Reviewed by Alan J. Richardson Queen’s University

A colleague of mine claims Lo work in the “oral tradition” preferring to interact with his audience and deal in realtime events rather than allow his ideas to grow stale on paper to be reinterpreted at a distance. Most academics, however, seek to publish their ideas to meet the expectations of their universities and for its own intrinsic rewards. It is also the case that published material forms the bulk of what practitioners and students study as accounting knowledge. Policing Accounting Knowledge, edited by Tinker and Puxty, provides a window into the processes by which ideas get into print and the ways in which those processes shape knowledge. This is a rare collection of manuscripts and correspondence which deserves a wide reading by both the producers and consumers of accounting knowledge.

The book reprints Watts’ and Zimmerman’s (1978) “The Demand for and Supply of Accounting Theories: The Market for Excuses” along with the reviewers’ comments and correspondence between the editor of The Accounting Review (Step)hen Zeff) and the authors. This is followed by three papers (and their associated reviews and correspondence) critical of Watts’ and Zimmerman’s article which were submitted to, and ultimately rejected by, The Accounting Review. The first, by Boer and Moseley (1980), was never published. The second, by Laughlin, Puxty and Lowe (1980), appeared in the Journal of Accounting and Public Policy in 1983. The third, by Williams (1983), appeared in Accounting, Organizations and Society in 1989. The editors contribute an introductory chapter entitled “The Rise and Fall of Positive Theory” and a conclusion entitled “Policing Accounting: The Sociology of Knowledge as Praxis.

The editors’ objective with this collection is to show how the editorial review process affects what is published and how the social identity of authors and reviewers affects this process. In short, that the review process is more affected by social forces than by philosophies of science. They conclude that the review process does not meet the basic conditions for scientific practice (using Popper as the exemplar of this method) and, further, that the institutional structures within which accounting knowledge is created precludes these conditions ever being met.

There is a tension in the editorial essays in that the editors see Watts’ and Zimmerman’s article as marking a change in methodology from normative to positive and inaugurating a deregulation movement within the accounting academy. Their critiques of the editorial process thus must simultaneously deal with changes in the political economy of the U.S. (a move to the right) associated with the election of Republican presidents and changes in the research agenda of accounting academics. As a theoretical position, I appreciate that the authors do not want to separate the nature of the review process from the substance of the material which is under review. Unfortunately, at times it is not clear whether the focus of this volume is on Watts’ and Zimmerman’s theorizing or the review process which brought this article to print.

The book is essentially an archives of publication correspondence for four interrelated articles. It is an incomplete archives in that it does not include those critiques of Watts and Zimmerman that successfully made it into The Accounting Review such as Christenson (1983) or Hines (1989) nor does it include the reviews from other journals that enabled two of the three papers to appear in print. As is true of all archival sources, there are multiple interpretations which can be placed on the documents presented. The greatest strength of this collection is that it provides the basic source documents on which further debate about the nature of the sociology of knowledge in accounting can be based.

This book covers some of the same ground as Cummings’ and Frosts’ (1985) examination of the publishing process in organizational science. That volume includes two case studies of articles passing through the publication process (one successful; one unsuccessful) and a wealth of introspective articles by editors, reviewers and authors as well as commentaries by outside observers (including a psychiatrist!). I would highly recommend the Cummings and Frost book to anyone concerned with the sociology of knowledge. It is particularly useful reading as a prerequisite to Policing Accounting Knowledge both to sensitize readers to the issues which you will encounter and for the: realization that the phenomenon documented is not unique to accounting. Indeed I am sure that similar data could be generated on other issues in the accounting literature (for historians the “Relevance Lost” thesis comes easily to mind as one which has not been thoroughly debated in The Accounting Review).

In the same way that Tinker and Puxty challenge us to understand the publication process in a broader context, this book must also be seen in context. It is part of Tinker’s continuing effort to change the nature of academic research in accounting and the way in which the American Accounting Association and its house journals (of which The Accounting Review is preeminent) operate. The journal which Tinker coedits, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, is based on alternative reviewing meth ods (e.g. there is the option for reviewers to name themselves to authors) and an editorial policy which encourages wide variation in the s\ibstance and format of papers. The success of this journal suggests that Policing Accounting Knowledge will have a receptive audience.

REFERENCES

Christenson, C, “The Methodology of Positive Accounting,” The Accounting Review (1983): 122.
Cummings, L.L. and Frost, P.J., Publishing in the Organizational Sciences, Irwin: Homewood 1985.
Hines, R., “Popper’s Methodology of Falsificationism and Accounting Research,” The Accounting Review (1989): 657662.
Lowe, E.A., Puxty, A.G. and Laughlin, R.C., “Simple Theories for Complex Processes: Accounting Policy and the Market for Myopia,” Journal of Accounting and Public Policy (1983): 1942.
Williams, P.F., “The Logic of Positive Accounting Research,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, (1989) Vol. 14, no. 5/6: 455468.