Description
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether accounting researchers in Australia more
proactively pursued government-sponsored Australian Research Council (ARC) research funding in
the post-Enron period than researchers in other commerce-related disciplines.
Accounting Research Journal
Winning ARC grants: comparing accounting with other commerce-related disciplines
Kevin Clarke J ack Flanagan Sharron O'Neill
Article information:
To cite this document:
Kevin Clarke J ack Flanagan Sharron O'Neill, (2011),"Winning ARC grants: comparing accounting with other
commerce-related disciplines", Accounting Research J ournal, Vol. 24 Iss 3 pp. 213 - 244
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Winning ARC grants: comparing
accounting with other
commerce-related disciplines
Kevin Clarke
Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales,
Sydney, Australia
Jack Flanagan
Centre for Accounting and Assurance Research, Australian School of Business,
University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, and
Sharron O’Neill
International Governance and Performance Research Centre,
School of Accounting and Corporate Governance, Macquarie University,
Sydney, Australia
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine whether accounting researchers in Australia more
proactively pursued government-sponsored Australian Research Council (ARC) research funding in
the post-Enron period than researchers in other commerce-related disciplines.
Design/methodology/approach – The study measures disciplinary research activity using
successful Australian Research Council Linkage and Discovery grants for the period 2000 to 2008.
The study identi?es the number of grants received, the total dollar amount funded, the number of
participating institutions, individual researchers and (where applicable) partnering organisations.
Using these criteria, the study compares the success of accounting with that of banking and ?nance,
economics and business and management.
Findings – The study highlights accounting’s failure to attain comparable levels of research funding
relative to other commerce-related disciplines (both in terms of grants and dollars), even given the
public pro?le of accounting events post-Enron. The study reveals a signi?cantly higher “elite
institution effect” exists in accounting and lower levels of academic and commercial partnerships
when compared to other disciplines. The study examines potential reasons for the lack of ARC funding
won by accounting researchers.
Practical implications – The persistently low level of representation of accounting researchers
among ARC grant winners during this period appears counterintuitive to the traditional “professional
model” that links university-based disciplinary members with practitioners. Why accounting, as a
high-pro?le profession diverges from this model should be of concern to researchers, universities and
the accounting profession.
Originality/value – The study’s use of comparative ARC data extends and contextualises earlier
studies that have sought to examine the state of accounting research in Australia.
Keywords Australia, Accounting research, Grants, Professionalism, Research grants,
Post-Enron period, Australian Research Council, Commonwealth Department of Education,
Employment and Workplace Relations
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 would like to thank the Australian Research Council and the Commonwealth
Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations for their assistance.
Winning
ARC grants
213
Accounting Research Journal
Vol. 24 No. 3, 2011
pp. 213-244
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1030-9616
DOI 10.1108/10309611111186984
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1. Introduction
On the world stage, the ?rst decade of the twenty-?rst century was characterised by a
series of events with signi?cance for the global accounting profession. Following the
collapse of Enron in the USAand the end of the dot-comboomin late 2001 a succession of
contentious accounting-related aftershocks reverberated through the discipline. These
included the rapid disintegration of the international accounting ?rmArthur Anderson,
the subsequent introduction of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the establishment of the
Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. The period concluded with what has
been called the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). These events, both individually and
collectively, focused public attention on a range of accounting practices and the role
accountants play in commercial and ?nancial institutions. While their epicentre was the
USA, their impact was felt throughout the accounting world[1].
The local adoption of international ?nancial reporting standards by the Australian
Accounting Standards Board also had a profound effect on, not only the actual
practices of accounting and auditing, but those administrative bodies and processes
fundamental to their application in this country[2]. The development and subsequent
adoption of a number of recommendations proposed in the Commonwealth
Government’s Corporate Law Economic Reform Program (CLERP), revisions to the
Corporations Act and policy changes introduced by the Australian Securities and
Investments Commission (ASIC) all directly contributed to a rapidly changing and
increasing uncertain accounting environment in Australia.
Within the same timeframe, the collapse of high-pro?le companies, beginning with
HIH Insurance and One.Tel (in 2001) and concluding with ABC Learning (in 2008) and
Babcock and Brown (in 2009) ensured that Australian accounting could not be
quarantined from continued public scrutiny.
Throughout the decade questions and criticisms have been voiced that once again
focus on the discipline’s responsiveness to both corporate failure and the ongoing need
to develop broadly accepted accounting and auditing practices. For example, the
?nancial crisis that hit the global banking system in 2007 re-exposed a raft of perennial
accounting problems that had been earlier identi?ed and widely-associated with the
collapse of Enron in December 2001 (Unerman and O’Dwyer, 2010)[3]. These matters
demanded investigation, but are said to have received little before the ?nancial crisis
hit the USA and Europe in 2008 (Arnold, 2009, p. 803).
Accounting, as a discipline, has highly-visible representative organisations and
commercial ?rms that consistently promote those attributes associated with
professional recognition (Greenwood, 1957; Lee, 1995). The abundance of references
in sociological and professionalism literature to the “profession” of accountancy[4]
within the Australian context con?rms the broad social acceptance of the occupational
status attributed to the local accounting discipline[5].
Notably, since 2000, claims to expertise and professionalismin relation to accountancy
have been consistently and aggressively promoted by both CPA Australia (we mean
business) and The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia (ICAA) (number 1 in
numbers) through extensive brand-management campaigns. The respective
annual reports of both professional bodies re?ect increasing marketing and
promotional expenditures during this period[6]. While this expenditure is indicative of
intra-professional competition, it is competition based on the assertion that the specialised
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accounting knowledge possessed by their respective members is both current and critical
to contemporary commercial activity.
Professionalism literature indicates that the media campaigns promoted by each of
accounting’s representative bodies were to be expected, as the legitimacy of the
discipline’s status within the Australian occupational hierarchy, is contingent upon
the (actual or socially perceived) capacity of its contemporary knowledge set to provide
understanding of and explanations about commercial uncertainty to those outside the
profession (Rueschemeyer, 1983).
Whilst discussion and subsequent criticism of speci?c accounting and auditing
practices can be directed at the discipline, it would churlish to lay the blame solely on
accountants as accounting outcomes are often the manifestation of actions (and
interactions) within the broader business community. For example, management groups
(with share-based remuneration); bankers and advisers in ?nancial markets (on the use
of derivative-based products); economists with government organisations and banks
(keeping interest rates low, lending on little or no security); regulators who seemed to see
corporate failures, such as HIH, only after they had occurred (Grabosky and Braithwaite,
1987; Whitmont, 2001) and ?nancial journalists who failed to report irregularities in
companies that later failed (Kitchener, 2002) have all contributed to or been affected by
the commercial events of the past decade. Globally, Enron, Sarbanes-Oxley, the GFCand
locally, One.Tel, CLERP and ABC Learning all obviously involved more than simply
accounting issues (Bargeron et al., 2007; Leuz and Wysocki, 2008).
Studies examining the responses of other commercial disciplines to the events of the
last decade (McSweeney, 2009; Elliott, 2009) indicate that while individuals and
academic groups have provided signi?cant commentary and insight on, what is
referred to here, as the post-Enron events, those organisations which represent other
commerce-related disciplines such as economics, ?nance, banking and management
appear not to have responded with the same aggressive, systemic, publicly-visible,
self-proclamations of knowledge and expertise as the accounting profession did[7].
Developing a profession’s knowledge set requires a commitment to research
so as to substantiate claims made for specialised knowledge. The responses made
by the accounting profession to the events of the last decade (as compared to other
commerce-based disciplines), has motivated this study to question whether in the
post-Enron era, accounting researchers have more vigorously attempted to engage in
research activities than some of the other commerce-related disciplines.
The ?rst place to look for research activity is the publication rate of Australian
researchers in major accounting journals. The level of research published by the
Australian accounting discipline is relatively high when compared to research
published by academic accountants of other nationalities (Chan et al., 2007). Evidence
from the USA, however, indicates that the proportion of accounting research published
in major journals is low relative to publication in other commerce-related disciplines
(Swanson, 2004). There is no equivalent Australian research on the comparative success
of accounting researchers relative to other commerce-related researchers and
comparisons are dif?cult because of the varying numbers of, and standards applied
by, international journals in different disciplines. An alternative approach is to compare
the relative success of Australian accounting researchers in winning competitive
research grants, such as those provided by the Australian Research Council (ARC).
Winning
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ARC grants offered by the Commonwealth government are an important source of
funding for signi?cant research projects within the local university sector.
The Commonwealth Government’s commitment to an ef?cient and effective
allocation of resources to businesses was evident in its adoption of the CLERP
proposals in 2004, which brought the regulation of corporate accounting disclosures
and their audit under greater government control. It could be expected that accounting
researchers try to secure suf?cient research funds to improve understanding of the
ef?ciency and effectiveness of the accounting policies adopted by major companies, the
consequences of CLERP reforms and fallout from several large corporate collapses.
ARC funding is limited and competition for grants is extreme. Researchers in the
commerce-related disciplines of ?nance, economics and management could have also
been expected to use the events leading to the GFC as a driver to seek a larger share of
the ARC funding pool. As a consequence the current study looks at the success of
Australian accounting researchers in winning ARC research grants when compared
with three other commerce-related disciplines.
Given the events in the decade leading up to the GFC and their impact on
accounting, and with an observed trend in leading journals towards the publication of
?nancial accounting research, we investigate four propositions relating to the period
2000-2008:
P1. That the proportion of successful ARC-funded research grants awarded to
accounting researchers would increase, in absolute or comparative terms,
relative to those awarded in the other commerce-related disciplines.
P2. That the proportion of successful ARC-funded research grants awarded to
accounting researchers would accelerate, in absolute or comparative terms.
P3. That there would be an increase in participation in successful ARC-funded
research grants by accounting researchers and the number of universities and
partnering organisations.
P4. That the growth in successful ARC-funded research grants going to
accounting researchers would be primarily due to increased funding for both
?nancial accounting and related auditing topics.
The results of our investigation show no strong support for the ?rst two propositions
with accounting researchers consistently receiving fewer grants and less funding that
the other disciplines investigated. P3 was af?rmed in terms of increased academic
participation only, while P4 was con?rmed with a relative increase in successful
?nancial accounting and auditing research. The overall conclusion reached was that
accounting was a “poor cousin” to the other three commerce-related disciplines in the
period reviewed, generating less than 7 percent of the grants made to all four
disciplines over the period, less than 6 percent of funding allocated, involving fewer
than 7 percent of researchers and 7 percent of participating organisations. We look at
possible causes for the poor performance of accounting researchers in winning ARC
grants and provide some suggestions for future research.
The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. The next section reviews the
literature on accounting research activity to assess the key trends identi?ed. In the main
empirical section that follows, we examine the performance of accounting researchers in
winning ARC grants in comparison with their commerce-related peers.
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Finally, we analyse some of the reasons suggested for accounting researchers’ poor
performance in winning ARC grants and indicate some avenues for future research,
followed by conclusions.
2. The development of disciplinary knowledge and accounting research
activity
Research into occupational strati?cation often relies on the concept of “intellectual
jurisdiction” as a means of distinguishing vocational groups (Larson, 1977; Abbott,
1988; Lee, 1995). The social identi?cation of a profession’s jurisdiction is based on the
group’s control over a de?ned “knowledge set”. As a consequence Halliday (1985,
p. 423) refers to a profession’s knowledge set as its “core generating trait”.
There is ample evidence of the Australian accounting bodies’ concerns with
professional knowledge or core knowledge and its application. On their web sites, CPA
Australia has a “knowledge portal” (CPA Australia, 2010) and ICAA has a “knowledge
centre” (ICAA, 2010b). Both bodies, in their pre-quali?cation educational literature for
professional accountants, stress the “core knowledge” areas to be covered in accredited
university and professional pre-quali?cation examinations (ICAA, 2010a).
The development of disciplinary knowledge requires a signi?cant investment in
research if a professionalised occupation is to identify those issues likely to threaten its
perceived social value and formulate appropriate responses to them. The substantive
nature of such investment has meant professions have sought to form mutually
bene?cial relationships with other interested parties in the facilitation of the research
associated with knowledge development (Larson, 1977; Torstendahl, 1990). Universities
and university-based disciplinary members have historically provided professions with
an effective means by which to facilitate these activities (Collins, 1979).
An extensive body of literature highlights the closeness of the relationship between
professionalised occupational groups, individual academics and universities (Schwarz,
2004). This literature often focuses on the centrality of the latter’s roles in disciplinary
knowledge-creation and its eventual dissemination (Carr-Saunders and Wilson, 1933;
Buckley, 1978; Freidson, 1986).
The accounting discipline has had an increasingly large academic presence in
Australian universities since 1955 when the ?rst accounting chairs were appointed at
Melbourne University and the University of NSW[8] (Goldberg, 1980). Over the last
50 years the professional bodies have attempted to facilitate a strong accounting
presence in all Australian higher educational institutions (for a comprehensive history,
see Juchau, 2005). The approach adopted by the accounting bodies has re?ected the
same mutually bene?cial relationship that is enjoyed by other professions and higher
educational institutions throughout the world (Schwarz, 2004).
Accounting research was de?ned in a recent study as:
[. . .] a literature that draws from and adds to a larger body of work dealing primarily with
businesses and their interactions with society at large, often through capital markets
(Oler et al., 2010, p. 635).
Such a de?nition indicates the broad scope of accounting research and also indicates
that accounting research has importance for society in general and is not just of
academic interest. Oler et al. (2010, p. 644) review the top six accounting journals and
conclude that, in the USA, ?nancial accounting is the dominant topic of research
Winning
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and that this research is informed primarily by ?nance and economics, consistent with
a rise in the use of positive theories employing in the main, archival methods.
Swanson (2004) investigated the comparative publishing success in major journals
of US accounting researchers with researchers in ?nance, management and marketing
and reported that accounting had the lowest proportion of researchers who publish in
the top journals. Some studies have suggested that accounting research is in decline in
the USA because of declining numbers of full-time accounting academics (Foggerty
and Markarian, 2007; Brown et al., 2007), a situation not dissimilar from Australia[9].
Chan et al. (2007) comprehensively analysed the publication of accounting research
in 24 major accounting journals and the level of authorship concentration, over a
15-year period (Heck, 2009[11]). They found that Australian accounting academics and
universities, when compared with their peers elsewhere, appeared to be making a
signi?cant contribution. Australia ranked as the third most productive country in
terms of published accounting research and contributed 8.1 percent, or 633 weighted
articles (Chan et al., 2007, p. 195).
While Chan et al. indicate that the levels of research published by the Australian
discipline is relativelyhighwhencomparedtoresearchpublishedbyacademic accountants
of other nationalities, their study does not compare the output of Australian accounting
researchers with that of other associated disciplines. Studies documenting the output of
Australian researchers in other commerce-related faculties have tended to focus on one
discipline only (Pomfret and Wang, 2003; Heck and Cooley, 2009; Cooley and Heck, 2005).
While studies have attempted to examine aspects of interdisciplinary publication
rates (Swanson, 2004) such comparisons, using a simple (or scaled) numeric
assessment of publications or a quality-based weighting process (Ellison, 2002), do not
re?ect the timeliness of a discipline’s response to contemporaneous issues[10].
For example, studies that have examined the responses by accounting researchers to
the more recent issues emerging from the GFC are highly critical of the applied value of
published studies, suggesting that rather than being proactive, they tend to lag behind
accounting practice (Arnold, 2009, p. 804).
In a review of the research focus of articles included in top-ranking accounting
journals, Unerman and O’Dwyer (2010, pp. 8-12) con?rm that there was no observed
trend in the frequency of any contemporaneous topic over recent times. For example,
fair-value accounting was the focus in only 1 percent of papers published and no
articles were published on the accounting issues raised by new forms of transaction,
such as securitisation of debts, or the use of off-balance sheet (special purpose) entities.
Hopwood (2008, pp. 88-94) explains that published research into accounting has
traditionally focused on a limited set of issues and that the more in?uential journals
appear to accept only particular types of studies. As he poignantly states: “there are very
few mechanisms by which the concerns of practice can permeate the accounting
academic world” and goes on to suggest that the worlds of accounting practitioners and
those of accountingacademics mayhave taken“divergent paths” (Hopwood, 2008, p. 88).
Tilt (2010) notes a general schism between academics and accounting practitioners in
Australia, whilst at the same time others observe that Australian academics have
become more focussed on the publication process as an outcome in itself (Ross, 2010;
Bricker and Previts, 1990).
Oler et al.(2010, pp. 641-2) indicate that there are threats looming for academic
accounting research emanating from the rising number of researchers with no practical
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experience in accounting, a trend towards homogenisation of methodologies applied in
?nancial accounting research, in particular, and the overlooking of signi?cant topics
which cannot be addressed through the theoretical and quantitative lens that dominate
the selection criteria applied by many journal editorial boards. In defence of accounting
researchers, the extended period of conception and gestation prior to publication in
many highly regarded journals prohibits the immediacy of a disciplinary response
(Taylor, 2009, pp. 321-4). As this may also be the case in other commerce-related
disciplines, for the purposes of this study, measures based on publications (or citations)
may not be indicative of the discipline’s reaction to contemporary issues or events.
The current study looks at the relative success of Australian accounting researchers
in winning competitive research grants provided by the ARC. The motivations for
using successful ARC funding as a gauge of research activity across commerce-related
disciplines are threefold. First, comparing publication in leading journals across
several disciplines is fraught with dif?culty because of the different number of
journals, the different criteria applied for evaluating submissions and the different
number of articles published each year relative to the researcher population. Second,
the ARC selection criteria focus on aspects such as national interest and application to
real-world problems and consequently should re?ect contemporary issues, such as
accounting regulation and the events leading to the GFC. Third, the selection criteria
applied in ARC selections are consistent across disciplines.
3. ARC grant success as an indicator of commerce-related comparative
research activity
Australia has a university systemwithconstrained funding available for researchactivity
(Wine?eld et al., 2002; ARC, 2000-2008) and academics are under intense pressure to seek
grants to fund their projects. Given such pressures, in concert with the uncertainty of the
last decade, we would have expected academics from all commerce-related disciplines to
have perceived this as an opportunity to bolster their applications for ARC funding,
irrespective of their discipline or the availability of other potential funding sources.
Competitive grants provide a uniform indicator of comparative research quality and
relevance in the Australian setting, as all disciplines must compete for a share of the
same pool of funds. Macve (1992) used a similar approach to highlight a number of
problems faced by accounting educators (and the small proportion of ARC funds
allocated to commerce-based disciplines) in the 1980s[12].
During the last decade the ARC has offered “Discovery” and “Linkage” grants[13],
both of which are ranked against criteria such as “signi?cance” and “innovation”,
“approach taken” and “national bene?t” (ARC, 2000-2008). Linkage grants have, as their
main purpose, the linking of universities, through research, with other organisations to
“enable the application of advanced knowledge to problems” (ARC, 2000-2008). With
regard to accounting, Linkage grants, in particular, appear to provide an opportunity for
researchers to partner with large professional ?rms, the profession’s representative
bodies and account preparers in investigating disciplinary issues. Overall, both of these
types of competitive grants appear to provide an appropriate means of facilitating
research into contemporary issues countenanced by all commerce-related disciplines.
As a result this study compares the success of accounting, to other commerce-related
disciplines, in winning both Linkage and Discovery grants.
Winning
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3.1 ARC classi?cations
The current study applies the ARC classi?cations to de?ne and differentiate
disciplinary research activity. Since 1998 the ARC has relied on the “Research Field,
Courses and Disciplines” (RFCD) scheme to classify research projects. Using this
approach the ARC classi?es “Accounting, Auditing and Accountability” (code 350100)
(referred to here as, Accounting) as one of a number of distinct disciplines within in the
“Commerce, Management, Tourism and Services Division” (CMTS).
This study compares Accounting funding outcomes on Discovery and Linkage grants
to three other commerce-related disciplines, “Economics” (code 340000), “Finance and
Banking” (code 350300), and “Business and Management” (code 350200). Economics is a
division in its own right with ?ve disciplinary groups, whereas Finance and Banking, and
Business and Management, like Accounting, are disciplines within the CMTS division.
Each of these four commerce-related disciplines, as de?ned by their ARC classi?cation,
constitutes a highly-educated occupational group and while some overlap occurs between
them, each has a distinct and identi?able “knowledge set”. All four disciplines have
established histories within Australian universities and each lays claim to similar
university resources with all likely to be subject to similar university constraints.
With regard to the nature of research in each of these disciplines, Oler et al.(2010)
indicate that the general trend in the leading accounting journals (other than
Accounting, Organisations and Society and Contemporary Accounting Research) has
been towards publishing more ?nancial accounting research employing essentially a
positive approach, utilising archival research methodologies and greater numbers of
citations from ?nance and economics. Some subjects, such as social accounting, have
never been published in some top journals, which may re?ect the absence of positive
methodologies in this type of research (Deegan and Soltys, 2006, p. 76).
The major ?nance journals are dominated by quantitative research, again
employing positive archival techniques, but there is a growing interest in other forms
of ?nance, such as behavioural ?nance, that employ alternative methods (Frankfurter
and McGoun, 2002; Neuhauser, 2007). Similarly, economics journals have been more
recently dominated by positive, neo-classical, quantitative research, although, again,
there is a growing interest in different forms of research employing alternative
methods (Volpi, 2010). In management research, where a balance between quantitative
and qualitative research would be expected, there has been a trend towards
quantitative research in the top journals (Gulati, 2007, p. 777) which has alarmed some
observers (Mintzberg et al., 2002; Ghoshal, 2005).
The analysis provided above would indicate that in all four disciplines the more
“scienti?c” positive approaches using predominantly quantitative research would
receive preferential treatment in the major journals. We have no evidence that the ARC
gives preferential treatment to quantitative research, however, successful grants tend
to go to researchers with a publishing track record, meeting the dominant criterion that
the investigators have the capacity to complete the work (ARC, 2011). This would tend
to suggest that quantitative types of research predominate among the grant winners
in the commerce-related disciplines, but this is an area for further research.
In addition to providing a basis for the differentiation of inter-disciplinary research,
the classi?cation regime employed by the ARCin awarding both Discovery and Linkage
grants may also provide further insight into the timeliness of accounting research.
Those successful grants identi?ed within the Accounting classi?cation are further
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grouped into the intra-disciplinary categories of “Financial Accounting”, “Management
Accounting”, “Auditing and Accountability” and “Other”. Thus, by using ARC data it
may be possible to recognise trends within successfully funded Accounting research
during the period of interest to this study. Given that the issues identi?ed as problematic
to accountants during the post-Enron period have been predominantly associated with
Financial Accounting and Auditing and Accountability, the current study would expect
to observe an increase in relative funding in these speci?c sub-classi?cations.
It is acknowledged that some accounting researchers will have received ARC
funding outside the Accounting disciplinary classi?cation[14] and that the results of
that research may be of value to the accounting discipline. We suggest that such
research activities do not signi?cantly diminish the ?ndings of this study as other
commerce-related researchers are also likely to receive some ARC funding outside their
disciplinary classi?cation.
3.2 Period of analysis
In December 1999 the Australian Federal Government, through the release of
“Knowledge and Innovation: A Policy Statement on Research and Research Training”,
announced a number of major reforms that both changed the role of the ARC and
established the National Competitive Grants Programme (NCGP). This programme
established both the Discovery and Linkage Grant schemes fromthe following year, and
relied on the aforementioned RFCD approach to project classi?cation. In April 2008 the
Australian Bureau of Statistics (in conjunction with Statistics NewZealand) announced
a new research classi?cation scheme (ANZSRC) replacing the existing method. While
the RFCD research classi?cation scheme applied by the ARC remained consistent from
2000 to 2008, the changes introduced by the ARC means research comparisons made
outside this period become more problematic (ARC, 2000-2008).
As a result the period from2000 to 2008 was chosen as a suitable timeframe in which
to compare commerce-based research activity. The year 2000 is an appropriate starting
point as it marked the end of the dot-com boom globally and the high-pro?le corporate
collapses of “OneTel” and “HIH” in Australia, following the demise of “Enron” in the
USA, occurred around late 2001. These events should have put accounting researchers
on notice that the discipline was likely to encounter a heightened level of international
and local scrutiny. The period of analysis concludes in 2008 with the GFC, the fallout
from the sub-prime mortgage meltdown in the USA and collapse of several large banks
in both the USA and Europe, all of which continued to focus attention on the practice of
accounting (Reason and Leone, 2008; Katz, 2009). While speci?cally associated with
the accounting discipline, the events captured within the period 2000-2008 profoundly
affected all four of the commerce-related disciplines chosen for this study.
The comprehensive nature of the issues characterising this period should
have provided the stimulus for commerce-related research participation from a
broad cross-section of institutions, individual academics and potential partnering
organisations. The nominated period also provided researchers from each discipline
with an opportunity to seek ARC funding for projects that adopted a variety
of perspectives and a number of philosophical positions or paradigms that could
potentially employ both empirical and non-empirical techniques. Overall, the breadth of
the issues associatedwiththe events capturedwithin this perioddo not limit the research
Winning
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opportunities available to the majority of commerce-based researchers but many of them
have been widely linked to the accounting discipline.
The period 2000-2008 is of a suf?cient duration to capture each of these commercial
disciplines’ research response to post-Enron events given the often protracted
preparations associated with successfully obtaining ARC funding. In acknowledging
the lead-time necessary to conceive and develop successful research projects (in concert
with the ARC’s grant application process and the timetable associated with such
funding) it may be expected that an academic reaction motivated by such events from
each of the commercial disciplines would become apparent from the 2003 funding
announcements. As a result, the period 2000-2008 includes data pertaining to funding
both prior to, and post, any anticipated response. The duration of the study allows us to
observe any immediate reaction to these events and each discipline’s continued research
response to their ongoing, sometimes indirect or secondary, consequences, in addition to
any overall trends within accounting research that may have occurred.
3.3 Propositions
Given the impact of the aforementioned events on the Australian commercial
environment since 2000 and the highly professionalised nature of the accounting
discipline, we address the following four propositions:
P1. The proportion of (and total funding for) successful ARC-funded research grants
(both Discovery and Linkage) awarded in the Accounting classi?cation (code
350100) would increase, in absolute or comparative terms, relative to those
awardedtothe Finance andBanking(code 350300), Economics (code 340000) and
Business and Management (code 350200) classi?cations from 2000 to 2008.
P2. The proportion of (and total funding for) successful ARC-funded research grants
(both Discovery and Linkage) awarded in the Accounting classi?cation (code
350100) would accelerate, in absolute or comparative terms, relative those
awardedtothe Finance andBanking(code 350300), Economics (code 340000) and
Business and Management (code 350200) classi?cations after 2002.
P3. There would be an increase in participation in successful ARC-funded research
grants (both Discovery and Linkage) within the Accounting classi?cation (code
350100) in terms of number of academics, universities and partnering
organisations overall, and after 2002.
P4. The growth in successful ARC-funded research grants (both Discovery and
Linkage) within the Accounting classi?cation (code 350100) would be primarily
due to an increase in the proportion of (and total funding for) both Financial
Accounting and Auditing and Accountability overall and projects after 2002.
4. Results
Amounts shown in Table I (Discovery grants) and Table II (Linkage grants) represent
the total funding for the project in the year of its approval. For example, Chua, Baxter
and Sawabe received three years’ funding totalling $125k for a management
accounting Discovery project in 2006 for the years 2007 ($35k), 2008 ($46k) and 2009
($44k). Table I includes the entire $125k in 2006 as this re?ects the ARC’s approval
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Accounting
(350100) Economics (340000)
Finance and
Banking (350300)
Business and
Management
(350200)
Year fo
funding
commitment A B C A B C A B C A B C
2000 3 0.37 4 17 2.08 31 4 0.61 8 4 0.55 9
2001 3 0.24 4 14 2.93 35 3 1.02 5 9 1.12 27
2002 2 0.24 6 26 4.38 52 5 0.77 11 10 1.30 32
2003 3 0.29 5 20 2.91 37 6 1.08 12 9 1.32 19
2004 4 0.37 8 36 7.16 65 8 1.68 21 8 1.52 22
2005 5 0.72 9 31 6.43 66 6 1.49 20 8 1.63 24
2006 1 0.13 3 23 6.25 56 7 2.22 23 8 1.79 21
2007 4 0.86 9 30 6.79 71 5 0.96 10 7 1.59 18
2008 0 0 0 33 9.11 94 3 0.50 8 9 1.60 26
Totals 25 $3.22m 48 230 $48.04m 507 47 $10.33m 118 72 $12.42m 198
Averages
2000/2008 2.8 $0.36m 5.3 25.5 $5.34m 56.3 5.2 $1.15m 13.1 8.0 $1.38m 22.0
2000/2002 2.7 $0.28 4.7 19.0 $3.13 39.4 4.0 $0.80 8.0 7.7 $0.99 22.7
Post-2002 2.8 $0.39 5.7 28.8 $6.44 64.8 5.8 $1.32 15.7 8.2 $1.57 21.7
Change pre-
to post-2002
(%) 3.7 38.9 21.3 51.8 105.9 64.5 45.0 64.7 96.3 6.5 59.2 (4.4)
Notes: A ¼ no. of grants; B ¼ A$ million funded; C ¼ no. participants/researchers
Table I.
ARC Discovery grants in
Accounting, Economics,
Finance and Banking,
and Business and
Management disciplines
(2000-2008)
Accounting
(350100) Economics (3400000)
Finance and
Banking (350300)
Business and
Management (350200)
A B C D A B C D A B C D A B C D
2000 2 0.32 2 3 16 1.41 12 31 4 0.54 2 4 16 1.39 14 30
2001 3 0.45 11 3 13 1.51 38 25 3 0.45 10 3 9 0.87 27 11
2002 1 0.12 4 3 24 4.25 71 50 2 0.13 7 2 21 2.71 57 26
2003 2 0.35 7 2 9 1.30 29 11 4 0.91 8 5 31 5.26 98 52
2004 3 0.72 14 7 10 1.59 24 30 6 0.81 11 8 20 3.45 65 30
2005 3 0.50 11 3 12 4.71 55 25 3 0.44 7 11 13 1.90 41 13
2006 0 0 0 0 10 3.06 39 10 3 0.65 11 6 14 4.34 59 27
2007 3 0.47 11 7 11 4.79 55 27 2 0.27 9 2 13 2.21 42 20
2008 2 0.33 5 2 6 1.32 25 11 1 0.11 3 2 16 5.23 64 24
Total 19 $3.26 65 30 111 $23.94 348 220 28 $4.31 68 43 153 $27.36 467 233
Averages
2000/2008 2.1 $0.36 7.2 3.3 12.3 $2.66 38.7 24.4 3.1$0.48 7.6 4.8 17.0 $2.92 51.9 25.9
2000/2002 2.0 $0.30 5.7 3.0 17.7 $2.39 40.3 35.3 3.0$0.37 6.3 3.0 15.3 $1.66 32.7 22.3
Post-2002 2.2 $0.40 8.0 3.5 9.7 $2.80 37.8 19.0 3.2$0.53 8.2 5.7 17.8 $3.73 61.5 27.7
Change
pre- to
post-2002
(%) 10.0 33.3 40.1 20.0 (45.0) 17.2 (6.2) (46.2) 6.743.2 30.2 90.0 16.3 124.7 88.1 24.2
Notes: A ¼ no. of grants; B ¼ A$ million funded; C ¼ no. participants/researchers; D ¼ no. partner
organisations
Table II.
ARC Linkage Grants in
Accounting, Economics,
Finance and Banking,
and Business and
Management disciplines
2000-2008
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of funds to the project, rather than its actual transfer. Table II provides an aggregate of
both rounds 1 and 2 approvals for Linkage projects each year.
In Tables I and II we have extracted the following information for each of the four
commerce-related disciplines:
(1) the number of successful projects funded;
(2) the total amount of funding and average amount per project, plus both pre- and
post-2002 averages;
(3) the number of participating researchers; and
(4) in Table II the number of partnering organisations, plus both pre- and post-2002
averages (note: partner organisations does not include administrative
university).
Table I importantly highlights that for the period 2000-2008, Accounting consistently
received (on average) fewer Discovery grants, was awarded less funds in total and had
lower levels of researcher participation than the other three disciplines. The table
indicates that across all of these metrics, Accounting failed to outperform the other
disciplines within each of the individual years between 2000 and 2008 and in some
cases was outperformed by a multiple of ten. In the post-2002 period, Accounting
Discovery grants increased in terms of their dollar value, number of grants and
number of participants. However, this occurred at a signi?cantly lower rate than the
other three commerce-related groups.
The data contained in Table I show that, relative to the 2000-2002 period, the period
2003-2008 generated a 3.7 percent increase in the number of Accounting grants
approved, which was lower than the equivalent increases in Business and Management
(6.5 percent) and much lower than the increases in Economics (51.8 percent) and
Finance and Banking (45 percent). Given the increase in the numbers of Accounting
Discovery grants was generated off a much smaller base than these other disciplines,
the 3.7 percent increase reported in Accounting is perhaps even less signi?cant than
might otherwise be the case. We thus ?nd, in relation to Discovery grants, no support
for P1 and P2 and only weak support for P3.
With regard to the average amount of yearly funding received by each of the
disciplines, Table I shows that, in the post-2002 period, Accounting researchers
obtained signi?cantly fewer dollars from Discovery grants ($0.39m) when compared to
Finance and Banking ($1.32m), Business and Management ($1.57m) and Economics
($6.44m). In relative terms, Accounting projects generated only 7 percent of the average
annual funding granted for Economics projects, 30 percent of average annual grants in
Finance and Banking and 26 percent of the annual average funding granted in
Business and Management over the period reviewed.
In terms of academic participation, the number of participants in Accounting
projects rose post-2002 by 21.3 per cent. The percentage increases in Economics
(64 percent) and Finance and Banking (96 percent) were higher, whereas Business and
Management suffered a marginal decline in academic participation (4 percent) but
again off a much higher base. The data contained in Table I provide support for P3 in
absolute terms only.
In relation to linkage grants, Table II re?ects similar results to those for Discovery
grants shown in Table I. The data show that for the period 2000-2008 Accounting
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consistently received (on average) fewer Linkage grants, was award less funds in total,
had lower levels of researcher participation and engaged fewer partner organisations.
Table II indicates that while Accounting and Finance and Banking have comparable
results, Economics and Business and Management dominate Linkage funding in
commercial disciplines by a signi?cant magnitude across all four criteria.
During the post-2002 period Accounting received (in absolute terms) on average more
grants, increased organisational participation, higher dollars awarded and the number of
participants. However, Table II reveals a mixed story for Accounting when compared to
the other disciplines in terms of the study’s pre- and post-2002 results. In terms of the
average number of grants awarded yearly (from 2002 to 2008), Accounting received
10percent more grants. While Finance andBankingalsoincreasedits share by6.7 percent,
both were however dominated by Business and Management which increased its average
byover 16 percent (importantlyfroma muchhigher base). The average yearlyfunding for
Business and Management projects also increased signi?cantly (124.7 percent), with
Accounting receiving 33.3 percent more funds and Finance and Banking increasing by
43.2 percent. This means that while increasing in average dollar value, Accounting
projects remained the lowest funded discipline in the post-2002 period, receiving
75 percent of the value of grants in Finance and Banking (81 percent in the prior period),
15 percent of the grants in Economics (12.5 percent in the prior period) and 11 percent of
the grants received by Business and Management (18 percent in the prior period).
Table II reveals that both Finance and Banking and Business and Management
(marginally) outperformed Accounting in terms of organisational participation.
Accounting attracted three partnering organisations per project up to 2002 and
3.5 partnering organisatons post-2002. Accounting’s performance is eclipsed by that of
Finance and Banking which also attracted three partnering organisations per project up
to 2002 but enjoyed a signi?cant increase in participation of 90 percent (5.7 partnering
organisatons) post-2002. In terms of academic participation the average number of
researchers post-2002 rose in Accounting at a respectable rate (40 percent) faster than
Finance and Banking (30 percent) but considerably slower than Business and
Management (88 percent).
The data from Table II lead to a partial acceptance of P3 in relation to Linkage grants,
with increases in the number of Accounting grants, their dollar values, participating
researchers andinpartner organisations. However, the datahighlight the failure of the only
professionaliseddiscipline, Accounting, to compete effectivelyfor ARCfundingagainst the
other commerce-related discipines in a period when it could be expected that accounting
researchers would be relatively successful in their grant-winning performance[15].
Table III aggregates the data in Tables I and II and calculates the relative
proportions of total commerce-related research received by each of the four
commerce-related disciplines in terms of successful receipts of grants, funding levels
and participation. Table III again demonstrates Accounting has been outperformed
across each of the metrics for the entire period 2000 to 2008. These results highlight
that Accounting research was a “poor cousin” to its commerce-related neighbours in
the period 2003-2008, generating 6.4 percent of the grants made in the four disciplines
over the period (down from 6.5 percent 2000-2002), 4.6 percent of funding allocated
(down from 5.9 percent 2000-2002), 6.1 percent of researchers (down from 6.5 percent
2000-2002) and 6.3 percent of participating organisations (up from 4.7 percent
2000-2002).
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.
7
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1
9
3
.
1
9
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.
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1
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4
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.
7
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9
3
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o
t
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l
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.
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4
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2
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5
5
.
4
2
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6
5
4
1
1
.
1
2
1
4
3
1
5
6
3
1
.
8
4
4
9
9
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7
1
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0
3
.
1
2
1
3
4
0
T
o
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l
(
%
)
6
.
4
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.
6
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.
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.
1
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.
7
4
6
0
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5
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3
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.
9
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.
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0
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6
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3
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1
1
4
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0
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)
3
4
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1
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1
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1
6
6
(
4
9
.
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)
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s
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;
B
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C
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p
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t
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t
s
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r
s
Table III.
ARC Total Discovery
and Linkage grants in all
disciplines
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Table III indicates the relative poverty of ARC-funded accounting research in
Australia. The results extend Macve’s observations from the 1980s with regard to the
low level of accounting research funding. From 2000 to 2008 total ARC funding rose
substantially, but the proportion being won by accounting applications declined
considerably. In terms of academic participation P3 can be supported, but not in
relation to partnering organistions.
Table IV gives a break-down of the funded research projects undertaken within the
Accounting classi?cation. The table reveals that a major proportion of the projects
(2000-2008) were “Auditing and Accountability” (36.4 percent), with less going to
Financial Accounting (25.0 percent) and Management Accounting (27.3 percent) and
only 11.3 percent to the Other category.
The changes in the accounting environment after 2002 would indicate a need to
undertake more research on ?nancial reporting and auditing as a consequence of the
changes taking place. Fromthe post-2002 perspective, the proportion of grants going to
“Auditing and Accountability” projects increased signi?cantly from 21.5 percent
(pre-2002) to 43.3 percent, similarly the proportion going to Financial Accounting
projects also rose from21.4 to 25.0 percent of the total. The results contained in Table IV
provide support for P4, with a relative increase in both Auditing and Accountability and
Financial Accounting-related research.
5. Discussion of results
This study has sought to examine ARC-funded research activity when compared with
other commerce-related occupational groups. It proposed that, as a cohort, accounting
researchers would have used the events taking place in the period covered by this
study to vigorously prosecute their case for an increased number and share of ARC
grants. The results do not provide support for this proposition.
In assessing the results of this study, it is necessary to explore some possible
explanations for the relative lack of success by accounting researchers in winning ARC
funding for Accounting projects. Previous studies indicate a lack of success
Total
Financial
Accounting
Management
Accounting
Auditing and
Accountability
Other
(includes tax)
Disc Link Disc Link Disc Link Disc Link Disc Link
2000 3 2 2 0 0 1 1 1 0 0
2001 3 3 0 0 2 3 1 0 0 0
2002 2 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0
2003 3 2 0 1 0 0 3 1 0 0
2004 4 3 1 0 1 1 2 1 0 1
2005 5 3 1 1 1 0 1 2 2 0
2006 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
2007 4 3 1 2 0 0 2 1 1 0
2008 0 2 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0
2000/2008 25 19 6 5 5 7 10 6 4 1
Combined 44 (100.0%) 11 (25.0%) 12 (27.3%) 16 (36.4%) 5 (11.3%)
2000/2002 8 6 3 0 2 5 2 1 1 0
Combined 14 (100.0%) 3 (21.4%) 7 (50.0%) 3 (21.5%) 1 (7.1%)
Post-2002 17 13 3 5 3 2 8 5 3 1
Combined 30 (100.0%) 8 (26.7%) 5 (16.7%) 13 (43.3%) 4 (13.3%)
Table IV.
Accounting, Auditing
and Accountability
projects
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by the discipline in obtaining funding could be accounted for by three factors (Simon,
1992; Tippett, 1992; CPA Australia, 2001; Juchau, 2005):
(1) ARC data could understate research activity because it is possible that
accounting researchers are obtaining alternative sources of funding (such as
accounting ?rms, major corporations and the accounting professional bodies)
while other commerce-related disciplines are more reliant on ARC funding.
(2) ARC data could accurately re?ect the state of accounting research because
accounting academics are overloaded with teaching commitments when
compared to other commerce-related disciplines.
(3) ARC data could re?ect a paucity of effective research cultures and relevant
infrastructures in the academic accounting community when compared to other
commerce-related disciplines.
As the data analysed are based on successful ARC applications rather than total
applications made to the ARC, it is not possible to assess the quantum of applications
made in Accounting versus the other three disciplines investigated (nor is it possible to
assess the success rates of individual institutions). This lack of data limits the current
study’s ability to fully assess the validity of the claims regarding the impact of these
factors on Accounting’s ARC performance. A study in 2001 showed that the success
rate of those who applied was 22 per cent in Accounting and Finance, 20 per cent in
Economics and 12 per cent in Business Management, indicating that a large proportion
of potential research projects never receive funding (Fretz and Veall, 2001, p. 185).
The following sections brie?y explore the three factors that may explain the
relatively low ARC-funding for Accounting.
5.1 Alternative sources of funding
As this study compared commerce-related disciplines, it should be remembered that all
the disciplines have representative bodies and access to commercial entities as potential
sources of research funds. So why accounting researchers would disproportionately
wish to pursue alternative sources of research funding, rather than compete for ARC
funding (which provides additional resources to the universities in which they work),
remains unclear and thus is in itself contentious.
Further insight may be gained from a brief examination of the potential sources of
funding for accounting research. In their annual reports, the two largest professional
accounting bodies in Australia indicate that they allocate resources to a diversity of
research endeavours, fromthe direct ?nancingof individual projects to the sponsoring the
Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and NewZealand. These reports reveal
that combined research-oriented expenditure (direct and indirect) by the ICAA and CPA
Australia nearly doubled from $4.64 million in 2001 to around $9 million in 2008.
In their joint submission to the Review of Australian Higher Education (2008), the
Joint Accounting Bodies ( JAB) stressed that they supported, and were active funders,
of accounting research. A review of their web pages reveals that both have some form
of academic research funding program and that they each support ARC grant
applications. For example, the ICAA recently appointed a head of academic relations
to support, in particular, early-career academic researchers with the initiation of
projects (Evans et al., 2010).
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ARC data con?rms that the professional accounting bodies have been willing to
facilitate what they consider to be relevant research[16]. There is some evidence of
studies being funded by the professional bodies using independent (although
associated) research groups who used commissioned academics[17] and evidence of
support for individuals and groups of researchers[18] (Worthington Di Marzio, 2004).
Irrespective of whether such research was carried out in-house or was commissioned,
the increased funding levels provided a signi?cant pool of resources available for
institutional or academic-type research activities.
Tilt (2010, p. 37) veri?es that academics and practitioners may not be as far apart as
some believe, citing academic publications available on the professional bodies’ web
sites and contributions by academics to professional journals. Tilt’s study indicates that
academics seem to be contributing in newer areas of research, such as accounting for
environmental concerns, where measurement and audit issues proliferate. A possible
reading of this trend is that the professional accounting bodies are positioning
themselves, with the aid of suitable research, as key managers of carbon knowledge and
measurement for corporate disclosure (Lovell and MacKenzie, 2011). Such research
endeavours do not encroach on established areas of accounting practice, where several
unresolved issues could bene?t from professional support.
A look at research support given by the professional accounting bodies through
ARC Linkage grants reveals little focus on an evaluation of the issues arising from
the post-Enron period and appears to be somewhat disjointed when contrasted to the
approach to research adopted by the representative bodies of other professions
(Clarke and Flanagan, 2011) and with that of overseas’ accounting bodies such as the
Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales which has two charitable
trust funds devoted to academic research that support their ongoing “Information for
better markets” project (ICAEW, 2007). This raises the question as to the degree to
which Australian accounting bodies have placed reliance on research carried out by
sister bodies in other countries and perhaps partially explains the number of eminent
accounting researchers identi?ed as working outside Australia (Heck, 2009).
A second avenue for research funding is commercial organisations and professional
?rms. Accounting ?rms represent the most obvious source of potential research funds.
The large accounting ?rms have all recognised the need to develop and manage
“knowledge” and as a result maintain extensive “knowledge management systems” and
research units[19] (Grant, 1996; Alavi and Leidner, 1999). These ?rms obviously seek to
monopolise the bene?ts that in-house research produces so as to give them comparative
advantage in the marketplace. In the current study we could not observe whether
academic researchers were employed by accounting ?rms for their in-house research,
however, one would expect such researchers to try and turn any insights into publishable
projects at some stage. In the period analysed, four ARC Linkage projects involved an
accounting ?rm[20] partnering with an academic institution (24 percent of all Accounting
Linkage projects funded). While this represents a signi?cant source of partner
organisations, the current study suggests this still is an under-represention[21] when
compared to other professionalised occupational groups (Clarke and Flanagan, 2011).
The current study cannot con?rm or reject whether relevant research is conducted
by academics on a private, consultative basis with other elements of the corporate
sector but as no companies have partnered with academics in ARC-funded accounting
projects over the relevant period, it is assumed that there are no strong links between
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the academic accounting community and the corporate preparers of ?nancial
information.
5.2 Accounting academics’ high teaching loads
For the period prior to that covered by the current study, Simon (1992) suggested that
accounting programs were seen as an inexpensive form of education and therefore
university administrators simply used it as a cash cow to fund more costly disciplines.
Tippett (1992) stated that accounting education in Australia was in a state of chronic
neglect and showed that undergraduate funding levels were historically lower than
those in the UK and USA. A number of enquiries have reported on the state of
accounting education in Australia over the last 25 years all of which tend to con?rm
these views[22] ( Juchau, 2005).
At the beginning of the current decade (and the period covered by this study) the
Commonwealth Government convened a Senate inquiry into the Australian university
sector’s capacity to meet the country’s higher education needs. CPA Australia’s
submission suggested that there had been a real decline in per capita funding of
accounting education and research in the later decades of the twentieth century (2001).
The submission highlighted the detrimental impact this had, not only on graduates and
teaching standards, but also on disciplinary research capabilities and the recruitment of
quality accounting academics. The submission highlighted a history of large class
numbers, under-resourcing, poor student-to-teacher ratios (STR) and therefore a low
level of staff research output, among a number of issues that had proved detrimental to
the quality of accounting education when benchmarked against North American
standards (CPA, 2001). Juchau (2005, p. 17) suggested that the 2003 reforms introduced
by the Commonwealth government would continue to adversely affect university
funding and policy disposition towards the accounting discipline.
The Commonwealth Department of Education, Employment and Workplace
Relations (DEEWR) generates information that may be used to assess the relative
student loads and staf?ng levels of each of the four commerce-related disciplines
examined in the current study for the period 2000-2008. These data may be used to
assess whether the scenario outlined by CPA Australia at the beginning of the decade
is still faced by academics within the accounting discipline and thus has contributed to
the results provided in the current study.
DEEWR categorises data by Academic Organisational Unit Group (AOUG) based
upon individual educational ?elds[23]. AOUG data are aggregated through a hierarchy
(“broad group”, “narrow group” and “detailed group” (DG)) based upon an increasing
degree of re?nement[24]. The DG data provide the most comprehensive indicators of
the student numbers for each of the speci?ed disciplines.
For the purposes of identifying any association between absolute student numbers
and disciplinary research performance across the four commerce-related disciplines, the
present study relied on student and staff-load data by discipline group provided by
DEEWR to calculate the STR using Equivalent Fulltime Student Load (EFTSL) of
academic staff for eachgroup. Table Vprovides DEEWRdata at the DGlevel onthe total
EFTSL taught in the disciplines that are of interest to this study for the years 2001-2008.
The table reveals a remarkable growth in both absolute numbers and in percentage
terms in both Accounting (12,120 students, 47.6 percent) and Finance and Banking
(10,570 students, 105.4 percent) over the period under review.
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Table VI provides actual “onshore” student loads and full-time and fractional staff for
each disciplinary group at the “narrow group” (NG) level for each year and calculates
STR. Ideally the current study would have continued to analyse data at the more
detailed DG level, however such re?ned data is not available. Nevertheless, the
criterion applied by DEEWR to aggregate data from the DG level to the NG level
means that valid comparisons can still be made between the disciplines of interest to
this study[25].
The table shows that in Economics and Econometrics EFTSL fell (12,185-11,426) as
did staf?ng (470-430). In Business and Management EFTSL remained stable
(24,301-24,311) but staf?ng increased signi?cantly (838-1,028). In Finance and Banking
EFTSL increased signi?cantly (2,542-8,934) but staf?ng increased equally
signi?cantly (92-266).
Year
Accounting
(0801)
Economics and
Econometrics (0919)
Finance and
Banking (0811)
Business and
Management (0803)
2001 25,473 20,760 10,025 44,745
2002 25,242 20,619 10,610 42,568
2003 28,029 21,171 11,634 43,559
2004 28,231 20,829 13,609 43,752
2005 31,309 20,683 14,562 43,048
2006 34,571 21,226 15,422 43,266
2007 36,910 22,963 17,162 46,389
2008 37,593 24,029 20,595 49,801
EFTSU
Total increase 12,120 3,269 10,570 5,056
Total change (%) 47.58 15.75 105.44 11.30
Annual change (%) 5.83 2.16 10.95 1.63
Average for period 30,920 21,535 14,202 44,641
Table V.
Actual student load
(EFTSL) of onshore
students aggregated
at the DG level and
summarised at the NG
level (2001-2008)
Accounting (0801)
Economics and
Econometrics (0919)
Finance and
Banking (0811)
Business and
Management (0899)
EFTSL FTE STR EFTSL FTE STR EFTSL FTE STR EFTSL FTE STR
2001 17,837 591 30.18 12,185 470 25.93 2,542 92 27.63 24,301 838 29.00
2002 14,522 508 28.59 14,541 533 27.28 2,944 102 28.86 24,266 1,085 22.36
2003 17,646 499 35.36 13,160 496 26.53 3,075 91 33.79 22,850 957 23.88
2004 16,790 469 35.80 11,150 464 24.03 6,026 141 42.74 21,685 838 25.88
2005 16,151 455 35.50 10,016 435 23.03 4,429 160 27.68 19,663 803 24.49
2006 18,408 461 39.93 9,598 443 21.67 6,306 197 32.01 21,788 914 23.84
2007 18,709 583 32.09 12,017 463 25.95 6,859 196 34.99 24,424 1,121 21.79
2008 18,366 542 33.89 11,426 430 26.57 8,934 266 33.59 24,311 1,028 23.65
Total increase 529 249 3.70 2759 240 0.65 6,392 174 5.96 10 190 25.35
Total change (%) 2.97 28.29 12.27 26.23 28.51 2.49 251.46 189.13 21.56 0.04 22.67 218.45
Average change
(%) 1.15 20.58 33.92 0.07 21.00 25.12 24.45 18.12 32.66 0.29 4.18 24.36
Average for
period 17,304 514 34 11,762 467 25 5,139 156 33 22,911 948 24
Table VI.
STR based on actual
student load (EFTSL) and
full-time equivalent staff
(FTE) by NG for
all onshore students
(2001-2008)
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Table VI speci?cally reveals that the largest STR are in Accounting (33.92:1), followed
closely by Finance and Banking (32.66:1). These two disciplines bear loads that have
remained signi?cantly higher than Economics and Econometrics (25.12:1) and
Business and Management (24.36:1). Business and Management appears to have
reduced its STR over the period of review from 29:1 to 23.65:1, although this fall should
be viewed with caution as it could be driven partly by changes in the structure of the
academic units offering the subject[26].
In Accounting whilst EFTSL rose only marginally from a high base (17,837-18,366),
full time equivalent (FTE) staff numbers fell between 2001 and 2008 (591-542). It is
apparent that in Accounting and Finance and Banking large EFTSL loads have been
taught over the review period. At the same time Accounting FTE staff have fallen and
Finance and Banking FTE staff have risen sharply, but not as fast as the EFTSL has
risen, as student-to-teacher loads in Finance and Banking rose by over 21 percent in the
review period.
These ?gures indicate that in Accounting and Finance and Banking academics are
either teaching larger classes than their counterparts in other commerce-related
disciplines or employing a signi?cantly larger number of casual academic staff, or both;
no conclusive explanation for this trend is apparent. There is an increasing demand from
students, both local and international, to study in both these disciplines and it appears
that universities are responding by loading up courses in these disciplines.
Anecdotal evidence suggests a large increase in the casualisation loads in
Accounting and Finance and Banking. This viewis supported by studies that identify a
signi?cant growth in overall levels of casual academic staff teaching in Australian
universities (Australian Learning and Teaching Council, 2008, p. 7; Bradley, 2008, p. 22).
These are disciplines where salaries for well-quali?ed practitioners far exceed academic
salaries and the ability of universities to attract suitably quali?ed and experienced
full-time staff has become increasingly dif?cult. However, there is a growing market of
quali?ed teachers prepared to instruct in one subject or more a semester. From the
universities’ budgeting perspective this is a win win situation as they pay only for
teaching done with no on-costs, but the downside is the loss of research depth in these
disciplines.
In summary, the DEEWR data appear to support a “teaching load”-based
explanation of the poor ARC grant-winning performance by accounting researchers,
particularly as any growth in accounting teaching loads comes from a residually high
base (CPA Australia, 2001; Tippett, 1992). The data suggest that academic teaching
loads – both in terms of students taught per staff member and the added
administration of dealing with a large casual workforce – may severely hamper their
attempts to contribute to disciplinary research activity (these data support the ?ndings
of Subramaniam (2003)).
5.3 Research culture and infrastructure is not widespread in academic accounting
Another possible explanation for low ARC grant success is found in the contention that
a higher proportion of accounting academics are lacking in support, training,
infrastructure and culture to develop and submit ARC grant applications that will be
funded. The problem is further exacerbated for accounting researchers in pursuing
ARC grants, where the track-record of chief investigators is one of the more critical
criteria taken into consideration in assessing the viability of a project (ARC, 2011).
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Up to 2000, the distribution of ARCLarge Grants Scheme funds was heavily based on
the number of applications. In that period Accounting and Finance were combined and
the combined applications for the 1996-2000 period was half those in Management and a
quarter of those in Economics. As success rates tended not to vary greatly across
disciplines in that period, the lower success of accounting projects could be directly
attributed to the lownumber of accounting applications received by the ARC (Fretz and
Veall, 2001, p. 183).
An analysis of the ARC data identi?es that just 69 individual accounting researchers
were in receipt of ARC Discovery and/or Linkage grants in the 2000-2008 period. An
index of accounting academics[27] indicated that approximately 853 academics were
employed in accounting education at universities at the mid-point of this period, so just
8 percent of accounting academics were successful in this period in winning ARCgrants.
This is a signi?cantly greater than Accounting’s success with the predecessor Large
Grants Scheme, where only one per cent of accounting staff were successful in winning
grants (Fretz and Veall, 2001, p. 186), but still represents a small number of researchers
and projects.
Table VII further highlights that the few awarded grants are concentrated in just a
few institutions with all successful accounting grant applications for the period
2000-2008 coming from just ten universities. Moreover, with researchers in fewer than
six universities account for the bulk of these grants. These data indicate that
accounting research expertise is con?ned to a few research-intensive universities. Very
few accounting academics in the remaining universities have succeeded in winning
ARC grants and overall this contributes to a diminished academic contribution to
disciplinary research. Chan et al. (2007, p. 214) similarly noted that there was an “elite
institution” effect at work with 2 percent of institutions responsible for 40 percent of
top ?ve accounting journal articles.
While the story is similar with Finance and Banking applications, where grants were
won by just ten universities, this was not the case in Economics, where researchers in
26 universities won ARC grants in the period under review and in 24 universities for
Business and Management. STR appear to be lower in these disciplines which could
explain some of the difference, but additional research is needed to arrive at a more
detailed understanding of the reasons for both the larger number of universities
involved in Economics and Business and Management ARC grant activity, and the
larger number of grants won by such researchers relative to Accounting’s performance.
These data would indicate that there are more “research-ready” academics in
Economics and Business and Management that are research-active in these disciplines
Accounting (350100) Economics (3400000)
Finance and
Banking (350300)
Business and
Management
(350200)
Grants Universities Grants Universities Grants Universities Grants Universities
Discovery 25 6 230 21 47 9 72 16
Linkage 19 9 113 21 28 8 153 24
Total 44 10 343 26 75 11 225 24
Note: Some universities received both types of grant
Table VII.
Institutional involvement
in ARC Discovery and
Linkage grants
(2000-2008)
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relative to the Accounting and Finance and Banking disciplines. This perspective is
perhaps con?rmed more recently by the Commonwealth Government’s development of
an Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) policy. This initiative was designed to
provide transparent information about the relative quality of Australia’s research
output. While outside the period of interest to the current study, the 2010 report (ARC,
2011) provides evidence of research quality in the four commerce-related disciplines.
The ERA ratings, based on four indicators (research quality, research output, research
impact and research recognition or esteem) suggest that Accounting, remains
competitive with Finance and Banking but less so with either Business and
Management or Economics. For example, ERA results for “research recognition or
esteem” (as measured by Units of Evaluation or UoE), show Accounting (nine UoEs)
and Finance and Banking (ten UoEs) were far behind Business and Management
(49 UoEs) and Economics (104 UoEs). These data tend to con?rm the continued “elite
institution” effect for Accounting and Finance and Banking, indicating that only a
small group of researchers from a select group of institutions within the disciplines get
published in the top journals or receive ARC grants.
6. Conclusion
The results of the current study highlight that, as a group, accountants did not
attain a relatively higher level of ARC-funded research grants compared with
other commerce-related disciplines, even given the public pro?le of accounting events,
post-Enron. The persistently low level of representation of accounting researchers
among ARC grant winners during this period appears counterintuitive to the
“professional model” described by the professionalism literature. Why accounting, as a
profession, therefore, diverges from this model should be a topic of great interest to all
accountants.
The results of this study do not automatically suggest individual Australian
accounting academics have failed to make a signi?cant research contribution to the
discipline, particularly when compared with their overseas peers (Chan et al., 2007). Yet
in accounting, academic participation appears in ARC grant-winning success terms,
minimal.
The ?ndings appear to extend the previous observations made by critics of the
policies of Australian universities towards accounting from last century (Simon, 1992;
Tippett, 1992; CPA Australia, 2001). The data point to growing teaching loads,
increased casualisation and a concentration of research capacity in a few institutions.
These results appear to support the notion that accounting has been systemically
limited with regard to well-funded research activity that could lead to sustainable new
knowledge development within Australian universities.
Signi?cantly higher levels (both in term of number of grants and dollar values) of
ARC funding provide an indicator of the more successful and co-ordinated
partnerships enjoyed between other disciplines and universities, when compared to
accounting (Clarke and Flanagan, 2011). Why this relationship substantially differs for
accounting, when compared with other commerce-related disciplines, should be of
particular interest to accounting researchers and the accounting profession.
After more than 50 years in the university sector, accounting, as a professional
discipline, does not conform closely to the traditional professional model, even when
compared to other less professionalised, commerce-based disciplines. The ongoing
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poor performance of the accounting academic community in successfully winning ARC
grants needs to be further investigated to provide more evidence of speci?c reasons for
the low rate of success. Information on grant success does not tell us anything about
the actual level and focus of research, only what is supported through grants. Further
research could look at emerging areas of research that are in need of funding, with the
professional accounting bodies, industry groups and organisations, or other
associations, such as AFAANZ[28], sponsoring promising areas.
From our analysis of ARC grants we can con?rm that there appear to be no
strong research links between the academic accounting community, corporate
preparers of ?nancial information, and only minimal interactions with other
accounting practitioners. This lack of engagement should be of serious concern to
both accounting researchers and the accounting profession in that it appears to con?rm
Hopwood’s concern about the diverging paths of accounting research and accounting
practice (2008, p. 88).
Notes
1. For example, Gettler (2004) also see GAO (2003).
2. See changes in the roles of the Financial Reporting Council, Australian Accounting
Standards Board and the Auditing and Assurance Standards Board and the
disbandment/integration of Australian Accounting Research Foundation (in 2001) and the
Urgent Issues Group (in 2006).
3. The appropriate measurement of assets and liabilities, off-balance sheet structures; the
development of derivatives for insurance and investment purposes were identi?ed as
problematic in the collapse of Enron (Unerman and O’Dwyer, 2010).
4. We use a liberal conceptualisation of the terms “profession”, “professionalism” and
“professionalisation” (Cooper and Robson, 2006, p. 414; Torstendahl, 2005).
5. For a variety of perspectives on the history of the accounting discipline in Australia see
Parker (1961), Carnegie (1993), Poullaos (1994), Carnegie and Edwards (2001) and Chua and
Poullaos (1993, 1998, 2002).
6. In 2005, ICAA spent 15 per cent and CPA Australia spent 18 per cent of total expenditure on
marketing and promotional activities. This was signi?cantly higher than such expenditure
in previous periods but this fell in subsequent periods (ICAA, 2005; CPA Australia, 2005
Annual Reports).
7. For example, disciplinary-based representative bodies such as: Australian Institute of
Management; Financial Services Institute of Australia and the Economic Society of
Australia appear not to have responded to such criticism in such a direct manner.
8. Then called the NSW University of Technology.
9. For example, within the Australian context it may be argued that the seminal works of
accounting academics such as Goldberg (1965), Chambers (1966), Gynther (1966), Ball and
Brown (1968) and Barton (1975) represented this profession/academic interaction. Equally,
the role that universities may play for the accounting profession during this period was
exempli?ed in the USA by the interaction between academics and the Public Company
Oversight Board Panel on “Audit Effectiveness” (PCOB, 2000, paragraphs 2.27 and 3.24).
10. Heck provides a list of proli?c accounting authors who have published in leading
international journals for the period 1959-2008. The list includes a number of academics who
resided in Australia during the period of interest to this study (2009, Exhibits 1 and 2).
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11. Measures based on publication rates could also include the number of citations speci?c
examples of published research receives. However, citations tend to re?ect “academic to
academic” activity and in isolation provide no evidence of the impact of research on
accounting practice, although there is literature identifying the contributions of accounting
research to accounting policies (Taylor, 2009). We have excluded references to “citations of
research” from the current study.
12. Macve reported that by 1990 only $250,000 was allocated to research in both economics and
accounting by the ARC from a total research allocation budget of $90 million (1992) (Note:
of?cial statistics did not distinguish between all business-based disciplines).
13. These two categories of ARC grants represent the bulk of ARC funding relative to total
research funds allocated.
14. For example, Godfrey, Gutherie, Sidhu, Mouritsen, Boedker all received ARC funding
outside the accounting classi?cation.
15. It is interesting to note that overall, Economics performed relatively poorly in all metrics
across the entire post-2002 period relative to the prior period.
16. In the period of analysis, the ICAA partnered in one Linkage project and CPA Australia in
three projects. The ICAA in the past has offered an Academic Research Grant Scheme worth
$115,000 each year and has funded a number of research monographs. CPAAustralia has six
competitive small grant programs for academics totalling $60,000 annually and
commissions research.
17. See ICAA web site for publications such as Extended Performance Reporting: a Review of
Empirical Studies (Chua, 2006), GAAP-based Financial Reporting: Measurement of Business
Performance (Taylor, 2006) and Professional Judgment (Trotman, 2006).
18. See CPA Australia web site for research focus areas that include reporting and assurance.
The current study was unable to uncover a publicly available list of successful applicants
and projects funded on the CPA web site.
19. Grant (1996) suggested that the major challenge for “experts” (such as accountants) would be
the creation, capture and dissemination of intra-disciplinary knowledge. O’Leary (1997)
examined several of these systems (Ernst and Young’s “Leading practices K-Base” and
PWC’s “Knowledge View”) and outlined some of the dif?culties several of these
organisations have had in implementing such knowledge bases1 within these KMS. Alavi
and Leidner’s(1999) survey indicated individual accounting ?rms such as Arthur Anderson,
Deloitte and Touche, Ernst and Young, KPMG Peat Marwick and Price Waterhouse Coopers
all began developing and implementing KMS from the 1990s.
20. During the period under review only Ernst &Young, KPMG, Deliottes and BDO Kendalls
partnered projects.
21. We do not deny that other universities have centres, lecture series and projects that involve
some engagement with accounting practitioners. We have focussed here on long-term
systemic engagement and a review of the web sites of the largest universities indicates a
patchy ongoing involvement with accounting practitioners. Only at Sydney University,
through the Pacioli Society and the sponsored journal, Australian Accounting Review, is
there evidence of long-term, systemic interactions between academics and accounting
practitioners.
22. Juchau (2005) lists the major reports as being, the Vatter Report, 1964 (with the broader
Martin Committee Report, also 1964); followed by the Standish Report (1982); Karpin Report
on general management education (1985); the Task Force for Accounting Education: ICAA
and ASA and AAANZ (1988); Mathews Report (1990); “Chartered Accountants in the 21st
Century” (1994); ICAA report, Trends in Accounting at Australian Universities (2002).
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23. See Higher Education Information Management System (HEIMS) at www.heimshelp.deewr.
gov.au/6_Appendices/#Appendix_E_-_Field_of_Education_Classi?cation.
24. At the highest level there are 12 broad ?elds of education called academic organisational units
(AOU). The NGwithin an AOU(the AOUG) are sub-divisions of education offered by an AOU.
The DGare sub-divisions of the narrowAOUGs. For example, BankingandFinance (with four
DG) is one of seven NG within the Management and Commerce AOU, as is Business and
Management (with 13 DG) and Accounting (with one DG). Economics and Econometrics (with
two DG) was one of 12 NG within the Society and Culture AOU. The DG have six-digit codes
describing the ?eld for that group. A group can include a range of individual disciplinary
subjects taught. For example, all Accounting subjects are coded within the single DG code
080101, whereas Industrial Relations, one of several Business and Management codes, is
coded as 080309. Moving up a step, at the narrow level (called the AOUG level), we have
four-digit codes. Accounting is 0801, whereas Industrial Relations is part of the Business and
Management NG coded 0803. At the broad group level we have two-digit codes. Accounting
and Business and Management are both part of Management and Commerce, code 08.
25. A reduction in speci?city occurs in the DEEWR data where, for example, the
accounting staff teach ?nance or taxation, as well as accounting. If the proportion of
EFTSL taught Accounting subjects (coded 0801) is less than 70 per cent of total EFTSL
taught by the group, then they will be coded 08 Management and Commerce rather than
0801 Accounting. In this case both the student load and the staf?ng is coded 08, including all
the Accounting EFTSL and the staff teaching them. DEEWR con?rmed that this was
common with several universities classifying accounting units across as many as four
AOUGs. Sometimes units from other AOUs (mainly Banking and Finance) were classi?ed as
Accounting, but such instances were less common. DEEWR data shows that for the actual
student load aggregated at the “narrow” AOUG EFTSL, for the four commerce-related
disciplines under investigation, are much smaller than EFTSL collected at the DG level
because some DG EFTSL is coded either directly to the broader two-digit AOU level or to
other AOUG codes. Note this difference is apparent in the student loads represented in
Tables V and VI of this paper. A summation of this data highlights that in Accounting the
average EFTSL load at the AOUG level for the period (17,304) as a percentage of the average
EFTSL load at the DG level (30,920) is 55.96 percent. An analysis of Economics and
Econometrics (11,762/21,535: 54.62 percent) and Business and Management (22,911/44,641:
51.32 percent) provide similar outcomes, whereas in Finance and Banking only (5,139/14,202)
36.19 percent is aggregated to the AOUG level. The remaining DG EFTSL is aggregated to
other narrow AOUGs or directly to broad AOU code. In Accounting the shrinkage of EFTSL
at the AOUG level is less than the other disciplines being compared but as all disciplines
compared seem to have suffered at least to the same degree (more so in Finance and
Banking), and as we can get access to staf?ng data only at the narrow AOUG level, valid
comparisons can only be made by comparing data collected by DEEWR at the narrow
AOUG level.
26. It is acknowledged that the actual disciplinary units taught increased over the period so a
restructuring that recoded Business and Management as Management and Commerce (08)
could lead to a reduction on EFTSL If coded at the 0803 level.
27. Wiley Australia, Directory of Accounting, 2003-2004.
28. AFAANZ has granted a total of more than $1 million since the mid-2000s towards
accounting academic research.
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Further reading
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(accessed 25 August 2011).
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About the authors
Kevin Clarke is a Senior Lecturer in the UNSW’s Australian School of Business and teaches both
Accounting and Finance in the school’s full and part time AGSM MBA programs. He holds
multiple postgraduate quali?cations in accounting, economics and taxation law. His PhD
examines the history of professional accounting and he has published a variety of articles both
locally and internationally on this and related subjects. He has received a number of academic
and professional grants and awards and is a regular presenter at research forums, both within
Australia and internationally. Kevin Clarke is the corresponding author and can be contacted at:
[email protected]
Jack Flanagan is Emeritus Professor of Accounting at Australian Catholic University,
Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Accounting and Assurance Research, Australian
School of Business and on the Adjunct Faculty at the AGSM. His research interests include the
?nancial analysis of corporate performance, ethical decision making by accountants and the
ethics of ?nancial measurement. He was a founding director of the Accounting Professional and
Ethical Standards Board.
Winning
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Sharron O’Neill is a Research Fellow (Senior lecturer) at the International Governance and
Performance Research Centre, at Macquarie University. She held previous academic positions at
the University of Sydney where she taught both Financial and Management Accounting at both
undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She has completed a Bachelor of Commerce
(Accounting) UWSN, a Master of Commerce (Honours) degree at UNSW. Her Master’s thesis
developed and tested a model to explain environmental risk management strategy. Her primary
research agenda is focused around occupational health and safety performance measurement.
Her PhD (RMIT) examines the evolution of OHS performance disclosures by large Australian
mining organisations.
ARJ
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This article has been cited by:
1. Kevin Clarke, Jack Flanagan, Sharron O'Neill. 2012. Success in winning Australian Research Council
grants as a measure of comparative professionalised disciplinary research activity. Pacific Accounting Review
24:1, 51-79. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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doc_955042071.pdf
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether accounting researchers in Australia more
proactively pursued government-sponsored Australian Research Council (ARC) research funding in
the post-Enron period than researchers in other commerce-related disciplines.
Accounting Research Journal
Winning ARC grants: comparing accounting with other commerce-related disciplines
Kevin Clarke J ack Flanagan Sharron O'Neill
Article information:
To cite this document:
Kevin Clarke J ack Flanagan Sharron O'Neill, (2011),"Winning ARC grants: comparing accounting with other
commerce-related disciplines", Accounting Research J ournal, Vol. 24 Iss 3 pp. 213 - 244
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Winning ARC grants: comparing
accounting with other
commerce-related disciplines
Kevin Clarke
Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales,
Sydney, Australia
Jack Flanagan
Centre for Accounting and Assurance Research, Australian School of Business,
University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, and
Sharron O’Neill
International Governance and Performance Research Centre,
School of Accounting and Corporate Governance, Macquarie University,
Sydney, Australia
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine whether accounting researchers in Australia more
proactively pursued government-sponsored Australian Research Council (ARC) research funding in
the post-Enron period than researchers in other commerce-related disciplines.
Design/methodology/approach – The study measures disciplinary research activity using
successful Australian Research Council Linkage and Discovery grants for the period 2000 to 2008.
The study identi?es the number of grants received, the total dollar amount funded, the number of
participating institutions, individual researchers and (where applicable) partnering organisations.
Using these criteria, the study compares the success of accounting with that of banking and ?nance,
economics and business and management.
Findings – The study highlights accounting’s failure to attain comparable levels of research funding
relative to other commerce-related disciplines (both in terms of grants and dollars), even given the
public pro?le of accounting events post-Enron. The study reveals a signi?cantly higher “elite
institution effect” exists in accounting and lower levels of academic and commercial partnerships
when compared to other disciplines. The study examines potential reasons for the lack of ARC funding
won by accounting researchers.
Practical implications – The persistently low level of representation of accounting researchers
among ARC grant winners during this period appears counterintuitive to the traditional “professional
model” that links university-based disciplinary members with practitioners. Why accounting, as a
high-pro?le profession diverges from this model should be of concern to researchers, universities and
the accounting profession.
Originality/value – The study’s use of comparative ARC data extends and contextualises earlier
studies that have sought to examine the state of accounting research in Australia.
Keywords Australia, Accounting research, Grants, Professionalism, Research grants,
Post-Enron period, Australian Research Council, Commonwealth Department of Education,
Employment and Workplace Relations
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 would like to thank the Australian Research Council and the Commonwealth
Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations for their assistance.
Winning
ARC grants
213
Accounting Research Journal
Vol. 24 No. 3, 2011
pp. 213-244
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1030-9616
DOI 10.1108/10309611111186984
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1. Introduction
On the world stage, the ?rst decade of the twenty-?rst century was characterised by a
series of events with signi?cance for the global accounting profession. Following the
collapse of Enron in the USAand the end of the dot-comboomin late 2001 a succession of
contentious accounting-related aftershocks reverberated through the discipline. These
included the rapid disintegration of the international accounting ?rmArthur Anderson,
the subsequent introduction of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the establishment of the
Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. The period concluded with what has
been called the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). These events, both individually and
collectively, focused public attention on a range of accounting practices and the role
accountants play in commercial and ?nancial institutions. While their epicentre was the
USA, their impact was felt throughout the accounting world[1].
The local adoption of international ?nancial reporting standards by the Australian
Accounting Standards Board also had a profound effect on, not only the actual
practices of accounting and auditing, but those administrative bodies and processes
fundamental to their application in this country[2]. The development and subsequent
adoption of a number of recommendations proposed in the Commonwealth
Government’s Corporate Law Economic Reform Program (CLERP), revisions to the
Corporations Act and policy changes introduced by the Australian Securities and
Investments Commission (ASIC) all directly contributed to a rapidly changing and
increasing uncertain accounting environment in Australia.
Within the same timeframe, the collapse of high-pro?le companies, beginning with
HIH Insurance and One.Tel (in 2001) and concluding with ABC Learning (in 2008) and
Babcock and Brown (in 2009) ensured that Australian accounting could not be
quarantined from continued public scrutiny.
Throughout the decade questions and criticisms have been voiced that once again
focus on the discipline’s responsiveness to both corporate failure and the ongoing need
to develop broadly accepted accounting and auditing practices. For example, the
?nancial crisis that hit the global banking system in 2007 re-exposed a raft of perennial
accounting problems that had been earlier identi?ed and widely-associated with the
collapse of Enron in December 2001 (Unerman and O’Dwyer, 2010)[3]. These matters
demanded investigation, but are said to have received little before the ?nancial crisis
hit the USA and Europe in 2008 (Arnold, 2009, p. 803).
Accounting, as a discipline, has highly-visible representative organisations and
commercial ?rms that consistently promote those attributes associated with
professional recognition (Greenwood, 1957; Lee, 1995). The abundance of references
in sociological and professionalism literature to the “profession” of accountancy[4]
within the Australian context con?rms the broad social acceptance of the occupational
status attributed to the local accounting discipline[5].
Notably, since 2000, claims to expertise and professionalismin relation to accountancy
have been consistently and aggressively promoted by both CPA Australia (we mean
business) and The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia (ICAA) (number 1 in
numbers) through extensive brand-management campaigns. The respective
annual reports of both professional bodies re?ect increasing marketing and
promotional expenditures during this period[6]. While this expenditure is indicative of
intra-professional competition, it is competition based on the assertion that the specialised
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accounting knowledge possessed by their respective members is both current and critical
to contemporary commercial activity.
Professionalism literature indicates that the media campaigns promoted by each of
accounting’s representative bodies were to be expected, as the legitimacy of the
discipline’s status within the Australian occupational hierarchy, is contingent upon
the (actual or socially perceived) capacity of its contemporary knowledge set to provide
understanding of and explanations about commercial uncertainty to those outside the
profession (Rueschemeyer, 1983).
Whilst discussion and subsequent criticism of speci?c accounting and auditing
practices can be directed at the discipline, it would churlish to lay the blame solely on
accountants as accounting outcomes are often the manifestation of actions (and
interactions) within the broader business community. For example, management groups
(with share-based remuneration); bankers and advisers in ?nancial markets (on the use
of derivative-based products); economists with government organisations and banks
(keeping interest rates low, lending on little or no security); regulators who seemed to see
corporate failures, such as HIH, only after they had occurred (Grabosky and Braithwaite,
1987; Whitmont, 2001) and ?nancial journalists who failed to report irregularities in
companies that later failed (Kitchener, 2002) have all contributed to or been affected by
the commercial events of the past decade. Globally, Enron, Sarbanes-Oxley, the GFCand
locally, One.Tel, CLERP and ABC Learning all obviously involved more than simply
accounting issues (Bargeron et al., 2007; Leuz and Wysocki, 2008).
Studies examining the responses of other commercial disciplines to the events of the
last decade (McSweeney, 2009; Elliott, 2009) indicate that while individuals and
academic groups have provided signi?cant commentary and insight on, what is
referred to here, as the post-Enron events, those organisations which represent other
commerce-related disciplines such as economics, ?nance, banking and management
appear not to have responded with the same aggressive, systemic, publicly-visible,
self-proclamations of knowledge and expertise as the accounting profession did[7].
Developing a profession’s knowledge set requires a commitment to research
so as to substantiate claims made for specialised knowledge. The responses made
by the accounting profession to the events of the last decade (as compared to other
commerce-based disciplines), has motivated this study to question whether in the
post-Enron era, accounting researchers have more vigorously attempted to engage in
research activities than some of the other commerce-related disciplines.
The ?rst place to look for research activity is the publication rate of Australian
researchers in major accounting journals. The level of research published by the
Australian accounting discipline is relatively high when compared to research
published by academic accountants of other nationalities (Chan et al., 2007). Evidence
from the USA, however, indicates that the proportion of accounting research published
in major journals is low relative to publication in other commerce-related disciplines
(Swanson, 2004). There is no equivalent Australian research on the comparative success
of accounting researchers relative to other commerce-related researchers and
comparisons are dif?cult because of the varying numbers of, and standards applied
by, international journals in different disciplines. An alternative approach is to compare
the relative success of Australian accounting researchers in winning competitive
research grants, such as those provided by the Australian Research Council (ARC).
Winning
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ARC grants offered by the Commonwealth government are an important source of
funding for signi?cant research projects within the local university sector.
The Commonwealth Government’s commitment to an ef?cient and effective
allocation of resources to businesses was evident in its adoption of the CLERP
proposals in 2004, which brought the regulation of corporate accounting disclosures
and their audit under greater government control. It could be expected that accounting
researchers try to secure suf?cient research funds to improve understanding of the
ef?ciency and effectiveness of the accounting policies adopted by major companies, the
consequences of CLERP reforms and fallout from several large corporate collapses.
ARC funding is limited and competition for grants is extreme. Researchers in the
commerce-related disciplines of ?nance, economics and management could have also
been expected to use the events leading to the GFC as a driver to seek a larger share of
the ARC funding pool. As a consequence the current study looks at the success of
Australian accounting researchers in winning ARC research grants when compared
with three other commerce-related disciplines.
Given the events in the decade leading up to the GFC and their impact on
accounting, and with an observed trend in leading journals towards the publication of
?nancial accounting research, we investigate four propositions relating to the period
2000-2008:
P1. That the proportion of successful ARC-funded research grants awarded to
accounting researchers would increase, in absolute or comparative terms,
relative to those awarded in the other commerce-related disciplines.
P2. That the proportion of successful ARC-funded research grants awarded to
accounting researchers would accelerate, in absolute or comparative terms.
P3. That there would be an increase in participation in successful ARC-funded
research grants by accounting researchers and the number of universities and
partnering organisations.
P4. That the growth in successful ARC-funded research grants going to
accounting researchers would be primarily due to increased funding for both
?nancial accounting and related auditing topics.
The results of our investigation show no strong support for the ?rst two propositions
with accounting researchers consistently receiving fewer grants and less funding that
the other disciplines investigated. P3 was af?rmed in terms of increased academic
participation only, while P4 was con?rmed with a relative increase in successful
?nancial accounting and auditing research. The overall conclusion reached was that
accounting was a “poor cousin” to the other three commerce-related disciplines in the
period reviewed, generating less than 7 percent of the grants made to all four
disciplines over the period, less than 6 percent of funding allocated, involving fewer
than 7 percent of researchers and 7 percent of participating organisations. We look at
possible causes for the poor performance of accounting researchers in winning ARC
grants and provide some suggestions for future research.
The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. The next section reviews the
literature on accounting research activity to assess the key trends identi?ed. In the main
empirical section that follows, we examine the performance of accounting researchers in
winning ARC grants in comparison with their commerce-related peers.
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Finally, we analyse some of the reasons suggested for accounting researchers’ poor
performance in winning ARC grants and indicate some avenues for future research,
followed by conclusions.
2. The development of disciplinary knowledge and accounting research
activity
Research into occupational strati?cation often relies on the concept of “intellectual
jurisdiction” as a means of distinguishing vocational groups (Larson, 1977; Abbott,
1988; Lee, 1995). The social identi?cation of a profession’s jurisdiction is based on the
group’s control over a de?ned “knowledge set”. As a consequence Halliday (1985,
p. 423) refers to a profession’s knowledge set as its “core generating trait”.
There is ample evidence of the Australian accounting bodies’ concerns with
professional knowledge or core knowledge and its application. On their web sites, CPA
Australia has a “knowledge portal” (CPA Australia, 2010) and ICAA has a “knowledge
centre” (ICAA, 2010b). Both bodies, in their pre-quali?cation educational literature for
professional accountants, stress the “core knowledge” areas to be covered in accredited
university and professional pre-quali?cation examinations (ICAA, 2010a).
The development of disciplinary knowledge requires a signi?cant investment in
research if a professionalised occupation is to identify those issues likely to threaten its
perceived social value and formulate appropriate responses to them. The substantive
nature of such investment has meant professions have sought to form mutually
bene?cial relationships with other interested parties in the facilitation of the research
associated with knowledge development (Larson, 1977; Torstendahl, 1990). Universities
and university-based disciplinary members have historically provided professions with
an effective means by which to facilitate these activities (Collins, 1979).
An extensive body of literature highlights the closeness of the relationship between
professionalised occupational groups, individual academics and universities (Schwarz,
2004). This literature often focuses on the centrality of the latter’s roles in disciplinary
knowledge-creation and its eventual dissemination (Carr-Saunders and Wilson, 1933;
Buckley, 1978; Freidson, 1986).
The accounting discipline has had an increasingly large academic presence in
Australian universities since 1955 when the ?rst accounting chairs were appointed at
Melbourne University and the University of NSW[8] (Goldberg, 1980). Over the last
50 years the professional bodies have attempted to facilitate a strong accounting
presence in all Australian higher educational institutions (for a comprehensive history,
see Juchau, 2005). The approach adopted by the accounting bodies has re?ected the
same mutually bene?cial relationship that is enjoyed by other professions and higher
educational institutions throughout the world (Schwarz, 2004).
Accounting research was de?ned in a recent study as:
[. . .] a literature that draws from and adds to a larger body of work dealing primarily with
businesses and their interactions with society at large, often through capital markets
(Oler et al., 2010, p. 635).
Such a de?nition indicates the broad scope of accounting research and also indicates
that accounting research has importance for society in general and is not just of
academic interest. Oler et al. (2010, p. 644) review the top six accounting journals and
conclude that, in the USA, ?nancial accounting is the dominant topic of research
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and that this research is informed primarily by ?nance and economics, consistent with
a rise in the use of positive theories employing in the main, archival methods.
Swanson (2004) investigated the comparative publishing success in major journals
of US accounting researchers with researchers in ?nance, management and marketing
and reported that accounting had the lowest proportion of researchers who publish in
the top journals. Some studies have suggested that accounting research is in decline in
the USA because of declining numbers of full-time accounting academics (Foggerty
and Markarian, 2007; Brown et al., 2007), a situation not dissimilar from Australia[9].
Chan et al. (2007) comprehensively analysed the publication of accounting research
in 24 major accounting journals and the level of authorship concentration, over a
15-year period (Heck, 2009[11]). They found that Australian accounting academics and
universities, when compared with their peers elsewhere, appeared to be making a
signi?cant contribution. Australia ranked as the third most productive country in
terms of published accounting research and contributed 8.1 percent, or 633 weighted
articles (Chan et al., 2007, p. 195).
While Chan et al. indicate that the levels of research published by the Australian
discipline is relativelyhighwhencomparedtoresearchpublishedbyacademic accountants
of other nationalities, their study does not compare the output of Australian accounting
researchers with that of other associated disciplines. Studies documenting the output of
Australian researchers in other commerce-related faculties have tended to focus on one
discipline only (Pomfret and Wang, 2003; Heck and Cooley, 2009; Cooley and Heck, 2005).
While studies have attempted to examine aspects of interdisciplinary publication
rates (Swanson, 2004) such comparisons, using a simple (or scaled) numeric
assessment of publications or a quality-based weighting process (Ellison, 2002), do not
re?ect the timeliness of a discipline’s response to contemporaneous issues[10].
For example, studies that have examined the responses by accounting researchers to
the more recent issues emerging from the GFC are highly critical of the applied value of
published studies, suggesting that rather than being proactive, they tend to lag behind
accounting practice (Arnold, 2009, p. 804).
In a review of the research focus of articles included in top-ranking accounting
journals, Unerman and O’Dwyer (2010, pp. 8-12) con?rm that there was no observed
trend in the frequency of any contemporaneous topic over recent times. For example,
fair-value accounting was the focus in only 1 percent of papers published and no
articles were published on the accounting issues raised by new forms of transaction,
such as securitisation of debts, or the use of off-balance sheet (special purpose) entities.
Hopwood (2008, pp. 88-94) explains that published research into accounting has
traditionally focused on a limited set of issues and that the more in?uential journals
appear to accept only particular types of studies. As he poignantly states: “there are very
few mechanisms by which the concerns of practice can permeate the accounting
academic world” and goes on to suggest that the worlds of accounting practitioners and
those of accountingacademics mayhave taken“divergent paths” (Hopwood, 2008, p. 88).
Tilt (2010) notes a general schism between academics and accounting practitioners in
Australia, whilst at the same time others observe that Australian academics have
become more focussed on the publication process as an outcome in itself (Ross, 2010;
Bricker and Previts, 1990).
Oler et al.(2010, pp. 641-2) indicate that there are threats looming for academic
accounting research emanating from the rising number of researchers with no practical
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experience in accounting, a trend towards homogenisation of methodologies applied in
?nancial accounting research, in particular, and the overlooking of signi?cant topics
which cannot be addressed through the theoretical and quantitative lens that dominate
the selection criteria applied by many journal editorial boards. In defence of accounting
researchers, the extended period of conception and gestation prior to publication in
many highly regarded journals prohibits the immediacy of a disciplinary response
(Taylor, 2009, pp. 321-4). As this may also be the case in other commerce-related
disciplines, for the purposes of this study, measures based on publications (or citations)
may not be indicative of the discipline’s reaction to contemporary issues or events.
The current study looks at the relative success of Australian accounting researchers
in winning competitive research grants provided by the ARC. The motivations for
using successful ARC funding as a gauge of research activity across commerce-related
disciplines are threefold. First, comparing publication in leading journals across
several disciplines is fraught with dif?culty because of the different number of
journals, the different criteria applied for evaluating submissions and the different
number of articles published each year relative to the researcher population. Second,
the ARC selection criteria focus on aspects such as national interest and application to
real-world problems and consequently should re?ect contemporary issues, such as
accounting regulation and the events leading to the GFC. Third, the selection criteria
applied in ARC selections are consistent across disciplines.
3. ARC grant success as an indicator of commerce-related comparative
research activity
Australia has a university systemwithconstrained funding available for researchactivity
(Wine?eld et al., 2002; ARC, 2000-2008) and academics are under intense pressure to seek
grants to fund their projects. Given such pressures, in concert with the uncertainty of the
last decade, we would have expected academics from all commerce-related disciplines to
have perceived this as an opportunity to bolster their applications for ARC funding,
irrespective of their discipline or the availability of other potential funding sources.
Competitive grants provide a uniform indicator of comparative research quality and
relevance in the Australian setting, as all disciplines must compete for a share of the
same pool of funds. Macve (1992) used a similar approach to highlight a number of
problems faced by accounting educators (and the small proportion of ARC funds
allocated to commerce-based disciplines) in the 1980s[12].
During the last decade the ARC has offered “Discovery” and “Linkage” grants[13],
both of which are ranked against criteria such as “signi?cance” and “innovation”,
“approach taken” and “national bene?t” (ARC, 2000-2008). Linkage grants have, as their
main purpose, the linking of universities, through research, with other organisations to
“enable the application of advanced knowledge to problems” (ARC, 2000-2008). With
regard to accounting, Linkage grants, in particular, appear to provide an opportunity for
researchers to partner with large professional ?rms, the profession’s representative
bodies and account preparers in investigating disciplinary issues. Overall, both of these
types of competitive grants appear to provide an appropriate means of facilitating
research into contemporary issues countenanced by all commerce-related disciplines.
As a result this study compares the success of accounting, to other commerce-related
disciplines, in winning both Linkage and Discovery grants.
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3.1 ARC classi?cations
The current study applies the ARC classi?cations to de?ne and differentiate
disciplinary research activity. Since 1998 the ARC has relied on the “Research Field,
Courses and Disciplines” (RFCD) scheme to classify research projects. Using this
approach the ARC classi?es “Accounting, Auditing and Accountability” (code 350100)
(referred to here as, Accounting) as one of a number of distinct disciplines within in the
“Commerce, Management, Tourism and Services Division” (CMTS).
This study compares Accounting funding outcomes on Discovery and Linkage grants
to three other commerce-related disciplines, “Economics” (code 340000), “Finance and
Banking” (code 350300), and “Business and Management” (code 350200). Economics is a
division in its own right with ?ve disciplinary groups, whereas Finance and Banking, and
Business and Management, like Accounting, are disciplines within the CMTS division.
Each of these four commerce-related disciplines, as de?ned by their ARC classi?cation,
constitutes a highly-educated occupational group and while some overlap occurs between
them, each has a distinct and identi?able “knowledge set”. All four disciplines have
established histories within Australian universities and each lays claim to similar
university resources with all likely to be subject to similar university constraints.
With regard to the nature of research in each of these disciplines, Oler et al.(2010)
indicate that the general trend in the leading accounting journals (other than
Accounting, Organisations and Society and Contemporary Accounting Research) has
been towards publishing more ?nancial accounting research employing essentially a
positive approach, utilising archival research methodologies and greater numbers of
citations from ?nance and economics. Some subjects, such as social accounting, have
never been published in some top journals, which may re?ect the absence of positive
methodologies in this type of research (Deegan and Soltys, 2006, p. 76).
The major ?nance journals are dominated by quantitative research, again
employing positive archival techniques, but there is a growing interest in other forms
of ?nance, such as behavioural ?nance, that employ alternative methods (Frankfurter
and McGoun, 2002; Neuhauser, 2007). Similarly, economics journals have been more
recently dominated by positive, neo-classical, quantitative research, although, again,
there is a growing interest in different forms of research employing alternative
methods (Volpi, 2010). In management research, where a balance between quantitative
and qualitative research would be expected, there has been a trend towards
quantitative research in the top journals (Gulati, 2007, p. 777) which has alarmed some
observers (Mintzberg et al., 2002; Ghoshal, 2005).
The analysis provided above would indicate that in all four disciplines the more
“scienti?c” positive approaches using predominantly quantitative research would
receive preferential treatment in the major journals. We have no evidence that the ARC
gives preferential treatment to quantitative research, however, successful grants tend
to go to researchers with a publishing track record, meeting the dominant criterion that
the investigators have the capacity to complete the work (ARC, 2011). This would tend
to suggest that quantitative types of research predominate among the grant winners
in the commerce-related disciplines, but this is an area for further research.
In addition to providing a basis for the differentiation of inter-disciplinary research,
the classi?cation regime employed by the ARCin awarding both Discovery and Linkage
grants may also provide further insight into the timeliness of accounting research.
Those successful grants identi?ed within the Accounting classi?cation are further
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grouped into the intra-disciplinary categories of “Financial Accounting”, “Management
Accounting”, “Auditing and Accountability” and “Other”. Thus, by using ARC data it
may be possible to recognise trends within successfully funded Accounting research
during the period of interest to this study. Given that the issues identi?ed as problematic
to accountants during the post-Enron period have been predominantly associated with
Financial Accounting and Auditing and Accountability, the current study would expect
to observe an increase in relative funding in these speci?c sub-classi?cations.
It is acknowledged that some accounting researchers will have received ARC
funding outside the Accounting disciplinary classi?cation[14] and that the results of
that research may be of value to the accounting discipline. We suggest that such
research activities do not signi?cantly diminish the ?ndings of this study as other
commerce-related researchers are also likely to receive some ARC funding outside their
disciplinary classi?cation.
3.2 Period of analysis
In December 1999 the Australian Federal Government, through the release of
“Knowledge and Innovation: A Policy Statement on Research and Research Training”,
announced a number of major reforms that both changed the role of the ARC and
established the National Competitive Grants Programme (NCGP). This programme
established both the Discovery and Linkage Grant schemes fromthe following year, and
relied on the aforementioned RFCD approach to project classi?cation. In April 2008 the
Australian Bureau of Statistics (in conjunction with Statistics NewZealand) announced
a new research classi?cation scheme (ANZSRC) replacing the existing method. While
the RFCD research classi?cation scheme applied by the ARC remained consistent from
2000 to 2008, the changes introduced by the ARC means research comparisons made
outside this period become more problematic (ARC, 2000-2008).
As a result the period from2000 to 2008 was chosen as a suitable timeframe in which
to compare commerce-based research activity. The year 2000 is an appropriate starting
point as it marked the end of the dot-com boom globally and the high-pro?le corporate
collapses of “OneTel” and “HIH” in Australia, following the demise of “Enron” in the
USA, occurred around late 2001. These events should have put accounting researchers
on notice that the discipline was likely to encounter a heightened level of international
and local scrutiny. The period of analysis concludes in 2008 with the GFC, the fallout
from the sub-prime mortgage meltdown in the USA and collapse of several large banks
in both the USA and Europe, all of which continued to focus attention on the practice of
accounting (Reason and Leone, 2008; Katz, 2009). While speci?cally associated with
the accounting discipline, the events captured within the period 2000-2008 profoundly
affected all four of the commerce-related disciplines chosen for this study.
The comprehensive nature of the issues characterising this period should
have provided the stimulus for commerce-related research participation from a
broad cross-section of institutions, individual academics and potential partnering
organisations. The nominated period also provided researchers from each discipline
with an opportunity to seek ARC funding for projects that adopted a variety
of perspectives and a number of philosophical positions or paradigms that could
potentially employ both empirical and non-empirical techniques. Overall, the breadth of
the issues associatedwiththe events capturedwithin this perioddo not limit the research
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opportunities available to the majority of commerce-based researchers but many of them
have been widely linked to the accounting discipline.
The period 2000-2008 is of a suf?cient duration to capture each of these commercial
disciplines’ research response to post-Enron events given the often protracted
preparations associated with successfully obtaining ARC funding. In acknowledging
the lead-time necessary to conceive and develop successful research projects (in concert
with the ARC’s grant application process and the timetable associated with such
funding) it may be expected that an academic reaction motivated by such events from
each of the commercial disciplines would become apparent from the 2003 funding
announcements. As a result, the period 2000-2008 includes data pertaining to funding
both prior to, and post, any anticipated response. The duration of the study allows us to
observe any immediate reaction to these events and each discipline’s continued research
response to their ongoing, sometimes indirect or secondary, consequences, in addition to
any overall trends within accounting research that may have occurred.
3.3 Propositions
Given the impact of the aforementioned events on the Australian commercial
environment since 2000 and the highly professionalised nature of the accounting
discipline, we address the following four propositions:
P1. The proportion of (and total funding for) successful ARC-funded research grants
(both Discovery and Linkage) awarded in the Accounting classi?cation (code
350100) would increase, in absolute or comparative terms, relative to those
awardedtothe Finance andBanking(code 350300), Economics (code 340000) and
Business and Management (code 350200) classi?cations from 2000 to 2008.
P2. The proportion of (and total funding for) successful ARC-funded research grants
(both Discovery and Linkage) awarded in the Accounting classi?cation (code
350100) would accelerate, in absolute or comparative terms, relative those
awardedtothe Finance andBanking(code 350300), Economics (code 340000) and
Business and Management (code 350200) classi?cations after 2002.
P3. There would be an increase in participation in successful ARC-funded research
grants (both Discovery and Linkage) within the Accounting classi?cation (code
350100) in terms of number of academics, universities and partnering
organisations overall, and after 2002.
P4. The growth in successful ARC-funded research grants (both Discovery and
Linkage) within the Accounting classi?cation (code 350100) would be primarily
due to an increase in the proportion of (and total funding for) both Financial
Accounting and Auditing and Accountability overall and projects after 2002.
4. Results
Amounts shown in Table I (Discovery grants) and Table II (Linkage grants) represent
the total funding for the project in the year of its approval. For example, Chua, Baxter
and Sawabe received three years’ funding totalling $125k for a management
accounting Discovery project in 2006 for the years 2007 ($35k), 2008 ($46k) and 2009
($44k). Table I includes the entire $125k in 2006 as this re?ects the ARC’s approval
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Accounting
(350100) Economics (340000)
Finance and
Banking (350300)
Business and
Management
(350200)
Year fo
funding
commitment A B C A B C A B C A B C
2000 3 0.37 4 17 2.08 31 4 0.61 8 4 0.55 9
2001 3 0.24 4 14 2.93 35 3 1.02 5 9 1.12 27
2002 2 0.24 6 26 4.38 52 5 0.77 11 10 1.30 32
2003 3 0.29 5 20 2.91 37 6 1.08 12 9 1.32 19
2004 4 0.37 8 36 7.16 65 8 1.68 21 8 1.52 22
2005 5 0.72 9 31 6.43 66 6 1.49 20 8 1.63 24
2006 1 0.13 3 23 6.25 56 7 2.22 23 8 1.79 21
2007 4 0.86 9 30 6.79 71 5 0.96 10 7 1.59 18
2008 0 0 0 33 9.11 94 3 0.50 8 9 1.60 26
Totals 25 $3.22m 48 230 $48.04m 507 47 $10.33m 118 72 $12.42m 198
Averages
2000/2008 2.8 $0.36m 5.3 25.5 $5.34m 56.3 5.2 $1.15m 13.1 8.0 $1.38m 22.0
2000/2002 2.7 $0.28 4.7 19.0 $3.13 39.4 4.0 $0.80 8.0 7.7 $0.99 22.7
Post-2002 2.8 $0.39 5.7 28.8 $6.44 64.8 5.8 $1.32 15.7 8.2 $1.57 21.7
Change pre-
to post-2002
(%) 3.7 38.9 21.3 51.8 105.9 64.5 45.0 64.7 96.3 6.5 59.2 (4.4)
Notes: A ¼ no. of grants; B ¼ A$ million funded; C ¼ no. participants/researchers
Table I.
ARC Discovery grants in
Accounting, Economics,
Finance and Banking,
and Business and
Management disciplines
(2000-2008)
Accounting
(350100) Economics (3400000)
Finance and
Banking (350300)
Business and
Management (350200)
A B C D A B C D A B C D A B C D
2000 2 0.32 2 3 16 1.41 12 31 4 0.54 2 4 16 1.39 14 30
2001 3 0.45 11 3 13 1.51 38 25 3 0.45 10 3 9 0.87 27 11
2002 1 0.12 4 3 24 4.25 71 50 2 0.13 7 2 21 2.71 57 26
2003 2 0.35 7 2 9 1.30 29 11 4 0.91 8 5 31 5.26 98 52
2004 3 0.72 14 7 10 1.59 24 30 6 0.81 11 8 20 3.45 65 30
2005 3 0.50 11 3 12 4.71 55 25 3 0.44 7 11 13 1.90 41 13
2006 0 0 0 0 10 3.06 39 10 3 0.65 11 6 14 4.34 59 27
2007 3 0.47 11 7 11 4.79 55 27 2 0.27 9 2 13 2.21 42 20
2008 2 0.33 5 2 6 1.32 25 11 1 0.11 3 2 16 5.23 64 24
Total 19 $3.26 65 30 111 $23.94 348 220 28 $4.31 68 43 153 $27.36 467 233
Averages
2000/2008 2.1 $0.36 7.2 3.3 12.3 $2.66 38.7 24.4 3.1$0.48 7.6 4.8 17.0 $2.92 51.9 25.9
2000/2002 2.0 $0.30 5.7 3.0 17.7 $2.39 40.3 35.3 3.0$0.37 6.3 3.0 15.3 $1.66 32.7 22.3
Post-2002 2.2 $0.40 8.0 3.5 9.7 $2.80 37.8 19.0 3.2$0.53 8.2 5.7 17.8 $3.73 61.5 27.7
Change
pre- to
post-2002
(%) 10.0 33.3 40.1 20.0 (45.0) 17.2 (6.2) (46.2) 6.743.2 30.2 90.0 16.3 124.7 88.1 24.2
Notes: A ¼ no. of grants; B ¼ A$ million funded; C ¼ no. participants/researchers; D ¼ no. partner
organisations
Table II.
ARC Linkage Grants in
Accounting, Economics,
Finance and Banking,
and Business and
Management disciplines
2000-2008
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of funds to the project, rather than its actual transfer. Table II provides an aggregate of
both rounds 1 and 2 approvals for Linkage projects each year.
In Tables I and II we have extracted the following information for each of the four
commerce-related disciplines:
(1) the number of successful projects funded;
(2) the total amount of funding and average amount per project, plus both pre- and
post-2002 averages;
(3) the number of participating researchers; and
(4) in Table II the number of partnering organisations, plus both pre- and post-2002
averages (note: partner organisations does not include administrative
university).
Table I importantly highlights that for the period 2000-2008, Accounting consistently
received (on average) fewer Discovery grants, was awarded less funds in total and had
lower levels of researcher participation than the other three disciplines. The table
indicates that across all of these metrics, Accounting failed to outperform the other
disciplines within each of the individual years between 2000 and 2008 and in some
cases was outperformed by a multiple of ten. In the post-2002 period, Accounting
Discovery grants increased in terms of their dollar value, number of grants and
number of participants. However, this occurred at a signi?cantly lower rate than the
other three commerce-related groups.
The data contained in Table I show that, relative to the 2000-2002 period, the period
2003-2008 generated a 3.7 percent increase in the number of Accounting grants
approved, which was lower than the equivalent increases in Business and Management
(6.5 percent) and much lower than the increases in Economics (51.8 percent) and
Finance and Banking (45 percent). Given the increase in the numbers of Accounting
Discovery grants was generated off a much smaller base than these other disciplines,
the 3.7 percent increase reported in Accounting is perhaps even less signi?cant than
might otherwise be the case. We thus ?nd, in relation to Discovery grants, no support
for P1 and P2 and only weak support for P3.
With regard to the average amount of yearly funding received by each of the
disciplines, Table I shows that, in the post-2002 period, Accounting researchers
obtained signi?cantly fewer dollars from Discovery grants ($0.39m) when compared to
Finance and Banking ($1.32m), Business and Management ($1.57m) and Economics
($6.44m). In relative terms, Accounting projects generated only 7 percent of the average
annual funding granted for Economics projects, 30 percent of average annual grants in
Finance and Banking and 26 percent of the annual average funding granted in
Business and Management over the period reviewed.
In terms of academic participation, the number of participants in Accounting
projects rose post-2002 by 21.3 per cent. The percentage increases in Economics
(64 percent) and Finance and Banking (96 percent) were higher, whereas Business and
Management suffered a marginal decline in academic participation (4 percent) but
again off a much higher base. The data contained in Table I provide support for P3 in
absolute terms only.
In relation to linkage grants, Table II re?ects similar results to those for Discovery
grants shown in Table I. The data show that for the period 2000-2008 Accounting
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(
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consistently received (on average) fewer Linkage grants, was award less funds in total,
had lower levels of researcher participation and engaged fewer partner organisations.
Table II indicates that while Accounting and Finance and Banking have comparable
results, Economics and Business and Management dominate Linkage funding in
commercial disciplines by a signi?cant magnitude across all four criteria.
During the post-2002 period Accounting received (in absolute terms) on average more
grants, increased organisational participation, higher dollars awarded and the number of
participants. However, Table II reveals a mixed story for Accounting when compared to
the other disciplines in terms of the study’s pre- and post-2002 results. In terms of the
average number of grants awarded yearly (from 2002 to 2008), Accounting received
10percent more grants. While Finance andBankingalsoincreasedits share by6.7 percent,
both were however dominated by Business and Management which increased its average
byover 16 percent (importantlyfroma muchhigher base). The average yearlyfunding for
Business and Management projects also increased signi?cantly (124.7 percent), with
Accounting receiving 33.3 percent more funds and Finance and Banking increasing by
43.2 percent. This means that while increasing in average dollar value, Accounting
projects remained the lowest funded discipline in the post-2002 period, receiving
75 percent of the value of grants in Finance and Banking (81 percent in the prior period),
15 percent of the grants in Economics (12.5 percent in the prior period) and 11 percent of
the grants received by Business and Management (18 percent in the prior period).
Table II reveals that both Finance and Banking and Business and Management
(marginally) outperformed Accounting in terms of organisational participation.
Accounting attracted three partnering organisations per project up to 2002 and
3.5 partnering organisatons post-2002. Accounting’s performance is eclipsed by that of
Finance and Banking which also attracted three partnering organisations per project up
to 2002 but enjoyed a signi?cant increase in participation of 90 percent (5.7 partnering
organisatons) post-2002. In terms of academic participation the average number of
researchers post-2002 rose in Accounting at a respectable rate (40 percent) faster than
Finance and Banking (30 percent) but considerably slower than Business and
Management (88 percent).
The data from Table II lead to a partial acceptance of P3 in relation to Linkage grants,
with increases in the number of Accounting grants, their dollar values, participating
researchers andinpartner organisations. However, the datahighlight the failure of the only
professionaliseddiscipline, Accounting, to compete effectivelyfor ARCfundingagainst the
other commerce-related discipines in a period when it could be expected that accounting
researchers would be relatively successful in their grant-winning performance[15].
Table III aggregates the data in Tables I and II and calculates the relative
proportions of total commerce-related research received by each of the four
commerce-related disciplines in terms of successful receipts of grants, funding levels
and participation. Table III again demonstrates Accounting has been outperformed
across each of the metrics for the entire period 2000 to 2008. These results highlight
that Accounting research was a “poor cousin” to its commerce-related neighbours in
the period 2003-2008, generating 6.4 percent of the grants made in the four disciplines
over the period (down from 6.5 percent 2000-2002), 4.6 percent of funding allocated
(down from 5.9 percent 2000-2002), 6.1 percent of researchers (down from 6.5 percent
2000-2002) and 6.3 percent of participating organisations (up from 4.7 percent
2000-2002).
Winning
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N
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B
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C
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Table III.
ARC Total Discovery
and Linkage grants in all
disciplines
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Table III indicates the relative poverty of ARC-funded accounting research in
Australia. The results extend Macve’s observations from the 1980s with regard to the
low level of accounting research funding. From 2000 to 2008 total ARC funding rose
substantially, but the proportion being won by accounting applications declined
considerably. In terms of academic participation P3 can be supported, but not in
relation to partnering organistions.
Table IV gives a break-down of the funded research projects undertaken within the
Accounting classi?cation. The table reveals that a major proportion of the projects
(2000-2008) were “Auditing and Accountability” (36.4 percent), with less going to
Financial Accounting (25.0 percent) and Management Accounting (27.3 percent) and
only 11.3 percent to the Other category.
The changes in the accounting environment after 2002 would indicate a need to
undertake more research on ?nancial reporting and auditing as a consequence of the
changes taking place. Fromthe post-2002 perspective, the proportion of grants going to
“Auditing and Accountability” projects increased signi?cantly from 21.5 percent
(pre-2002) to 43.3 percent, similarly the proportion going to Financial Accounting
projects also rose from21.4 to 25.0 percent of the total. The results contained in Table IV
provide support for P4, with a relative increase in both Auditing and Accountability and
Financial Accounting-related research.
5. Discussion of results
This study has sought to examine ARC-funded research activity when compared with
other commerce-related occupational groups. It proposed that, as a cohort, accounting
researchers would have used the events taking place in the period covered by this
study to vigorously prosecute their case for an increased number and share of ARC
grants. The results do not provide support for this proposition.
In assessing the results of this study, it is necessary to explore some possible
explanations for the relative lack of success by accounting researchers in winning ARC
funding for Accounting projects. Previous studies indicate a lack of success
Total
Financial
Accounting
Management
Accounting
Auditing and
Accountability
Other
(includes tax)
Disc Link Disc Link Disc Link Disc Link Disc Link
2000 3 2 2 0 0 1 1 1 0 0
2001 3 3 0 0 2 3 1 0 0 0
2002 2 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0
2003 3 2 0 1 0 0 3 1 0 0
2004 4 3 1 0 1 1 2 1 0 1
2005 5 3 1 1 1 0 1 2 2 0
2006 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
2007 4 3 1 2 0 0 2 1 1 0
2008 0 2 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0
2000/2008 25 19 6 5 5 7 10 6 4 1
Combined 44 (100.0%) 11 (25.0%) 12 (27.3%) 16 (36.4%) 5 (11.3%)
2000/2002 8 6 3 0 2 5 2 1 1 0
Combined 14 (100.0%) 3 (21.4%) 7 (50.0%) 3 (21.5%) 1 (7.1%)
Post-2002 17 13 3 5 3 2 8 5 3 1
Combined 30 (100.0%) 8 (26.7%) 5 (16.7%) 13 (43.3%) 4 (13.3%)
Table IV.
Accounting, Auditing
and Accountability
projects
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by the discipline in obtaining funding could be accounted for by three factors (Simon,
1992; Tippett, 1992; CPA Australia, 2001; Juchau, 2005):
(1) ARC data could understate research activity because it is possible that
accounting researchers are obtaining alternative sources of funding (such as
accounting ?rms, major corporations and the accounting professional bodies)
while other commerce-related disciplines are more reliant on ARC funding.
(2) ARC data could accurately re?ect the state of accounting research because
accounting academics are overloaded with teaching commitments when
compared to other commerce-related disciplines.
(3) ARC data could re?ect a paucity of effective research cultures and relevant
infrastructures in the academic accounting community when compared to other
commerce-related disciplines.
As the data analysed are based on successful ARC applications rather than total
applications made to the ARC, it is not possible to assess the quantum of applications
made in Accounting versus the other three disciplines investigated (nor is it possible to
assess the success rates of individual institutions). This lack of data limits the current
study’s ability to fully assess the validity of the claims regarding the impact of these
factors on Accounting’s ARC performance. A study in 2001 showed that the success
rate of those who applied was 22 per cent in Accounting and Finance, 20 per cent in
Economics and 12 per cent in Business Management, indicating that a large proportion
of potential research projects never receive funding (Fretz and Veall, 2001, p. 185).
The following sections brie?y explore the three factors that may explain the
relatively low ARC-funding for Accounting.
5.1 Alternative sources of funding
As this study compared commerce-related disciplines, it should be remembered that all
the disciplines have representative bodies and access to commercial entities as potential
sources of research funds. So why accounting researchers would disproportionately
wish to pursue alternative sources of research funding, rather than compete for ARC
funding (which provides additional resources to the universities in which they work),
remains unclear and thus is in itself contentious.
Further insight may be gained from a brief examination of the potential sources of
funding for accounting research. In their annual reports, the two largest professional
accounting bodies in Australia indicate that they allocate resources to a diversity of
research endeavours, fromthe direct ?nancingof individual projects to the sponsoring the
Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and NewZealand. These reports reveal
that combined research-oriented expenditure (direct and indirect) by the ICAA and CPA
Australia nearly doubled from $4.64 million in 2001 to around $9 million in 2008.
In their joint submission to the Review of Australian Higher Education (2008), the
Joint Accounting Bodies ( JAB) stressed that they supported, and were active funders,
of accounting research. A review of their web pages reveals that both have some form
of academic research funding program and that they each support ARC grant
applications. For example, the ICAA recently appointed a head of academic relations
to support, in particular, early-career academic researchers with the initiation of
projects (Evans et al., 2010).
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ARC data con?rms that the professional accounting bodies have been willing to
facilitate what they consider to be relevant research[16]. There is some evidence of
studies being funded by the professional bodies using independent (although
associated) research groups who used commissioned academics[17] and evidence of
support for individuals and groups of researchers[18] (Worthington Di Marzio, 2004).
Irrespective of whether such research was carried out in-house or was commissioned,
the increased funding levels provided a signi?cant pool of resources available for
institutional or academic-type research activities.
Tilt (2010, p. 37) veri?es that academics and practitioners may not be as far apart as
some believe, citing academic publications available on the professional bodies’ web
sites and contributions by academics to professional journals. Tilt’s study indicates that
academics seem to be contributing in newer areas of research, such as accounting for
environmental concerns, where measurement and audit issues proliferate. A possible
reading of this trend is that the professional accounting bodies are positioning
themselves, with the aid of suitable research, as key managers of carbon knowledge and
measurement for corporate disclosure (Lovell and MacKenzie, 2011). Such research
endeavours do not encroach on established areas of accounting practice, where several
unresolved issues could bene?t from professional support.
A look at research support given by the professional accounting bodies through
ARC Linkage grants reveals little focus on an evaluation of the issues arising from
the post-Enron period and appears to be somewhat disjointed when contrasted to the
approach to research adopted by the representative bodies of other professions
(Clarke and Flanagan, 2011) and with that of overseas’ accounting bodies such as the
Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales which has two charitable
trust funds devoted to academic research that support their ongoing “Information for
better markets” project (ICAEW, 2007). This raises the question as to the degree to
which Australian accounting bodies have placed reliance on research carried out by
sister bodies in other countries and perhaps partially explains the number of eminent
accounting researchers identi?ed as working outside Australia (Heck, 2009).
A second avenue for research funding is commercial organisations and professional
?rms. Accounting ?rms represent the most obvious source of potential research funds.
The large accounting ?rms have all recognised the need to develop and manage
“knowledge” and as a result maintain extensive “knowledge management systems” and
research units[19] (Grant, 1996; Alavi and Leidner, 1999). These ?rms obviously seek to
monopolise the bene?ts that in-house research produces so as to give them comparative
advantage in the marketplace. In the current study we could not observe whether
academic researchers were employed by accounting ?rms for their in-house research,
however, one would expect such researchers to try and turn any insights into publishable
projects at some stage. In the period analysed, four ARC Linkage projects involved an
accounting ?rm[20] partnering with an academic institution (24 percent of all Accounting
Linkage projects funded). While this represents a signi?cant source of partner
organisations, the current study suggests this still is an under-represention[21] when
compared to other professionalised occupational groups (Clarke and Flanagan, 2011).
The current study cannot con?rm or reject whether relevant research is conducted
by academics on a private, consultative basis with other elements of the corporate
sector but as no companies have partnered with academics in ARC-funded accounting
projects over the relevant period, it is assumed that there are no strong links between
Winning
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the academic accounting community and the corporate preparers of ?nancial
information.
5.2 Accounting academics’ high teaching loads
For the period prior to that covered by the current study, Simon (1992) suggested that
accounting programs were seen as an inexpensive form of education and therefore
university administrators simply used it as a cash cow to fund more costly disciplines.
Tippett (1992) stated that accounting education in Australia was in a state of chronic
neglect and showed that undergraduate funding levels were historically lower than
those in the UK and USA. A number of enquiries have reported on the state of
accounting education in Australia over the last 25 years all of which tend to con?rm
these views[22] ( Juchau, 2005).
At the beginning of the current decade (and the period covered by this study) the
Commonwealth Government convened a Senate inquiry into the Australian university
sector’s capacity to meet the country’s higher education needs. CPA Australia’s
submission suggested that there had been a real decline in per capita funding of
accounting education and research in the later decades of the twentieth century (2001).
The submission highlighted the detrimental impact this had, not only on graduates and
teaching standards, but also on disciplinary research capabilities and the recruitment of
quality accounting academics. The submission highlighted a history of large class
numbers, under-resourcing, poor student-to-teacher ratios (STR) and therefore a low
level of staff research output, among a number of issues that had proved detrimental to
the quality of accounting education when benchmarked against North American
standards (CPA, 2001). Juchau (2005, p. 17) suggested that the 2003 reforms introduced
by the Commonwealth government would continue to adversely affect university
funding and policy disposition towards the accounting discipline.
The Commonwealth Department of Education, Employment and Workplace
Relations (DEEWR) generates information that may be used to assess the relative
student loads and staf?ng levels of each of the four commerce-related disciplines
examined in the current study for the period 2000-2008. These data may be used to
assess whether the scenario outlined by CPA Australia at the beginning of the decade
is still faced by academics within the accounting discipline and thus has contributed to
the results provided in the current study.
DEEWR categorises data by Academic Organisational Unit Group (AOUG) based
upon individual educational ?elds[23]. AOUG data are aggregated through a hierarchy
(“broad group”, “narrow group” and “detailed group” (DG)) based upon an increasing
degree of re?nement[24]. The DG data provide the most comprehensive indicators of
the student numbers for each of the speci?ed disciplines.
For the purposes of identifying any association between absolute student numbers
and disciplinary research performance across the four commerce-related disciplines, the
present study relied on student and staff-load data by discipline group provided by
DEEWR to calculate the STR using Equivalent Fulltime Student Load (EFTSL) of
academic staff for eachgroup. Table Vprovides DEEWRdata at the DGlevel onthe total
EFTSL taught in the disciplines that are of interest to this study for the years 2001-2008.
The table reveals a remarkable growth in both absolute numbers and in percentage
terms in both Accounting (12,120 students, 47.6 percent) and Finance and Banking
(10,570 students, 105.4 percent) over the period under review.
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Table VI provides actual “onshore” student loads and full-time and fractional staff for
each disciplinary group at the “narrow group” (NG) level for each year and calculates
STR. Ideally the current study would have continued to analyse data at the more
detailed DG level, however such re?ned data is not available. Nevertheless, the
criterion applied by DEEWR to aggregate data from the DG level to the NG level
means that valid comparisons can still be made between the disciplines of interest to
this study[25].
The table shows that in Economics and Econometrics EFTSL fell (12,185-11,426) as
did staf?ng (470-430). In Business and Management EFTSL remained stable
(24,301-24,311) but staf?ng increased signi?cantly (838-1,028). In Finance and Banking
EFTSL increased signi?cantly (2,542-8,934) but staf?ng increased equally
signi?cantly (92-266).
Year
Accounting
(0801)
Economics and
Econometrics (0919)
Finance and
Banking (0811)
Business and
Management (0803)
2001 25,473 20,760 10,025 44,745
2002 25,242 20,619 10,610 42,568
2003 28,029 21,171 11,634 43,559
2004 28,231 20,829 13,609 43,752
2005 31,309 20,683 14,562 43,048
2006 34,571 21,226 15,422 43,266
2007 36,910 22,963 17,162 46,389
2008 37,593 24,029 20,595 49,801
EFTSU
Total increase 12,120 3,269 10,570 5,056
Total change (%) 47.58 15.75 105.44 11.30
Annual change (%) 5.83 2.16 10.95 1.63
Average for period 30,920 21,535 14,202 44,641
Table V.
Actual student load
(EFTSL) of onshore
students aggregated
at the DG level and
summarised at the NG
level (2001-2008)
Accounting (0801)
Economics and
Econometrics (0919)
Finance and
Banking (0811)
Business and
Management (0899)
EFTSL FTE STR EFTSL FTE STR EFTSL FTE STR EFTSL FTE STR
2001 17,837 591 30.18 12,185 470 25.93 2,542 92 27.63 24,301 838 29.00
2002 14,522 508 28.59 14,541 533 27.28 2,944 102 28.86 24,266 1,085 22.36
2003 17,646 499 35.36 13,160 496 26.53 3,075 91 33.79 22,850 957 23.88
2004 16,790 469 35.80 11,150 464 24.03 6,026 141 42.74 21,685 838 25.88
2005 16,151 455 35.50 10,016 435 23.03 4,429 160 27.68 19,663 803 24.49
2006 18,408 461 39.93 9,598 443 21.67 6,306 197 32.01 21,788 914 23.84
2007 18,709 583 32.09 12,017 463 25.95 6,859 196 34.99 24,424 1,121 21.79
2008 18,366 542 33.89 11,426 430 26.57 8,934 266 33.59 24,311 1,028 23.65
Total increase 529 249 3.70 2759 240 0.65 6,392 174 5.96 10 190 25.35
Total change (%) 2.97 28.29 12.27 26.23 28.51 2.49 251.46 189.13 21.56 0.04 22.67 218.45
Average change
(%) 1.15 20.58 33.92 0.07 21.00 25.12 24.45 18.12 32.66 0.29 4.18 24.36
Average for
period 17,304 514 34 11,762 467 25 5,139 156 33 22,911 948 24
Table VI.
STR based on actual
student load (EFTSL) and
full-time equivalent staff
(FTE) by NG for
all onshore students
(2001-2008)
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Table VI speci?cally reveals that the largest STR are in Accounting (33.92:1), followed
closely by Finance and Banking (32.66:1). These two disciplines bear loads that have
remained signi?cantly higher than Economics and Econometrics (25.12:1) and
Business and Management (24.36:1). Business and Management appears to have
reduced its STR over the period of review from 29:1 to 23.65:1, although this fall should
be viewed with caution as it could be driven partly by changes in the structure of the
academic units offering the subject[26].
In Accounting whilst EFTSL rose only marginally from a high base (17,837-18,366),
full time equivalent (FTE) staff numbers fell between 2001 and 2008 (591-542). It is
apparent that in Accounting and Finance and Banking large EFTSL loads have been
taught over the review period. At the same time Accounting FTE staff have fallen and
Finance and Banking FTE staff have risen sharply, but not as fast as the EFTSL has
risen, as student-to-teacher loads in Finance and Banking rose by over 21 percent in the
review period.
These ?gures indicate that in Accounting and Finance and Banking academics are
either teaching larger classes than their counterparts in other commerce-related
disciplines or employing a signi?cantly larger number of casual academic staff, or both;
no conclusive explanation for this trend is apparent. There is an increasing demand from
students, both local and international, to study in both these disciplines and it appears
that universities are responding by loading up courses in these disciplines.
Anecdotal evidence suggests a large increase in the casualisation loads in
Accounting and Finance and Banking. This viewis supported by studies that identify a
signi?cant growth in overall levels of casual academic staff teaching in Australian
universities (Australian Learning and Teaching Council, 2008, p. 7; Bradley, 2008, p. 22).
These are disciplines where salaries for well-quali?ed practitioners far exceed academic
salaries and the ability of universities to attract suitably quali?ed and experienced
full-time staff has become increasingly dif?cult. However, there is a growing market of
quali?ed teachers prepared to instruct in one subject or more a semester. From the
universities’ budgeting perspective this is a win win situation as they pay only for
teaching done with no on-costs, but the downside is the loss of research depth in these
disciplines.
In summary, the DEEWR data appear to support a “teaching load”-based
explanation of the poor ARC grant-winning performance by accounting researchers,
particularly as any growth in accounting teaching loads comes from a residually high
base (CPA Australia, 2001; Tippett, 1992). The data suggest that academic teaching
loads – both in terms of students taught per staff member and the added
administration of dealing with a large casual workforce – may severely hamper their
attempts to contribute to disciplinary research activity (these data support the ?ndings
of Subramaniam (2003)).
5.3 Research culture and infrastructure is not widespread in academic accounting
Another possible explanation for low ARC grant success is found in the contention that
a higher proportion of accounting academics are lacking in support, training,
infrastructure and culture to develop and submit ARC grant applications that will be
funded. The problem is further exacerbated for accounting researchers in pursuing
ARC grants, where the track-record of chief investigators is one of the more critical
criteria taken into consideration in assessing the viability of a project (ARC, 2011).
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Up to 2000, the distribution of ARCLarge Grants Scheme funds was heavily based on
the number of applications. In that period Accounting and Finance were combined and
the combined applications for the 1996-2000 period was half those in Management and a
quarter of those in Economics. As success rates tended not to vary greatly across
disciplines in that period, the lower success of accounting projects could be directly
attributed to the lownumber of accounting applications received by the ARC (Fretz and
Veall, 2001, p. 183).
An analysis of the ARC data identi?es that just 69 individual accounting researchers
were in receipt of ARC Discovery and/or Linkage grants in the 2000-2008 period. An
index of accounting academics[27] indicated that approximately 853 academics were
employed in accounting education at universities at the mid-point of this period, so just
8 percent of accounting academics were successful in this period in winning ARCgrants.
This is a signi?cantly greater than Accounting’s success with the predecessor Large
Grants Scheme, where only one per cent of accounting staff were successful in winning
grants (Fretz and Veall, 2001, p. 186), but still represents a small number of researchers
and projects.
Table VII further highlights that the few awarded grants are concentrated in just a
few institutions with all successful accounting grant applications for the period
2000-2008 coming from just ten universities. Moreover, with researchers in fewer than
six universities account for the bulk of these grants. These data indicate that
accounting research expertise is con?ned to a few research-intensive universities. Very
few accounting academics in the remaining universities have succeeded in winning
ARC grants and overall this contributes to a diminished academic contribution to
disciplinary research. Chan et al. (2007, p. 214) similarly noted that there was an “elite
institution” effect at work with 2 percent of institutions responsible for 40 percent of
top ?ve accounting journal articles.
While the story is similar with Finance and Banking applications, where grants were
won by just ten universities, this was not the case in Economics, where researchers in
26 universities won ARC grants in the period under review and in 24 universities for
Business and Management. STR appear to be lower in these disciplines which could
explain some of the difference, but additional research is needed to arrive at a more
detailed understanding of the reasons for both the larger number of universities
involved in Economics and Business and Management ARC grant activity, and the
larger number of grants won by such researchers relative to Accounting’s performance.
These data would indicate that there are more “research-ready” academics in
Economics and Business and Management that are research-active in these disciplines
Accounting (350100) Economics (3400000)
Finance and
Banking (350300)
Business and
Management
(350200)
Grants Universities Grants Universities Grants Universities Grants Universities
Discovery 25 6 230 21 47 9 72 16
Linkage 19 9 113 21 28 8 153 24
Total 44 10 343 26 75 11 225 24
Note: Some universities received both types of grant
Table VII.
Institutional involvement
in ARC Discovery and
Linkage grants
(2000-2008)
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relative to the Accounting and Finance and Banking disciplines. This perspective is
perhaps con?rmed more recently by the Commonwealth Government’s development of
an Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) policy. This initiative was designed to
provide transparent information about the relative quality of Australia’s research
output. While outside the period of interest to the current study, the 2010 report (ARC,
2011) provides evidence of research quality in the four commerce-related disciplines.
The ERA ratings, based on four indicators (research quality, research output, research
impact and research recognition or esteem) suggest that Accounting, remains
competitive with Finance and Banking but less so with either Business and
Management or Economics. For example, ERA results for “research recognition or
esteem” (as measured by Units of Evaluation or UoE), show Accounting (nine UoEs)
and Finance and Banking (ten UoEs) were far behind Business and Management
(49 UoEs) and Economics (104 UoEs). These data tend to con?rm the continued “elite
institution” effect for Accounting and Finance and Banking, indicating that only a
small group of researchers from a select group of institutions within the disciplines get
published in the top journals or receive ARC grants.
6. Conclusion
The results of the current study highlight that, as a group, accountants did not
attain a relatively higher level of ARC-funded research grants compared with
other commerce-related disciplines, even given the public pro?le of accounting events,
post-Enron. The persistently low level of representation of accounting researchers
among ARC grant winners during this period appears counterintuitive to the
“professional model” described by the professionalism literature. Why accounting, as a
profession, therefore, diverges from this model should be a topic of great interest to all
accountants.
The results of this study do not automatically suggest individual Australian
accounting academics have failed to make a signi?cant research contribution to the
discipline, particularly when compared with their overseas peers (Chan et al., 2007). Yet
in accounting, academic participation appears in ARC grant-winning success terms,
minimal.
The ?ndings appear to extend the previous observations made by critics of the
policies of Australian universities towards accounting from last century (Simon, 1992;
Tippett, 1992; CPA Australia, 2001). The data point to growing teaching loads,
increased casualisation and a concentration of research capacity in a few institutions.
These results appear to support the notion that accounting has been systemically
limited with regard to well-funded research activity that could lead to sustainable new
knowledge development within Australian universities.
Signi?cantly higher levels (both in term of number of grants and dollar values) of
ARC funding provide an indicator of the more successful and co-ordinated
partnerships enjoyed between other disciplines and universities, when compared to
accounting (Clarke and Flanagan, 2011). Why this relationship substantially differs for
accounting, when compared with other commerce-related disciplines, should be of
particular interest to accounting researchers and the accounting profession.
After more than 50 years in the university sector, accounting, as a professional
discipline, does not conform closely to the traditional professional model, even when
compared to other less professionalised, commerce-based disciplines. The ongoing
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poor performance of the accounting academic community in successfully winning ARC
grants needs to be further investigated to provide more evidence of speci?c reasons for
the low rate of success. Information on grant success does not tell us anything about
the actual level and focus of research, only what is supported through grants. Further
research could look at emerging areas of research that are in need of funding, with the
professional accounting bodies, industry groups and organisations, or other
associations, such as AFAANZ[28], sponsoring promising areas.
From our analysis of ARC grants we can con?rm that there appear to be no
strong research links between the academic accounting community, corporate
preparers of ?nancial information, and only minimal interactions with other
accounting practitioners. This lack of engagement should be of serious concern to
both accounting researchers and the accounting profession in that it appears to con?rm
Hopwood’s concern about the diverging paths of accounting research and accounting
practice (2008, p. 88).
Notes
1. For example, Gettler (2004) also see GAO (2003).
2. See changes in the roles of the Financial Reporting Council, Australian Accounting
Standards Board and the Auditing and Assurance Standards Board and the
disbandment/integration of Australian Accounting Research Foundation (in 2001) and the
Urgent Issues Group (in 2006).
3. The appropriate measurement of assets and liabilities, off-balance sheet structures; the
development of derivatives for insurance and investment purposes were identi?ed as
problematic in the collapse of Enron (Unerman and O’Dwyer, 2010).
4. We use a liberal conceptualisation of the terms “profession”, “professionalism” and
“professionalisation” (Cooper and Robson, 2006, p. 414; Torstendahl, 2005).
5. For a variety of perspectives on the history of the accounting discipline in Australia see
Parker (1961), Carnegie (1993), Poullaos (1994), Carnegie and Edwards (2001) and Chua and
Poullaos (1993, 1998, 2002).
6. In 2005, ICAA spent 15 per cent and CPA Australia spent 18 per cent of total expenditure on
marketing and promotional activities. This was signi?cantly higher than such expenditure
in previous periods but this fell in subsequent periods (ICAA, 2005; CPA Australia, 2005
Annual Reports).
7. For example, disciplinary-based representative bodies such as: Australian Institute of
Management; Financial Services Institute of Australia and the Economic Society of
Australia appear not to have responded to such criticism in such a direct manner.
8. Then called the NSW University of Technology.
9. For example, within the Australian context it may be argued that the seminal works of
accounting academics such as Goldberg (1965), Chambers (1966), Gynther (1966), Ball and
Brown (1968) and Barton (1975) represented this profession/academic interaction. Equally,
the role that universities may play for the accounting profession during this period was
exempli?ed in the USA by the interaction between academics and the Public Company
Oversight Board Panel on “Audit Effectiveness” (PCOB, 2000, paragraphs 2.27 and 3.24).
10. Heck provides a list of proli?c accounting authors who have published in leading
international journals for the period 1959-2008. The list includes a number of academics who
resided in Australia during the period of interest to this study (2009, Exhibits 1 and 2).
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11. Measures based on publication rates could also include the number of citations speci?c
examples of published research receives. However, citations tend to re?ect “academic to
academic” activity and in isolation provide no evidence of the impact of research on
accounting practice, although there is literature identifying the contributions of accounting
research to accounting policies (Taylor, 2009). We have excluded references to “citations of
research” from the current study.
12. Macve reported that by 1990 only $250,000 was allocated to research in both economics and
accounting by the ARC from a total research allocation budget of $90 million (1992) (Note:
of?cial statistics did not distinguish between all business-based disciplines).
13. These two categories of ARC grants represent the bulk of ARC funding relative to total
research funds allocated.
14. For example, Godfrey, Gutherie, Sidhu, Mouritsen, Boedker all received ARC funding
outside the accounting classi?cation.
15. It is interesting to note that overall, Economics performed relatively poorly in all metrics
across the entire post-2002 period relative to the prior period.
16. In the period of analysis, the ICAA partnered in one Linkage project and CPA Australia in
three projects. The ICAA in the past has offered an Academic Research Grant Scheme worth
$115,000 each year and has funded a number of research monographs. CPAAustralia has six
competitive small grant programs for academics totalling $60,000 annually and
commissions research.
17. See ICAA web site for publications such as Extended Performance Reporting: a Review of
Empirical Studies (Chua, 2006), GAAP-based Financial Reporting: Measurement of Business
Performance (Taylor, 2006) and Professional Judgment (Trotman, 2006).
18. See CPA Australia web site for research focus areas that include reporting and assurance.
The current study was unable to uncover a publicly available list of successful applicants
and projects funded on the CPA web site.
19. Grant (1996) suggested that the major challenge for “experts” (such as accountants) would be
the creation, capture and dissemination of intra-disciplinary knowledge. O’Leary (1997)
examined several of these systems (Ernst and Young’s “Leading practices K-Base” and
PWC’s “Knowledge View”) and outlined some of the dif?culties several of these
organisations have had in implementing such knowledge bases1 within these KMS. Alavi
and Leidner’s(1999) survey indicated individual accounting ?rms such as Arthur Anderson,
Deloitte and Touche, Ernst and Young, KPMG Peat Marwick and Price Waterhouse Coopers
all began developing and implementing KMS from the 1990s.
20. During the period under review only Ernst &Young, KPMG, Deliottes and BDO Kendalls
partnered projects.
21. We do not deny that other universities have centres, lecture series and projects that involve
some engagement with accounting practitioners. We have focussed here on long-term
systemic engagement and a review of the web sites of the largest universities indicates a
patchy ongoing involvement with accounting practitioners. Only at Sydney University,
through the Pacioli Society and the sponsored journal, Australian Accounting Review, is
there evidence of long-term, systemic interactions between academics and accounting
practitioners.
22. Juchau (2005) lists the major reports as being, the Vatter Report, 1964 (with the broader
Martin Committee Report, also 1964); followed by the Standish Report (1982); Karpin Report
on general management education (1985); the Task Force for Accounting Education: ICAA
and ASA and AAANZ (1988); Mathews Report (1990); “Chartered Accountants in the 21st
Century” (1994); ICAA report, Trends in Accounting at Australian Universities (2002).
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23. See Higher Education Information Management System (HEIMS) at www.heimshelp.deewr.
gov.au/6_Appendices/#Appendix_E_-_Field_of_Education_Classi?cation.
24. At the highest level there are 12 broad ?elds of education called academic organisational units
(AOU). The NGwithin an AOU(the AOUG) are sub-divisions of education offered by an AOU.
The DGare sub-divisions of the narrowAOUGs. For example, BankingandFinance (with four
DG) is one of seven NG within the Management and Commerce AOU, as is Business and
Management (with 13 DG) and Accounting (with one DG). Economics and Econometrics (with
two DG) was one of 12 NG within the Society and Culture AOU. The DG have six-digit codes
describing the ?eld for that group. A group can include a range of individual disciplinary
subjects taught. For example, all Accounting subjects are coded within the single DG code
080101, whereas Industrial Relations, one of several Business and Management codes, is
coded as 080309. Moving up a step, at the narrow level (called the AOUG level), we have
four-digit codes. Accounting is 0801, whereas Industrial Relations is part of the Business and
Management NG coded 0803. At the broad group level we have two-digit codes. Accounting
and Business and Management are both part of Management and Commerce, code 08.
25. A reduction in speci?city occurs in the DEEWR data where, for example, the
accounting staff teach ?nance or taxation, as well as accounting. If the proportion of
EFTSL taught Accounting subjects (coded 0801) is less than 70 per cent of total EFTSL
taught by the group, then they will be coded 08 Management and Commerce rather than
0801 Accounting. In this case both the student load and the staf?ng is coded 08, including all
the Accounting EFTSL and the staff teaching them. DEEWR con?rmed that this was
common with several universities classifying accounting units across as many as four
AOUGs. Sometimes units from other AOUs (mainly Banking and Finance) were classi?ed as
Accounting, but such instances were less common. DEEWR data shows that for the actual
student load aggregated at the “narrow” AOUG EFTSL, for the four commerce-related
disciplines under investigation, are much smaller than EFTSL collected at the DG level
because some DG EFTSL is coded either directly to the broader two-digit AOU level or to
other AOUG codes. Note this difference is apparent in the student loads represented in
Tables V and VI of this paper. A summation of this data highlights that in Accounting the
average EFTSL load at the AOUG level for the period (17,304) as a percentage of the average
EFTSL load at the DG level (30,920) is 55.96 percent. An analysis of Economics and
Econometrics (11,762/21,535: 54.62 percent) and Business and Management (22,911/44,641:
51.32 percent) provide similar outcomes, whereas in Finance and Banking only (5,139/14,202)
36.19 percent is aggregated to the AOUG level. The remaining DG EFTSL is aggregated to
other narrow AOUGs or directly to broad AOU code. In Accounting the shrinkage of EFTSL
at the AOUG level is less than the other disciplines being compared but as all disciplines
compared seem to have suffered at least to the same degree (more so in Finance and
Banking), and as we can get access to staf?ng data only at the narrow AOUG level, valid
comparisons can only be made by comparing data collected by DEEWR at the narrow
AOUG level.
26. It is acknowledged that the actual disciplinary units taught increased over the period so a
restructuring that recoded Business and Management as Management and Commerce (08)
could lead to a reduction on EFTSL If coded at the 0803 level.
27. Wiley Australia, Directory of Accounting, 2003-2004.
28. AFAANZ has granted a total of more than $1 million since the mid-2000s towards
accounting academic research.
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bene?ts”, Communication of AIS, Vol. 1, pp. 7-21.
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About the authors
Kevin Clarke is a Senior Lecturer in the UNSW’s Australian School of Business and teaches both
Accounting and Finance in the school’s full and part time AGSM MBA programs. He holds
multiple postgraduate quali?cations in accounting, economics and taxation law. His PhD
examines the history of professional accounting and he has published a variety of articles both
locally and internationally on this and related subjects. He has received a number of academic
and professional grants and awards and is a regular presenter at research forums, both within
Australia and internationally. Kevin Clarke is the corresponding author and can be contacted at:
[email protected]
Jack Flanagan is Emeritus Professor of Accounting at Australian Catholic University,
Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Accounting and Assurance Research, Australian
School of Business and on the Adjunct Faculty at the AGSM. His research interests include the
?nancial analysis of corporate performance, ethical decision making by accountants and the
ethics of ?nancial measurement. He was a founding director of the Accounting Professional and
Ethical Standards Board.
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Sharron O’Neill is a Research Fellow (Senior lecturer) at the International Governance and
Performance Research Centre, at Macquarie University. She held previous academic positions at
the University of Sydney where she taught both Financial and Management Accounting at both
undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She has completed a Bachelor of Commerce
(Accounting) UWSN, a Master of Commerce (Honours) degree at UNSW. Her Master’s thesis
developed and tested a model to explain environmental risk management strategy. Her primary
research agenda is focused around occupational health and safety performance measurement.
Her PhD (RMIT) examines the evolution of OHS performance disclosures by large Australian
mining organisations.
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This article has been cited by:
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doc_955042071.pdf