Qualitative management accounting research: Assessing deliverables and relevance

By Lee D. Parker. 2012

330 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper examines the positioning of qualitative research to date in the field of management accounting. It offers a critical reflection and an appraisal of its profile relative to the dominant positivist quantitative accounting research literature. In the accounting literature, management accounting research is arguably a leader in applying qualitative research methodologies. Drawing on both the management accounting and qualitative research methodology literatures, the paper critically evaluates key features of the qualitative tradition and the future trajectory of the qualitative contribution to management accounting research. The qualitative tradition emerges as contributing to the understanding and critiquing of management and accounting processes, as well as having the ability to address the concerns of practitioners and policymakers. Close researcher engagement with the field, a concern with process, embracing situational complexity, as well as critical and reflective understandings of organisational phenomena remain as hallmarks of the tradition.

Subfields: Accounting, Management Information Systems

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e09cd77a3358ee583512578c2508d3210cb80d8c

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In Management Information Systems

Citations in the corpus

Integrated Reporting: Insights, gaps and an agenda for future research (2014, background): “Academics and practitioners have analysed the interaction between managements’ strategic propositions, organisational control systems and performance measurement and reporting systems (Parker, 2012).”
The research design maze: understanding paradigms, cases, methods and methodologies (2012, background): “In particular, the application of qualitative research has gained popularity in the management accounting arena (Parker 2012).”
Approaches to validation and evaluation in qualitative studies of management accounting (2015, background): “According to Parker (2012, 59), different alternative labels are more appropriate for management accounting studies contributing to the understanding and critiquing of management and accounting processes.”