) Why did you apply to the scheme?
(5) Does the scheme aid your career development? How?
(6) Do you have any suggestions for the organisers about what to do differently next time?
(7) If you participated in such a scheme again, what would you do differently?
(8) Did this scheme create an additional workload for you?
(9) If it did, do you regard this as reasonable? Why or why not?
(10) Do you feel you were able to take full advantage of the opportunities of the scheme and
why or why not?
(11) In your opinion to what degree does such a mentoring scheme compensate for having no
accounting professor on staff?
(12) Did you enjoy the process?
(13) What do you think the impacts of the scheme are for you in both the short term and the
long term?
(14) Are your expectations being met? If so, how? If not, why not?
(15) Has the scheme helped you be a better researcher? If so, how?
(16) Did the scheme offer you anything that you could not otherwise obtain?
(17) What was disappointing about it?
(18) What was surprising about it?
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(19) Do you have any a clear idea now of where your paper is going and what it will take for
you to complete it for submission to a journal?
(20) Do you have any other comments and/or suggestions?
Questions for the mentor
(1) What appealed to you about being involved in the mentoring scheme?
(2) Were the goals and anticipated outcomes of the scheme communicated clearly to you?
(3) What is your opinion on the organisation of the program?
(4) Were you needs satisfactorily met during your visit with respect to resources,
accommodation, travel, etc.? In what ways can this be improved?
(5) What were your motivations in accepting the position of mentor?
(6) What do you think were your strongest qualities you had to contribute to the scheme?
(7) What were your expectations of the scheme?
(8) Did the scheme meet your expectations?
(9) Were you able to establish a connection with all mentees? If so, how, and if not, why not?
(10) Setting this scheme in its context, what do you think was the main reason for the
scheme?
(11) Can you identify the weaker qualities of the research environment in the school, as you
observed through working with the mentees?
(12) Can you identify the stronger qualities of the research environment in the school, as you
observed through working with the mentees?
(13) Do you think a similar scheme is worth pursuing for junior PhD supervisors?
(14) How widely applicable do you think this scheme is to other universities, both in
Australia and world-wide?
(15) The scheme was initially envisaged to achieve quality journal publications. Now, in your
view is this a realistic goal for all mentees?
(16) What are your re?ections on the scheme:
.
organisationally;
.
academically;
.
strategically; and
.
personally.
(17) Do you have any other comments and/or suggestions?
Re?ections from organisers
(1) What was the purpose of the scheme? Why was it thought necessary?
(2) What were your expectations of the scheme?
(3) What would you do differently next time?
.
organisationally;
.
?nancially;
.
in choosing an academic mentor; and
.
in choosing mentees.
(4) What have you got out of the scheme? Personally? Career wise?
The challenge
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(5) What have been the negatives for you?
(6) Do you have any reservations about conducting such a scheme again?
Appendix 3. Data
Data consisted of the following:
(1) Archival data from internet sources – documented current staf?ng pro?les from all
Australian university business schools with a dedicated accounting undergraduate
degree program at the time of the scheme. Where the staff member’s accounting
af?liation could not be indenti?ed accurately they were not counted in the statistics.
(2) Interviews were conducted by at least two of the organisers using a set of open ended
interview questions tailored to the interviewee (Appendix 2). The interviews were
recorded and later transcribed. Care was taken so that the interviewer was not the
interviewee’s supervisor in work or research.
(3) Re?ective summaries from the organisers.
(4) Scheme documents as detailed below.
Application for a faculty grant
The Faculty of Commerce provided a portfolio of annual, internally competitive funding for
research related projects. Our publication mentoring scheme was funded within the parameters
of a Conference Convening/Visitor Invitation grant. It provided suf?cient funds to cover airfare,
accommodation and living expenses. The mentor was very generous with time both on and off
site for the duration of the scheme. The selection and characteristics of the mentor and the
mentoring relationship included the following:
.
The mentor was identi?ed by the organisers. The mentor had already developed a
relationship with the school through former visitors and was well regarded by the
academics as a person with a “mentoring heart”.
.
The mentor’s research pro?le dovetailed with the school’s research focus, especially
interdisciplinary methodologies. The mentor was an editor for several international
accounting journals.
.
The mentor was able to provide sustained mentoring without the distraction of our
institutional commitments.
.
The mentor was located in the northern hemisphere and the visit coincided with the
summer break for the mentor’s university.
Meeting minutes
Following negotiations with the mentor and securing funds the organisers spent 12 months prior
to the arrival of the mentor organising selection of mentees and preparing for the visit.
The organisers met fortnightly and detailed minutes were recorded and circulated.
Research mentoring application form
The application process involved the submission of details of both the prospective mentee and
his/her paper. The organisers had observed that many Level A and B staff were able successfully
to complete a scholarly paper for a conference but were unable to continue and progress to
submission to a journal. The organisers were interested in whether the paper was complete and
whether it was already in the process of refereeing for a conference or journal. The organisers
also asked the potential mentees to articulate their reasons for participating in the scheme. The
mentor was able to advise the mentees on journals to target, theory and methodology to explore
and how to re?ne the focus of their research for a speci?c purpose.
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Appendix 4. Data analysis
(1) Summary data about staf?ng in Australian accounting business schools is represented
in graphs.
(2) NVivo analysis. The green drought metaphor formed the basis for theorising the scheme
as a response to the dearth of accounting academics in Australia. Three primary
categories based on the paper’s purpose, with sub-categories based on the metaphor,
were used to code the interview and re?ective summary data as detailed below.
Expose
(1) Drought. Dearth of accounting academic staff. Potential reasons/explanations for the
lack of senior accounting staff.
(2) Lack of sustainability. Problems arising in terms of research and mentoring.
Relate
(1) Shower of rain. The meaning and de?nition of mentoring. The publication mentor
scheme as a short term solution.
(2) Greening. Expectations, experience and outcomes of the scheme.
Challenge
(1) Drought not over. Limitations of scheme. Short term yield.
(2) Sustainability. Individual and organisational responses to the shortage of staff. Longer
term challenges.
About the authors
Helen Irvine is an Associate Professor in Accounting in the School of Accountancy at the
Queensland University of Technology. Helen Irvine is the corresponding author and can be
contacted at: [email protected]
Lee Moerman is a Lecturer in the School of Accounting and Finance at the University of
Wollongong.
Kathy Rudkin is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Accounting and Finance at the University
of Wollongong.
The challenge
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171
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This article has been cited by:
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doc_443004848.pdf
The purpose of this paper is to expose the impact of the shortage of senior academics,
particularly professors, in Australian accounting schools, to relate the way one school addressed this
shortage through a mentoring scheme, and to challenge existing institutional arrangements.
Accounting Research Journal
A green drought: the challenge of mentoring for Australian accounting academics
Helen Irvine Lee Moerman Kathy Rudkin
Article information:
To cite this document:
Helen Irvine Lee Moerman Kathy Rudkin, (2010),"A green drought: the challenge of mentoring for
Australian accounting academics", Accounting Research J ournal, Vol. 23 Iss 2 pp. 146 - 171
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A green drought: the challenge
of mentoring for Australian
accounting academics
Helen Irvine
School of Accountancy, Queensland University of Technology,
Brisbane, Australia, and
Lee Moerman and Kathy Rudkin
School of Accounting and Finance,
University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to expose the impact of the shortage of senior academics,
particularly professors, in Australian accounting schools, to relate the way one school addressed this
shortage through a mentoring scheme, and to challenge existing institutional arrangements.
Design/methodology/approach – This is a contextualised qualitative case study of a mentoring
scheme conducted in an Australian accounting school. Data collected from semi-structured interviews,
personal re?ections and from Australian university web sites are interpreted theoretically using the
metaphor of a “green drought”.
Findings – The mentoring scheme achieved some notable successes, but raised many issues and
challenges. Mentoring is a multifaceted investment in vocational endeavour and intellectual
infrastructure, which will not occur unless creative means are developed over the long term to
overcome current and future shortages of academic mentors.
Research limitations/implications – This is a qualitative case study, which, therefore, limits its
generalisability. However, its contextualisation enables insights to be applied to the wider academic
environment.
Practical implications – In the Australian and global academic environment, as accounting
professors retire in greater numbers, new and creative ways of mentoring will need to be devised.
The challenge will be to address longer term issues of academic sustainability, and not just to focus on
short-term academic outcomes.
Originality/value – A mentoring scheme based on a collegial networking model of mentoring is
presented as a means of enhancing academic endeavour through a creative short-term solution to
a shortage of accounting professors. The paper exempli?es the theorising power of metaphor in a
qualitative study.
Keywords Mentoring, Accountancy, Academic staff, Australia, Schools, Qualitative research,
Metaphors
Paper type Research paper
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1030-9616.htm
The authors acknowledge, with appreciation, the funding from the Commerce Faculty at the
University of Wollongong, which made possible the mentoring scheme, and, in consequence, this
paper. They are also grateful to the ?ve mentees who participated in the scheme, to the mentor,
to all the people who shared their insights through interviews and to the anonymous reviewers of
this paper.
ARJ
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Accounting Research Journal
Vol. 23 No. 2, 2010
pp. 146-171
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1030-9616
DOI 10.1108/10309611011073241
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While farms across Australia have started showing a green tinge again thanks to recent
rainfall, experts say crops are still on a knife’s edge [. . .] The green tinge in Australia’s
paddocks is one of nature’s ironies, and they’re calling it the “Green Drought” (Cowan, 2007).
1. Introduction
This paper is a contextualised qualitative case study interpreted through the theoretical
lens of metaphor (Llewellyn, 2003). The choice of a drought metaphor, particularly a
“green drought”, was chosen because of its accessibility and impact and because it
coincided with our understanding and interpretation of the current situation facing
university accounting schools. Eschewing the “characteristic distrust of rhetorical or
?gurative language” (Walters-York, 1996, p. 46), we harness the power of metaphor to
“theorize experience” (Llewellyn, 2003, p. 667). The “green drought” speaks vividly of a
situation that, while it is dif?cult and threatening, is temporarily lightened by a
short-term solution, which provides a certain relief but does not eliminate the problem.
One Australian farmer, who also sits on Australia’s National Water Commission,
observed that in a drought situation, after a good shower of rain, “while the rolling green
landscape looks pretty for citysiders”, further rain is needed very quickly. If that rain
does not eventuate, the chances of producing a “sustainable cropor a sustainable pasture
become less”, because the plants do not have any “subsoil moisture” to sustain them, and
are in real danger of “simply dying” (Cowan, 2007).
The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, it exposes the “drought” of
senior accounting academics, particularly professors, in Australian accounting schools,
highlighting the consequent lack of mentoring of younger academic staff. Second, it
relates the story of a mentoring scheme for junior academics conducted at our Australian
university, identifying it as a temporary mentoring “greening” of the academic
landscape. Third, it identi?es an ongoing “green drought” mentoring situation, with
sustainability implications not only for our school, but for other accounting schools in
the Australian tertiary sector.
The drought of senior accounting academics in Australia is arguably due to a number
of factors. One of these is the global shortage of academics, which has seen a marked
increase in recruiting competition and mobility within the sector (Plumlee et al., 2006;
Healy, 2007, 2008a). In the Australian context, the “rapid ageing of the academic
workforce” provides a “fundamental challenge” to universities’ ability to maintain their
“intellectual infrastructure” (National Tertiary Education Union, 2007, p. 29).
The Bradley (2008, p. 10) report, commissioned by the Australian Government,
identi?ed this as a signi?cant problem:
[. . .] higher education institutions face their own workforce shortages of major proportions.
Academic staff are approaching retirement age in signi?cant numbers. There is a shortage of
younger academics to take their places. This situation re?ects global competition for
high-quality staff and the relative unattractiveness of academic salaries and conditions,
particularly compared with those offered by the private sector. This will require concerted
action on many fronts to ensure that Australia has access to suf?cient high-quality academic
staff to educate new generations and conduct international-class research.
The impact of an ageing academic workforce, increased casualisation, and the need
to increase “the stock of people with higher degrees by research” in order to “replace the
large group of ageing academics and to expand Australia’s research and innovation
workforce” (Bradley et al., 2008, p. 11) mean that the future quality of Australian
The challenge
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accounting schools is under threat. Even allowing for a minimum of eight years for
an academic to complete necessary training, junior academics will not be able to replace
lecturers and researchers who have “30 to 40 years experience” (Healy, 2008a).
Accounting has been identi?ed as one of a few disciplines under “most pressure” from
the current academic shortage (Healy, 2008c). This paper argues that this situation is
exacerbated by the shortage of trained accountants in Australia[1] and the consequent
prevalence of employment offered to graduate accountants, where rewards are much
more immediate than in academic life (Healy, 2008c). In this environment, Australia’s
eight research-intensive universities[2] are more likely to be able to attract and retain
world-class researchers, since they are more likely to have the resources and
“understand [the] need to provide the facilities and collegial environment to support
great quality research” (Healy, 2008c). However, within all Australian universities,
whether in the top eight or not, there is a need for resources, facilities, and a collegial
environment in order to attract professors. Undoubtedly one feature of this “collegial
environment” is the mentoringcapabilityof a school. Inorder to increase the number and
quality of younger academics to replace retiring academics, and to extend universities’
research capabilities, it is crucial that senior academics create a culture in which their
younger colleagues can be mentored.
Most of the literature on the shortage of academics, particularly accounting
academics, is gathered at a macro-level, but there has been a call for further
“disaggregated analysis”, by “university, and by present patterns of PhD research”
(Healy, 2008a). This paper provides a micro-view, documenting the situation at one
accounting school. It is our contention that in Australian universities, many schools
of accounting are experiencing a severe academic drought due to a shortage of senior
accounting academics. This situation may be temporarily alleviated by a “good shower
of rain”, i.e. a mentoring scheme such as the one conducted at our university,
but ultimately more concerted mentoring and a depth of academic maturity is required if
academic endeavour is to be sustained. The effect of this drought, therefore, raises
potentially profound sustainability issues. In the short term it results in a paucity of
quality research output from accounting schools, including training and supervision of
early career and junior academics. Academics, at their best, embody a thirst for
knowledge and an intellectual quest within an academic community that shares
inspiration and socialisation. In the longer term, without the contribution of senior
academics with a mentoring “heart”, that community enters a drought mode.
Despite being in a top Australian regional university[3], our school[4] had
experienced a period of one year without a full time resident accounting professor by the
time the visiting research mentor arrived. While it is acknowledged that those other than
professors can be effective mentors, the mentoring literature traditionally de?nes the
mentoring process as a relationship between two individuals, one of whom has a
powerful senior role in the organisation (Bozinelos, 2006, p. 362). In the university sector,
the professorial role legitimates a claim to seniority and leadership in the discipline.
If this is exercised responsibly, academics enjoy the bene?ts of mentoring that assist
them in career advancement and provide intrinsic rewards.
In response to the lack of mentoring assistance from a professor in our school,
we developed a publication mentoring scheme, the main features of which are described
inAppendix1. Anexperienced, international accountingprofessor was invitedto mentor
junior academics over several months, with a view to the submission of their papers
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to academic journals. The mentoring scheme built on our awareness of the need for
publication-speci?c mentoring, and used a Faculty Grant to develop the nascent idea of a
visiting academic mentor into a de?ned process. The focus on submissions to ranked
journals ful?lled two needs. First, given the emphasis in academic life on publishing,
particularly with the Australian Government’s plans at the time to introduce a research
quality framework[5] it would enable junior academics to move into the publishing
arena with the help of a mentor experienced in academic publishing. Second, it enabled
us to specify achievable short-term outcomes, which were a requirement of the
competitive Faculty Grant process. Despite the success of this mentoring scheme and its
consequent “greening” of the academic landscape, we realised that this was not a
long-term solution to the dearth of senior accounting academics. While there were some
bene?ts to the mentees, structurally nothing changed. When the scheme concluded, the
school still had a dearth of senior accounting academics, speci?cally a professor, who
could supply the research guidance we believed was needed in the school. It became
apparent to us that the appointment of senior staff and the development of new ways of
mentoring were crucial issues in meeting the challenge of sustainable, authentic,
long-term academic endeavour.
The following section of the paper describes the theorising power of metaphor in
qualitative research. Mentoring literature is then explored, to establish the importance
and variety of academic mentoring models in ensuring intellectual development and
rejuvenation. The paper is then structured in accordance with its threefold focus.
The “drought” exposes the dearth of professors and consequent lack of mentoring
potential in Australian universities. The “greening” relates the story of the mentoring
scheme and its impact. The “green drought” challenges the sustainability of rigorous
academic achievement in the light of a chronic shortage of quali?ed, experienced senior
accounting academics, focusing on the need to build a cooperative mentoring culture.
It represents a synthesis of the context, the experience and our re?ections on the scheme.
The conclusion establishes the major contributions of the paper, identi?es its
limitations, and proposes possibilities for further research.
2. Qualitative research and metaphor
Qualitative research acknowledges the contextual nature of inquiry (Glesne and
Peshkin, 1992), and qualitative case studies in accounting cover a wide range of
purposes, research sites, methods and theories. Although qualitative case studies may
be presented without a stated theoretical basis, underlying assumptions and beliefs
always inform the research (Roberts and Scapens, 1990; May, 1994; Laughlin, 1995;
Llewellyn, 2003), so that observation is “never unstructured” theoretically (Tinker, 2005,
p. 105). Accounting researchers have been urged to make use of “existing theories,
metaphors and prior case studies in a less constrained way than has hitherto been
considered appropriate”, since a theoretical framework “adds to the value of empirical
enquiry” (Humphrey and Scapens, 1996, p. 88).
Llewellyn (2003, p. 665) identi?ed metaphor as the ?rst of ?ve levels of theorising
in qualitative research, a powerful means of assisting people to address “ambiguity,
contradiction or paradox” in dealing with life. Metaphor provides a satisfying means
of making concrete an impression or belief formed in the conduct of qualitative
research, avoiding the problem of squeezing empirics into a “predetermined theory”,
and making a useful contribution in developing a theory of “social practice”
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(Humphrey and Scapens, 1996, pp. 91-2). “Practical adequacy” becomes the gauge of
whether theory is appropriate in a contextualised setting (Llewellyn, 2003, p. 665).
Despite the fact that metaphor is “a basic structural formof experience throughwhich
human beings engage, organise, and understand their world” (Llewellyn, 2003, p. 667,
citing Morgan, 1983), its power is both under-recognised and under-used (Llewellyn,
2003). Far frombeing a mere rhetorical device, the “macroscopic metaphorical model” is
increasingly recognised as playing a powerful role in accounting and organisations
(Walters-York, 1996, p. 45). The adoption of a metaphor constructs a social reality,
de?ning a problem in a particular way and implying a solution (Walters and Young,
2008). Personal investing has been portrayed as a motoring experience (McGoun et al.,
2007); the development of a conceptual framework either as having “conceptual
underwear” (Page and Spira, 1999) or being a quest for the holy grail or “hunting a
snark” (Page, 2005); and stock options have been portrayed in a metaphoric progression
from good “useful tools” to bad “trickery” (Walters and Young, 2008, p. 828).
This paper applies metaphor to a contextualised qualitative study of accountants in
action, with a particular focus on accounting academics in action. The research site is an
accounting school within an Australian university. The mentoring scheme was
activated through shared structures that existed at a particular time and place (Usher,
1993). The data consists of documentation about the mentoring scheme, interviews and
our own personal re?ections. In addition, archival data are used to explore the
Australian and global context in which accounting academics work. Both the mentoring
scheme and its institutional context were socially constructed by government policies,
PhD programmes, staf?ng levels, retention policies of individual universities and
over-arching power and workload dynamics.
The notion of documenting the mentoring scheme developed as the scheme
progressed and we became aware that we were “complete membership participant
observer
2000, p. 159). As organisers, we were deeply embedded in the process, not just “watching
people in their own territory” (Kirk and Miller, 1986, p. 9), but being a part of it. Our role
as mentoring scheme organisers was in addition to our pre-existing relationships with
the mentees as colleagues and, in some cases, research students. As we took on a
researcher role, we became the “researched”, by consciously and continuously re?ecting
on our own experience (Irvine and Gaf?kin, 2006; Watson, 1995) and the impact of our
presence on the research site and processes (Pratt, 1986) as participant observers
(Parker, 2003; Lightbody, 2000). Hierarchical and organisational factors necessitated
some distance between us as “researchers” and the “researched”, and we were
particularly conscious of the power differential between senior and junior academics.
We tried, as much as possible, to overcome this by conducting the scheme in a formal,
professional manner, with well documented correspondence and minutes, and by
re?ecting constantly on the process and its implications. Consequently, we encouraged
the mentees to give their honest opinions, assuring con?dentiality in accordance not
only with the requirements of our ethics agreement, but in order to maintain the trust
(Irvine, 2003) that had been built up through the conduct of the mentoring scheme.
In total, we conducted ten interviews, the interviewees being all the mentees,
the mentor, anassociate professor andthree other professors[6]. Inaddition, inour role as
the “researched”, each of us provided our own re?ections on the mentoring scheme.
Interview questions were semi-structured, tailored to the position and experience
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of the interviewees. Appendix 2 outlines the questions we asked the mentees and the
mentor, and the issues we as organisers re?ected on when documenting the scheme.
Several sources of data were used in the course of the mentoring scheme, as documented
in Appendix 3. These were archival data collected fromuniversity web sites, interviews,
re?ective summaries from the organisers and documentation associated with the
administration of the grant and the conduct of the scheme.
The way data were synthesised and analysed is detailed in Appendix 4. Summary
data about academic staff in Australian accounting schools was presented in chart form
(Figure 1). The drawing together of data from interviews and re?ections represented a
communal discovery, which allowed the construction of new knowledge (Bruner, 1990).
The green drought metaphor was one we adopted towards the end of the mentoring
scheme in response to our re?ections about the process and its long-term effects.
It facilitated the “think-ability” and “action-ability” (Walters and Young, 2008, p. 809) of
the mentoring scheme, bringing us to a deeper appreciation of the complexity and
ambiguity of mentoring. What became apparent to us was that the mentoring scheme
was a short-term solution, undeniably of value to the mentees who participated
enthusiastically in the programme, but relying on us to followup and provide additional
mentoring at the conclusion of the scheme. The strikingly vivid and appropriate
metaphor of a green drought, together with the three purposes of the paper, to expose,
relate and challenge, determined the categories and sub-categories by which data were
collated and categorised using NVivo. As a result of our analysis of data, our
understanding of mentoring relationships deepened.
3. Mentoring
Amentor has beendescribedas “a wise andfaithful counsellor” (Hanno, 1999, p. 331), or a
person who serves as “a guide or sponsor [. . .] who looks after, advises, protects, and
takes a special interest in another’s development” (Sands et al., 1991, p. 175). In a
professional sense, a mentor is somebody with experience who provides knowledge,
support and encouragement to a less experienced person (Katz and Coleman, 2001).
Kram (1985) described mentoring in an organisational setting as an interpersonal
relationship where a junior, less experienced person is guided by a senior, more
experienced person. This is facilitated by organisational agents, who broker the
mentoring process (Kram, 1985). It is recognised that while such a relationship can
presuppose a one-way ?ow of expertise and resources (McGuire and Reger, 2003),
in practice a complementary relationship develops where both mentor and mentee
Figure 1.
Distribution of Australian
accounting professors
between “Group of 8”
and other universities,
August 2007
Professors/Emeritus
professors/associate professors
“Group of 8” Australian
Universities
Other Australian
Universities (30)
41%
59%
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experience growth opportunities (Kram, 1985). In any mentoring relationship, a mentor
must undertake more than a training role, by creating a reciprocal relationship of
inspiration and trust (Kunselman et al., 2003). Thus, while the traditional apprenticeship
mentor relationship is often conceived as desirable for PhD students, their own
conceptualizations of the supervisor-student relationship have been demonstrated to
depend on demographic and academic characteristics (Rose, 2005).
Changes in the workplace have been identi?ed as necessitating a move away fromthe
dyadic relationship of mentor and mentee to multiple mentors with diverse skills to
facilitate development (de Janasz and Sullivan, 2004). Mentoring can, therefore,
be conceived in a number of different ways. The primary mentoring model is the
traditional, hierarchical approach, with an informal dyadic relationship between two
people of unequal knowledge and in?uence (Bozinelos, 2006), or a more formal model
such as a competency or apprenticeship model, where work-related training is provided
(Watty et al., 2006). A mentoring relationship can be seen also as working two ways,
where learning takes place initially as a “transactional” process, but ultimately as a
“transformational” process in which “teacher and student collaborate, exchanging
information useful to both and making the learning mutually enriching” (Connell, 2007,
p. 229, citing Daloz, 1986, 1999; Galbraith, 1991).
Another alternative is a collegial mentoring model, as practised in a teaching
professional development programme in Canada (Coupal, 2004). Support was provided
to teachers who problem-solved in “learning communities”, gaining a sense of
empowerment and support from mentors (Coupal, 2004, pp. 591-2). One documented
feminist model is co-operative in a similar way, with each person being both teacher and
learner (McGuire and Reger, 2003). The mentoring relationship could also be a network
that enhances the development of the prote´ge´’s career, meeting his or her needs in
different ways at different career phases (Chandler and Kram, 2005). Alternatively, a
networking group could co-mentor, working together to share their experiences and
expertise (Sadler, 1999). This model is recognised as being relevant in the changing
academic environment (Sorcinelli and Yun, 2007), where a network of mentors (de Janasz
and Sullivan, 2004), “faculty-to-faculty mentoring” (Benson et al., 2002), and
“multidimensional support” (Kogler-Hill et al., 1989) are effective for academics in
developing skills and networks. This is different from the traditional “top-down,
one-to-one relationship inwhichanexperienced faculty member guides and supports the
career development of a newor early-career faculty member” (Sorcinelli and Yun, 2007).
Mentoring models involving a prescriptive approach accommodate the four stage
mentoring process identi?ed by Kram (1985), where mentors and mentees move from
initiation, through cultivation, to separation and eventually rede?nition. An empirical
study based onKram(1985) four stages highlighted the needfor a “dynamic context” ina
mentoring relationship (Bouquillon et al., 2005, p. 253). This would apply to mentoring in
any of the models, from hierarchical through to co-operative or collegial.
Thus, mentoring in an organisational setting involves three players: a mentor,
a mentee and the organisation(s) in which they are situated. The bene?ts of mentoring
are experienced by all of these. In the case of mentees, professional identity is enhanced
(DobrowandHiggins, 2005), andthe mentee is situated ina favourable or privilegedlight
(Bozinelos, 2006) in relation to their long-term career (Kunselman et al., 2003). Mentored
individuals have been demonstrated to experience superior career advancement and
achievement, higher salaries, greater stability and satisfaction in employment and less
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work related stress (Crocitto et al., 2005; de Janasz and Sullivan, 2004). Mentoring meets
the emotional, therapeutic, personal satisfaction, social or intellectual needs of mentors
(Cox, 2000), and provides an opportunity for a person in mid-life to pass on skills and
expertise (Kram, 1985). In the case of the organisation, social capital is built (Bozinelos
and Wang, 2006).
While there is a plethora of literature on mentoring in both industry and education
(Bouquillon et al., 2005; Bartlett, 2003), there is a dearth of research on mentoring
relationships in diverse cultural contexts (Bozinelos, 2006), particularly in universities.
In academe, mentees obtain the advantages of being connected with senior academics in
their ?eld. They have a partner and an advisor in achieving academic publications, and
obtaining advice about how to develop scholarship and strategise their research
endeavours. The relationship can also informtheir teaching and generally support their
“intellectual, professional and personal development” (Kunselman et al., 2003, p. 21).
Most mentoring literature with a university focus, deals primarily with mentoring for
teaching (Watty et al., 2006; Barkham, 2005; Brockbank and McGill, 1998) rather than
publishing. However, there is some academic literature on mentoring for publications.
Bartlett (2003) reported on a multi-constituency mentoring approach, whereby
academics in a research-intensive university trained carefully selected, gifted
undergraduate science students to perform research tasks, a form of mentoring that
required the students to make a contribution to speci?c projects. de Janasz and Sullivan
(2004) identi?ed the need for academics seeking to publish to develop mentoring
relationships with mentors other than their dissertation supervisors, and advocated the
process of “signalling” to match with other scholars. Amentoring induction programme
in Israel involved practical research support for academic staff in a teacher training
college (Katz and Coleman, 2001). Sadler (1999) described a collegial mentoring
approach, where academics worked together to accelerate their publishing.
The mentoring process requires working with “truth, integrity and authenticity” and
is enhanced when there is time for re?ection on that process (Barrett, 2002, p. 279).
Effective mentors will possess the quality of leadership as determined by their
self-re?ection and regulation, motivations, authenticity, honesty, competence and
a willingness to share their knowledge and experience. Accordingly, these attributes
may not appear until the mentor has reached a level of personal and professional
maturity, and, in academic circles, an established publishing reputation. The next
section highlights the problems that have arisen when there is a lack of potential
mentors who embody these characteristics.
4. The drought
There is a well-documented shortage of PhD-quali?ed academics, not only in Australia
(Matchett, 2008; Lebihan, 2008; Healy, 2008b, c), but world-wide (Healy, 2007)[7]. This
will undoubtedly have negative consequences for accounting schools, academics and
students, and ultimately, for the accounting profession and business. While these
concerns are not of recent origin (Boedecker and Morgan, 2006, p. 2, citing Pierson, 1959;
Boedecker and Morgan, 2006, p. 3, citing Gordon and Howell, 1959), an American
Accounting Association report in 2004 predicted that the situation would worsen over
the next few years (Plumlee et al., 2006).
In Australia a growth in demand for business education (Mather and Lebihan, 2008)
and an ageing academic workforce expecting to retire within the next decade
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(Healy, 2007) has prompted “the most severe academic shortage yet”, especially in
accounting and ?nance (Mather and Lebihan, 2008, p. 30). This shortage of research
trained academics prompted the Commonwealth Government Inquiry into Research
Training and Research Workforce Issues in Australian Universities, which includes both
the contributions and challenges in retention of suitably quali?ed staff (Commonwealth
of Australia, 2008). A submission to this inquiry highlighted the fact that “Australian
universities are likely to lose between a ?fth anda third of their staff inthe next decade or
so” (Commonwealth of Australia, 2008, p. 123).
In relation to business schools, there are many expectations of senior faculty, over
and above their contribution to research and scholarship, teaching and professional
leadership. For internationally accredited schools, they are vital for the maintenance of
accreditation standards, and because of their valuable role in mentoring junior faculty in
research training and scholarship (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of
Business (AACSB), 2003). As the number of accounting professors is often inadequate to
provide this service, those who do make themselves available are frequently
overloaded[8]. Professors are nowrequired to obtain and manage grants, as well as carry
heavy governance responsibilities. Decreased resources in the form of tenured staff,
coupled with increased workloads (de Janasz and Sullivan, 2004), allow considerably
less time for quality mentoring to take place, and, potentially, result in less inclination to
mentor on the part of over-worked professors.
Data were gathered from the web sites of 38 Australian Vice Chancellors’ Committee
universities[9] across six states, two territories and one Australia-wide university.
It revealed the relative paucity of accounting professors. A total of 926 accounting
academics, there were 92 professors (10 per cent), many of whomwould have signi?cant
governance responsibilities as heads of schools or academic programmes. While the
?gure of 10 per cent does not seemunreasonable, it should be noted that professors were
not spread evenly across universities. Several universities, including ours, had no
resident full-time accounting professor at all, while others were well staffed with
professors. The prevalence of accounting professors seemed to depend on the strategic
vision and resource capabilities of universities, with Australia’s premier universities
better endowed, and able to set a high standard for professorial appointments, while
regional universities struggled to attract well quali?ed professors. Figure 1 shows that
41 per cent of Australian accounting professors were attached to the prestigious
“Group of 8” universities, with 31 other Australian universities sharing the remaining
59 per cent.
Consistent with reported evidence, all three accounting professors interviewed
identi?ed a current shortage of professors in Australian and overseas accounting
schools. It was acknowledged that within any business-oriented discipline, there was
always competition with industry for personnel:
[. . .] salaries are fairly low in the public sector, and a lot of people are already in debt by the
time they ?nish a ?rst degree, by the time they’ve done a Masters, professional accountancy
exams, it doesn’t make sense for them to enter at a low salary in the academy. So the crisis is
perpetuated by broader policies as well.
The rewards in the private sector are attractive but universities must share the blame
with poor management and retention strategies combined with increasing workloads
(Lane, 2008). In addition, a shortage of professors gave well-endowed universities a
competitive edge since they could afford to pay higher salaries.
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That there was a dearth of academic mentoring was acknowledged, with one
accounting professor stating:
[. . .] it seems that there is really a shortage of mentors and perhaps a lot of good people are
retiring.
There was agreement between all accounting professors about the leadership role a
professor should play, which included the mentoring of junior academics. In this role,
an accounting professor, it was suggested, should “profess” something:
[. . .] in other words, have a commitment to a particular philosophy [. . .] which she or he then
encourages the people who work with her or him to work collaboratively towards [. . .] I think
a professor should, as a senior member of a department or a school [. . .] encourage people to
develop their own philosophies and their own [. . .] interests which would gear their research,
improve their teaching, and just generally help them to be more ful?lled, satis?ed and
effective academics.
According to one of the accounting professors interviewed, this ideal of research
leadershipandmentoringwas not the experience of manyjunior academic staff. The lack
of accounting professors was by no means the only reason. It was believed that many
factors prevented some accounting professors from ful?lling this role. One that this
professor identi?ed, with sadness, was what was perceived to be the inadequate quality
of some scholarship, which had little “breadth of vision” or “intellectual inquiry”,
rendering some senior academics incapable of ful?lling the ideal of “true academics and
true academic leaders”. This attitude, the interviewee suggested, percolated “right down
to the junior colleagues”, and “right down to the students that are involved”. In addition,
the increased emphasis in Australian accounting schools on entrepreneurial and
grant-winning activities meant that accounting professors bore heavy workloads.
These institutional emphases, according to a professor from another discipline,
reinforce current reward systems, so that academic careers are based on “developing
your personal CV, so there’s nothing in it for them[professors]” in relation to mentoring.
Key performance indicators, it was suggested “do not say ‘help young people’”, but
rather say “earn lots of grant money, publish lots”. Consequently, this professor
believed, “many people even refuse to supervise [research] students, because they think
it’s too much burden”. That professor went on to suggest that:
[. . .] it’s damaging to any school not to have senior people [. . .] but also having senior people
doesn’t guarantee they’re going to work with you, right, so there’s many problems in
academia just having physically a professor in your unit doesn’t mean they’re going to be
valuable. But of course, in the optimal case, you’d want to have the senior person that shares
their experience with junior people.
Our motivation for organising the mentoring scheme arose from the lack of an
accounting professor in our school, and emanated from a resolution at a school meeting
that some form of mentoring scheme be developed. With just one retired Emeritus
Professor and one Associate Professor, who was also the Head of School, the possibilities
for meaningful mentoring within the school were severely limited. A consequence
was that certain leadership responsibilities, including the responsibility for nurturing
junior academic staff, fell to staff who had not yet been able to establish their own
academic credentials, thus limiting their potential for advancement. This shortage was
re?ected in the observations of two of the mentees:
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I’ve worked considerably with (X). I’d also worked a little bit with (Y) but I don’t think apart
from that I didn’t really have any access to any other senior academic.
This, our School doesn’t have a lot of senior staff.
[. . .] we don’t have many senior staff. This is our problem [. . .].
Consistent with the views of the accounting professors, the mentees recognised that
senior staff were busy and over-loaded, and therefore, they were reluctant to approach
them for mentoring assistance. At the same time, they recognised that they shared
some of the responsibility for seeking out help:
[. . .] we should take more advantage of the senior staff and, you know, I could be just lazy and
say, you know, I just don’t want anyone to see my work.
An accounting professor observed that sometimes junior academics were reluctant to
seek out or “pester” professors or other senior academics, since they were the ones who
had “the power in terms of hiring, ?ring, promotions, loadings, all those sorts of
things”.
Given the shortage of accounting professors and the mentoring opportunities that
are being lost, there are severe implications for the development of junior academics as
they attempt to master academic research skills and build a portfolio of publications.
One of our organising group identi?ed assistance with this aspect of research as
essential for junior staff:
[. . .] the publication of journal articles is a step in career and also the academic life which is
separate from the PhD process and I can see the need for a separate program or relationship
network to develop “professional skills”.
The following section outlines the school’s response to the drought of the mentoring we
believe is so essential to the academic life.
5. A green tinge
The mentoring scheme initiated in the school developed from a nascent idea[10]
suggested at a research planning day and coincided with a faculty funding opportunity
to invite a visiting academic. The necessity for academics to conduct research with
tangible outcomes was an explicit requirement of workload models and an implicit
expectation for career development. The original idea for the scheme was based on a
traditional form of mentoring where the mentor, as a more experienced, possibly
senior person, supports and guides a less experienced or junior person (McGuire and
Reger, 2003).
From the outset, the scheme had very clearly de?ned objectives and a prescriptive
approach, partly due to the grant funding requirements. An accounting professor with a
prestigious international reputation was invited to mentor a small group of ?ve junior
accounting researchers. The objective was for each mentee to achieve a Department of
Education Science and Training (DEST)[11] recognised publication submission.
In addition, the mentor presented seminars to the academic community at the school,
faculty and university and modelled mentoring for school staff.
As summarised in Appendix 1, the process began with an invitation
to junior accounting staff on continuing or ?xed contracts to submit a complete
scholarly paper to us, as organisers. We evaluated the submissions and provided initial
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feedback to the mentees, who were also encouraged to submit their papers to an
academic accounting conference in order to obtain some additional feedback. The
selected papers were then sent to the mentor, who provided comments to the mentees
and suggestions for improvements in preparation for his visit to the school. The
mentees were required to make a commitment to be available over a two week period
for individual and group meetings with the mentor during his visit later in the year.
After the mentor’s visit, the mentees had a three month period to incorporate
comments and submit their papers to journals they had targeted on the mentor’s advice.
An unexpected bonus was the opportunity for us to take the mentees to a dedicated
research facility for three days, in order to provide a space for them to work,
uninterrupted, ontheir papers, andwhere we were available to provide assistance. Given
the family commitments of some of the mentees, this was an extremely valuable few
days, described by one of themas “my period of regeneration”. The mentor committed to
providing further assistance with reviewers’ comments.
All participants involved in the scheme had expectations of working toward
publication of a scholarly paper. The mentees were all current PhD students or
post-doctoral researchers struggling with the different demands of writing a journal
article as opposed to a thesis. The actual process of working with the mentor was
important for the mentees as it assisted them to gain valuable experience and guidance
on how to publish in addition to the exposure to a different perspective from a
well-established international researcher:
[. . .] [it was] a good opportunity to have access to somebody who [. . .] was well published and
could perhaps provide me with some ideas and some guidance about developing the paper.
The discipline of committing to a timeframe and a prescribed process of deadlines was
motivating, especially in an academic environment where teaching loads and student
numbers were signi?cant. In terms of career development, the mentees were able to
acknowledge the role research plays in terms of promotion and career progression.
However, for some mentees, research was seen primarily as an employment-related
expectation rather than an academic lifestyle.
The mentor, on the other hand, was focussed on giving back to the academy and
building the next generation or new crop of academics to develop a community of
scholarly intent. His self de?ned role as a kind of “intellectual conversation” maker
playing a part in assisting emerging scholars to “make their mark” was a dominant
theme. The mentoring process was thus extended beyond a publication to the
preparation and building of future scholars. However, the thought of working with a
senior academic created a level of anxiety for some staff, mixed with the excitement and
awe of working with a mentor who was so highly regarded.
The mentees adhered to the guidelines of the scheme and displayed a high level of
commitment to the process. As a tangible and expected outcome of the scheme, three
mentees presented their papers at an international conference, and one presented at an
Australian conference. In addition, three mentees submitted their papers to a journal by
the mentoring scheme deadline, one continued to re?ne the paper, and the ?fth mentee,
whose paper was not publishable by the end of the mentoring scheme, later worked with
two of us on a new project and eventually submitted it to a journal. To date, there have
been four submissions to journals as a result of the mentoring scheme. Three of these
have been either published or accepted for publication, and one is still waiting for
feedback from reviewers.
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Apart from the expected outcomes of the scheme, other intangible bene?ts were
identi?ed. One mentee was invited by the mentor to work on a collaborative project, and
all mentees were introduced to a professor with a high international reputation,
affording them networking opportunities. These opportunities became evident when
three of the mentees attended an international conference also attended by the mentor,
shortly after his visit to the school. The opportunity for an introduction to accounting
academics from other institutions was a welcome con?dence-builder for the junior
researchers.
Within the school and university community, the mentees and we as organisers were
pleasantly surprised to discover each other’s research interests and to be exposed to
different ideas for research and also for teaching. It was a privilege to work with such
dedicated and hard-working colleagues, and we were aware that the scheme had
facilitated a relationship between ourselves and the mentees that had not previously
existed:
[. . .] and now I don’t think they feel scared to come to us and say “could you read my paper”
and it never occurred to me that they would never do that [. . .].
The mentoring scheme not only provided opportunities for the mentees but also for us
as organisers. The Faculty Grant was instrumental in moving the scheme from an idea
to a reality, and an added bonus was that being a competitive process, we gained
valuable experience in grant writing. The application process also forced us to identify
and resolve issues and potential dif?culties in advance. The bene?ts of the mentoring
scheme included increased con?dence, networking, skill building and the exposure to
and challenge of new ideas:
The grant process was a joy. I loved the meetings because I learnt so much about process,
getting things done, being bold to step out, make decisions and stick with them, wrestle
obstacles out of the way instead of being paralysed by them.
The mentoring scheme created a space in which we could think about ourselves, the
mentor, mentees and the school as a community of scholars, a place where relationships
and networks were strengthened. For the mentor it provided an opportunity to
contribute to the academic community and to reinforce an existing relationship with our
school. The mentor described himself as somebody who, “if someone is willing to run
and explore some ideas”, was “happy to run with them”.
On re?ection, we identi?ed areas for improvements in the mentoring scheme. One of
these was the idea of instigating a structured reading program in theoretical aspects of
accounting research. This would offer the potential for deeper cross disciplinary
theoretical insights and understandings, with potential linkage to higher level theory
and social systems. Exposing the mentees to ideas from other branches of the social
sciences has the potential to enrich their accounting research. The mentor observed
that:
[. . .] a lot of accounting writings tend to borrow from other branches of social sciences. And,
so in some ways, though it is useful to look at accounting journals to see how somebody has
deployed or modi?ed some particular ideas, but I think it is useful to go back and read the
originals. I don’t know how many people have gone back and read the original chapters,
maybe, from Marx, or from Adam Smith, or Foucault, or whatever. You know, these things
could be helpful.
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A mentee expressed appreciation of this approach:
[. . .] it also opened my eyes as well because when I chat with him [the mentor] I get a new
idea, it is a new way of seeing things. There are so many ways of doing a piece of research
and the same material you can see it in a different angles and different ways.
The application of these readings to speci?c accounting research issues would entail
further synthesis of concepts and theories. This would reinforce the need for the
guidance of a mentor:
[. . .] theories have to be crafted, whether it’s, you know, Foucault or Marx or somebody else
has written something. But we can’t just exactly pick it out and plonk it in our writings.
We’ve got to play around with it, knock it about, modify it.
Generally, apart from an initial group meeting with the mentees, we had organised for
the mentor to meet with them individually during his visit. However, he suggested that
the mentoring scheme would be enhanced by having more group sessions in order to
create a social dynamic:
[. . .] let’s read a paper, and in 2-3 [days] we meet, or read a journal article, and then between
us, even if somebody’s not fully read it, or somebody’s only partially been through the article,
between us we can manage to get more out of it.
I would have liked to spend a bit more time, and perhaps if some of the activities could have
been a little more structured [. . .] that was dif?cult in some ways, because the mentees were at
different stages as well.
Given the diversity of personalities, life experience, cultural backgrounds and status of
the mentor and mentees, the mentoring scheme worked remarkably well, not only
academically but on a personal level for the majority of the participants. The responses
and levels of participation of the individual mentees gave us fresh insights into
mentoring dynamics and our own participation. The process challenged us to refocus
our preconceptions of mentoring and opened up new possibilities of what mentoring is
and can be for sustainable academic endeavour.
Initially, our perceptions of mentoring were based on the traditional model, where a
mentor and mentee “found” each other and embarked on a long-term relationship that
produced mutual bene?ts, particularly for the mentee. This mentoring relationship is
shown in Figure 2 as the “traditional (dyadic) mentoring model”.
The mentoring scheme was devised as a means of providing a short-term mentoring
relationship, geared towards a speci?c academic output, the submission of an article to a
peer-reviewed journal. As organisers, we intended to broker this traditional relationship
between the mentor and the mentees, providing a conduit through which resources and
expertise could ?ow, and providing the opportunity for mentor and mentees to develop
their own relationships. While this was not planned to be an ongoing process, it was
nevertheless consistent with Kram (1985) identi?cation of organisational agents and
their role in providing mentoring opportunities for employees. As highlighted earlier in
the paper, one of the mentees was able to establish an ongoing relationship with the
mentor. This mentoring model is shown in Figure 2 as a “team (triadic) mentoring
model”.
As the mentoring scheme progressed, the dynamics changed from what we had
originally conceived, to the model shown in Figure 2 as the “collegial (networking)
The challenge
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mentoring model”. We, as organisers, played a much greater role in the outworking of
the mentoring scheme, becoming peer mentors, for a number of reasons:
.
Because we were already colleagues with existing relationships with all the
mentees, we were the natural point of contact.
.
As a group of three organisers, we effectively mentored each other as we
developed the scheme.
.
We were mentored ourselves by the mentor, informally. He took a great interest
in the scheme and in our contributions, and we re-established and strengthened
our relationship with him as we liaised and participated in some of the research
activities during his visit.
.
After the mentor left, we continued to work with the mentees on their papers,
as discussed above, by taking them away to a writing retreat.
.
As mentioned earlier, two of our group worked with one of the mentees on
another research project after the scheme had concluded.
The ongoing bene?ts of this “collegial” model of mentoring are still being experienced.
For example, one of the original mentees joined the organising group in the second
iteration of the mentoring scheme, and two of the original mentees have now formed a
research partnership. In addition, we have an ongoing relationship with the mentor
which has proved to be an encouragement in our own academic endeavours, and a way
of widening the population of colleagues who ultimately bene?ts from the scheme.
This mentoring scheme operated in the Australian university environment,
one which poses challenges for the future of academic endeavour. It provided “greening”
to the academic landscape at our university, but we came to the realisation that,
ironically, it was a “green drought” (Cowan, 2007).
6. A green drought
The instigation of a government inquiry into the Australian academic workforce
(Commonwealth of Australia, 2008) and the AACSB’s (2003) report both reinforced the
Figure 2.
Mentoring models
Mentor
Mentee
Traditional
(dyadic)
mentoring
model
Collegial
(networking)
mentoring
model
Mentor
Mentees
Mentoring
scheme
organisers
Mentees
Mentor
Mentoring
scheme
organisers
Team (triadic)
mentoring
model
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shortage of research trained staff who were able to ful?l the role of research leadership in
business schools. This systemic problem in academe can be addressed with solutions
such as mentoring schemes and adjunct professorships or new strategies for
employment and retention (Mather and Lebihan, 2008). However, some of these
solutions are short term, and may not provide universities with the sustainable research
scholarship that is enhanced through long-term mentoring relationships. While the
scheme referred to in this paper was judged to be successful, and it was conducted again
the following year, ongoing general research mentoring is also required, rather than just
speci?c publication-focused mentoring.
This challenge is expected to increase in the years ahead, and to become a “critical
issue”, according to one accounting professor interviewed. He highlighted the potential
impact of the retirement of current accounting professors over the next ?ve to ten
years, and observed that this would cause a “major problem”:
[. . .] a lot of the people who are in that next level are still looking for mentoring and leadership
[. . .] and they’ll be thrust into the leadership, but they won’t have the skills to then mentor
people below them.
The mentoring scheme was viewed very positively by one professor:
[. . .] [the mentoring scheme] was a very proactive way of ?lling a gap in your School, where
you don’t have any senior people, so I was very impressed. And what I particularly liked is
that you had structure in place that we could reproduce, so really it wasn’t speci?c to
accounting. Your idea was essentially reproducible in any other school [. . .].
“Green drought” solutions, while effective in the short term, limit the ability of
individual academics to transfer knowledge from the environment to the organisation’s
structure, since ultimately decisions about professorial appointments and research
expectations are institutionally determined. This is a sentiment reinforced by the
AACSB’s (2003, p. 26) recommendation that the dearth of research trained staff is “not
amenable to quick ?x strategies”.
The “greening” that occurred as a result of the mentoring scheme is by no means a
panacea for the ongoing drought of accounting professors. The shortage of academic
staff, mentioned earlier, together with the dominance of the resource-rich group of eight
universities, makes recruitment and retention of accounting professors an ongoing
challenge for smaller universities. An accounting professor identi?ed the mentoring
scheme as “obviously a step in the right direction”, but pointed out a danger:
The only danger I see, if I may be presumptious to say, is that if you get one person coming in,
you get that person’s perspective, and then that person goes away again and what happens?
So it’s different from developing from within and [. . .] encouraging the school to develop.
You’ve got someone who’s come in with experience in publishing and research lends their
expertise and is very helpful and supportive. They may direct the mentees down directions
which once that person’s gone, the mentees feel at a bit of a loss about how to proceed.
The mentoring scheme also exposed some challenges about what is involved in being an
accounting researcher, and has stimulated some further insights about the development
of a collegial mentoring culture, which by no means replaces the need for professors
with a mentoring “heart”. As was so aptly pointed out in the interviews we conducted,
institutions may have a plethora of senior staff, who for one reason or another,
are unable to provide the type of mentoring leadership required to foster a community
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of research scholars. One accounting professor identi?ed the important role of
professors in mentoring, and observed that there were “de?nitely not enough professors,
given the amount of staff we now have”. He observed further, that:
[. . .] what I think has been one of the dilemmas in Australia and probably overseas as well,
although I don’t have that experience, but in Australia I would say most of the universities’
professors, through a variety of reasons, have not had the time to undertake those tasks. I
think a lot of their time has been taken up with managing minutae of funding and teaching
allocations and all sorts of tasks in a very very dif?cult environment.
The result of this, in his opinion, was that “there are a few institutions where the
professors still do the role I think they are supposed to do, but I think they are fewand far
between”. Thus, while it is acknowledged that in Australian accounting schools there is
a shortage of professors, the problem is not just in the number of these staff, but in the
extent to which they are able to provide academic leadership.
7. Conclusions
As a contextualised qualitative research study, this paper exposes the dearth of
accounting professors, not only in Australia, but globally. It relates the story of a
unique mentoring scheme developed within one accounting school in response to this
shortage. It also challenges the ability of Australian accounting schools to provide the
academic nurturing required by junior academic staff in order to achieve research
sustainability.
This mentoring scheme departed from the traditional mentoring model of a
mentor/mentee dyadic relationship, to introduce a triadic approach, with our organising
team brokering, in a discrete way, the relationships between the mentor and a group of
mentees. This then developed into a collegial mentoring relationship, characterised by
overlaps and ?uidity. This is suggested as a desirable way in which to nurture junior
academic staff and create a mentoring culture, where multiple mentors can be of bene?t
in various ways to a number of colleagues. This in no way negates the need for an
experienced academic mentor, but rather extends the traditional mentoring model.
The paper makes three contributions. First, it responds to the assertion that metaphor
is under-appreciated and under-used in qualitative research (Llewellyn, 2003). Second, it
explores the notion of mentoring, expanding traditional perceptions of what is valuable
in nurturing junior academics by suggesting a range of helpful mentoring models.
Third, by exposing the drought of professors in Australian accounting schools, it invites
debate about the impact of the current situation in accounting academe. Accounting
schools will need to ?nd new and creative ways of mentoring early career and junior
academic staff, while at the same time recognising the need for the longer-term
sustainability of academic endeavour.
As a study of one mentoring scheme, in one university, there is no claim to
generalisability. This paper makes no attempt to extend the “green drought” metaphor
to the other levels of theorising proposed by Llewellyn (2003), but this could be done.
Issues of power, gender, policy, new public management, university funding
and staf?ng issues could be explored to differentiate or “cut up” experience, concepts
could be employed to “explicate practices”, and settings could be theorised to explain
“relationships between social phenomena in context”, employing Llewellyn (2003)
second, third and fourth levels of theorising. As to Llewellyn (2003) level ?ve “grand”
theory, the ongoing tide of globalisation, issues of power or politics or the entrenched
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impact of neo-liberalism could be employed to interpret the current state of accounting
academe. This paper, however, does not deal directly with such issues, instead
demonstrating the power of the “green drought” metaphor to create “new and unique
meaning, insights, similarity, relations (and) [. . .] perspectives in which the evoked
systems of associated implications play a central role” (Walters-York, 1996, p. 53).
The use of the “green drought” metaphor acknowledges current realities, re?ects on
the institutional environment in which Australian universities operate, and provides
powerful insights into the current shortage of accounting professors. In a drought
situation, a shower of rain can “green” the environment, giving the illusion that the crisis
is over. The danger is that this illusion will suspend action that would address the core of
the issue.
Notes
1. The shortage of accountants in Australia is well documented, and evidenced by
the Australian Government’s attempt to increase the number of immigrant accountants
(Birrell, 2006). This undoubtedly has an effect, over time, on the ability of accounting schools
to recruit suitably quali?ed academics.
2. Australia’s premier universities include the well established “sandstone” universities of
Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Tasmania, Queensland and Western Australia. Another
classi?cation of the most prestigious Australian universities is the “Group of 8”, which
includes these six sandstone universities and also the University of New South Wales and
Monash University (Group of Eight Australia, 2009).
3. Our university was well ranked. In 2007, it was for the second time listed in The Times
Higher Education Supplement Top 200 World University Rankings. It was at the time one of
only two universities nationwide to achieve top-tier rankings in every discipline category of
the Australian Government’s Learning and Teaching Performance Fund for 2008; it received
?ve stars in six key areas of the 2008 Good Universities Guide (University of Wollongong,
2009).
4. The school was one of three in the faculty, and at the time of the mentoring scheme, consisted
of 31 academic staff. With no professor, and one associate professor, the rest of the staff were
senior lecturers, lecturers and associate lecturers. While an excellent research reputation had
been established over many years, nevertheless at the time, in-house mentoring resources
were very limited.
5. The Howard Government’s Research Quality Framework plans have been replaced by the
Rudd Government’s Excellence in Research for Australia exercise (Excellence in Research
for Australia, 2009).
6. These three professors were chosen for their knowledge of the wider academic environment
in which our school operated. One was a professor who exercised authority at faculty level,
one was the professor at an accounting school in a prestigious Australian university, and one
was a recently retired accounting professor.
7. While there are undoubtedly some well published accounting academics who do not have
PhDs, the emphasis now is that a PhD is essential to an academic career. An AACSB report
con?rmed the current shortage of PhD-quali?ed business-school academics in both the US
and internationally, and predicted a shortage of more than 3,000 within 5 years and nearly
6,000 in ten years (AACSB, 2003, p. 14).
8. McGuire and Reger (2003) acknowledged that a shortage of mentors in some institutions is
damaging for traditional mentors.
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9. Data were current at 31 August 2007, the time at which interviews were conducted. In some
cases, “adjunct” professors were listed. These are not included in the ?gures. These ?gures
are intended only to give a general impression, due to staf?ng changes and movements, and
ambiguity about the role of some listed academics.
10. The idea of an invited mentor to assist in a publication process was not new. In the 1980s,
following the restructure of the tertiary sector in Australia, one of the “new” universities,
faced with the requirement to boost staff research activity, had employed a senior accounting
academic to conduct a successful research publication mentoring programme.
11. DEST was a federal government department responsible for publication metrics in the
higher education sector in Australia at the time of the mentoring scheme.
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Appendix 1. Mentoring scheme outline
(1) Submissions were invited in October 2007 from early career researchers who were on the
staff of the School. Applicants were required to meet eligibility and submission
requirements:
.
Eligibility requirements. applicants must be Lecturers levels A or B; applicants may
be full time or part time continuing staff of the School or on a ?xed term contract.
.
Submission requirement. an accounting paper on which the applicant is a single
author or the lead author. The paper must be capable of being developed for
submission to a conference or journal.
(2) Applicants were required to commit to the following actions:
.
to submit a completed paper to the organisers by 1 March 2007;
.
on acceptance into the scheme, to send their paper to the mentor by April 2007;
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to be available for consultation with the mentor, by arrangement, during his visit
between Wednesday 20 June and Tuesday 3 July 2007;
.
to be willing to work on the paper during this two week period; and
.
to submit the completed, revised paper to a journal by 31 October 2007, under the
advice of the mentor.
(3) Selection of applicants was to take place in April 2007. Applications were assessed by a
panel comprising the three mentoring scheme organisers, in consultation with the
mentor. A standardised evaluation form was used.
(4) Applicants were encouraged to submit their paper to one of two designated accounting
research conferences, to be held in July 2007, Accounting and Finance Association of
Australia and New Zealand Conference and the Asia Paci?c Interdisciplinary Research
in Accounting Conference.
(5) The mentor was to undertake the following during his two week visit to the School in
July 2007:
.
the mentoring of selected staff by assisting with the focus of their papers, targeting
appropriate journals and providing editorial advice;
.
the delivery of a seminar to the Faculty and University community; and
.
the delivery of a seminar to Faculty postgraduate students.
(6) Following his visit to the school, the mentor was to continue to follow up mentees by
assisting with journal reviewers’ comments.
Appendix 2. Sample interview questions
Questions for mentees
(1) What was your understanding of academic mentoring before the scheme?
(2) Was there any anxiety for you? In what way?
(3) What were your expectations of the mentoring scheme?
(4) Why did you apply to the scheme?
(5) Does the scheme aid your career development? How?
(6) Do you have any suggestions for the organisers about what to do differently next time?
(7) If you participated in such a scheme again, what would you do differently?
(8) Did this scheme create an additional workload for you?
(9) If it did, do you regard this as reasonable? Why or why not?
(10) Do you feel you were able to take full advantage of the opportunities of the scheme and
why or why not?
(11) In your opinion to what degree does such a mentoring scheme compensate for having no
accounting professor on staff?
(12) Did you enjoy the process?
(13) What do you think the impacts of the scheme are for you in both the short term and the
long term?
(14) Are your expectations being met? If so, how? If not, why not?
(15) Has the scheme helped you be a better researcher? If so, how?
(16) Did the scheme offer you anything that you could not otherwise obtain?
(17) What was disappointing about it?
(18) What was surprising about it?
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(19) Do you have any a clear idea now of where your paper is going and what it will take for
you to complete it for submission to a journal?
(20) Do you have any other comments and/or suggestions?
Questions for the mentor
(1) What appealed to you about being involved in the mentoring scheme?
(2) Were the goals and anticipated outcomes of the scheme communicated clearly to you?
(3) What is your opinion on the organisation of the program?
(4) Were you needs satisfactorily met during your visit with respect to resources,
accommodation, travel, etc.? In what ways can this be improved?
(5) What were your motivations in accepting the position of mentor?
(6) What do you think were your strongest qualities you had to contribute to the scheme?
(7) What were your expectations of the scheme?
(8) Did the scheme meet your expectations?
(9) Were you able to establish a connection with all mentees? If so, how, and if not, why not?
(10) Setting this scheme in its context, what do you think was the main reason for the
scheme?
(11) Can you identify the weaker qualities of the research environment in the school, as you
observed through working with the mentees?
(12) Can you identify the stronger qualities of the research environment in the school, as you
observed through working with the mentees?
(13) Do you think a similar scheme is worth pursuing for junior PhD supervisors?
(14) How widely applicable do you think this scheme is to other universities, both in
Australia and world-wide?
(15) The scheme was initially envisaged to achieve quality journal publications. Now, in your
view is this a realistic goal for all mentees?
(16) What are your re?ections on the scheme:
.
organisationally;
.
academically;
.
strategically; and
.
personally.
(17) Do you have any other comments and/or suggestions?
Re?ections from organisers
(1) What was the purpose of the scheme? Why was it thought necessary?
(2) What were your expectations of the scheme?
(3) What would you do differently next time?
.
organisationally;
.
?nancially;
.
in choosing an academic mentor; and
.
in choosing mentees.
(4) What have you got out of the scheme? Personally? Career wise?
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(5) What have been the negatives for you?
(6) Do you have any reservations about conducting such a scheme again?
Appendix 3. Data
Data consisted of the following:
(1) Archival data from internet sources – documented current staf?ng pro?les from all
Australian university business schools with a dedicated accounting undergraduate
degree program at the time of the scheme. Where the staff member’s accounting
af?liation could not be indenti?ed accurately they were not counted in the statistics.
(2) Interviews were conducted by at least two of the organisers using a set of open ended
interview questions tailored to the interviewee (Appendix 2). The interviews were
recorded and later transcribed. Care was taken so that the interviewer was not the
interviewee’s supervisor in work or research.
(3) Re?ective summaries from the organisers.
(4) Scheme documents as detailed below.
Application for a faculty grant
The Faculty of Commerce provided a portfolio of annual, internally competitive funding for
research related projects. Our publication mentoring scheme was funded within the parameters
of a Conference Convening/Visitor Invitation grant. It provided suf?cient funds to cover airfare,
accommodation and living expenses. The mentor was very generous with time both on and off
site for the duration of the scheme. The selection and characteristics of the mentor and the
mentoring relationship included the following:
.
The mentor was identi?ed by the organisers. The mentor had already developed a
relationship with the school through former visitors and was well regarded by the
academics as a person with a “mentoring heart”.
.
The mentor’s research pro?le dovetailed with the school’s research focus, especially
interdisciplinary methodologies. The mentor was an editor for several international
accounting journals.
.
The mentor was able to provide sustained mentoring without the distraction of our
institutional commitments.
.
The mentor was located in the northern hemisphere and the visit coincided with the
summer break for the mentor’s university.
Meeting minutes
Following negotiations with the mentor and securing funds the organisers spent 12 months prior
to the arrival of the mentor organising selection of mentees and preparing for the visit.
The organisers met fortnightly and detailed minutes were recorded and circulated.
Research mentoring application form
The application process involved the submission of details of both the prospective mentee and
his/her paper. The organisers had observed that many Level A and B staff were able successfully
to complete a scholarly paper for a conference but were unable to continue and progress to
submission to a journal. The organisers were interested in whether the paper was complete and
whether it was already in the process of refereeing for a conference or journal. The organisers
also asked the potential mentees to articulate their reasons for participating in the scheme. The
mentor was able to advise the mentees on journals to target, theory and methodology to explore
and how to re?ne the focus of their research for a speci?c purpose.
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Appendix 4. Data analysis
(1) Summary data about staf?ng in Australian accounting business schools is represented
in graphs.
(2) NVivo analysis. The green drought metaphor formed the basis for theorising the scheme
as a response to the dearth of accounting academics in Australia. Three primary
categories based on the paper’s purpose, with sub-categories based on the metaphor,
were used to code the interview and re?ective summary data as detailed below.
Expose
(1) Drought. Dearth of accounting academic staff. Potential reasons/explanations for the
lack of senior accounting staff.
(2) Lack of sustainability. Problems arising in terms of research and mentoring.
Relate
(1) Shower of rain. The meaning and de?nition of mentoring. The publication mentor
scheme as a short term solution.
(2) Greening. Expectations, experience and outcomes of the scheme.
Challenge
(1) Drought not over. Limitations of scheme. Short term yield.
(2) Sustainability. Individual and organisational responses to the shortage of staff. Longer
term challenges.
About the authors
Helen Irvine is an Associate Professor in Accounting in the School of Accountancy at the
Queensland University of Technology. Helen Irvine is the corresponding author and can be
contacted at: [email protected]
Lee Moerman is a Lecturer in the School of Accounting and Finance at the University of
Wollongong.
Kathy Rudkin is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Accounting and Finance at the University
of Wollongong.
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