Advanced Accounting Theory & Complex Real World Situations Questions

Advanced Accounting Theory & Practice assignment
•
•
•
Choose two of the following three questions (optional).
Word count for each question: 1500 words (3000 total for two questions)
Harvard Referencing with in-text citations and references (25 to 30 references)
Reference to the material utilized throughout the course is encouraged. “All Accounting
research is at its core interdisciplinary in that it draws from its theory and methodology from
other disciplines” (Roslender & Dillard, 2003:326). Having said this, accounting scholars had
deployed different theories as lenses that questioned many issues that were taken for granted.
These questions include what is accounting; its regulatory bodies neutrality; the role it is
playing in the economy; behavioral accounting and accounting reporting; and its role in
constructing or legitimizing particular social structures.
Question 1:
In accounting research, an enormous range of questions can be sightsaw using qualitative
research methods as qualitative research does not rely on database analysis or focus on the
economics of an agency problem.
According to Carlin 2018 and Ohlson 2015, in qualitative research, these two criteria could
deliver to data in answering a question instead of the other way around. Additionally,
qualitative research leads to develop new understandings and theories.
These new understandings and theories likely have to expand further research in both
qualitative and quantitative research methods. For example, prior studies may have claimed
the main impacts of capital markets in large samples. However, such studies may have
reviewed the significant differences among certain sub-samples or otherwise may not have
examined fairly factors considered to be important determinants of the phenomenon being
explored. Having said that, your task is to discuss:
•
Why should we restrict our inquiries to the effects of accounting on investors or a
manager’s choice of accounting methods when there are so many other interesting questions
to explore?
•
why should we restrict our questions to those that can be answered using readily
available numerical data when there are so many interesting questions that relate to complex
individual interpretations of how accounting should be used and what it should be used for?
Question 2:
Unlike financial accounting with its mandatory reporting frameworks, companies are still free
to cherry pick which social and environmental framework(s) to use and when to use them.
Quantitative/positivist accounting research has taken on the role of attempting to understand
whether these frameworks do provide more reliable information to investors.
•
Do these frameworks result “in efficient and productive capital allocation” or “act as a
force for financial stability and sustainability”?
•
Do they truly promote social and environmental sustainability?
Question 3:
Van and Johnson (2006) examine three related methods in which the gap between theory and
practice has been outlined. They concluded their study with these three methods one
approach outlooks it as a knowledge transfer problem, a second claims that theory and
practice represent distinct types of knowledge, and a third combines a strategy of arbitrage
leading to the interpretation that the gap is a knowledge production problem.
Van and Johnson (2006) suggested a method of engaged scholarship for addressing the
knowledge production problem, debating that engaged scholarship not only boosts the
relevance of research for practice but also adds significantly to advancing research
knowledge in a given field.
Your task is to debate the following to relevant question:
•
What knowledge does the practitioner of an occupation or profession use?
•
How does he or she obtain it?
•
What does the practitioner think, and how does he or she go about constructing
thought and action?