تحقیقات حسابداری اجتماعی: چشم انداز استرالیا

This paper provides an insight into the nature and the extent of social accounting research being undertaken within Australasia. It demonstrates that Australasian researchers account for a significant amount of internationally published social accounting research, but emphasises that the research effort seems to be confined to a limited number of researchers perhaps reflecting a lack of ‘take-up’ in this area in terms of the scale of participation. Information is also presented about the relative propensity of journals within the sample to publish social accounting research, and identifies that ‘top tier’ accounting journals historically have not published social accounting research. The paper also considers various factors which seem to be impeding the ‘recruitment’ of new social accounting researchers.

As background to this paper, in 2005 one of the authors of this paper (Deegan) was kindly asked by Professor Rob Gray of the University of St. Andrews (and notably also of the Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research which is now housed at the University of St. Andrews) whether there would be interest in contributing a chapter to a book that was being prepared in honour of the 2005 retirement of Professor Martin Reginald Mathews (Reg) (Gray, 2007). Given Reg's contribution to the area of social and environmental accounting – particularly the generous assistance he provides to ‘up-and-coming’ researchers – there was immediate interest in contributing a chapter. This paper represents an extended analysis and discussion of the data relative to that included within this earlier chapter.1 The topic initially provided by Rob Gray for the book in honour of Reg Mathews, and the topic thereafter embraced for this paper is ‘Social Accounting Research—an Australasian perspective’. There are obviously various ways a topic like this could be addressed but after some deliberation it was decided that a number of research questions could be addressed under the umbrella of the topic. Specifically, the issues addressed in the earlier chapter, and subsequently in this paper, are as follows: 1. What presence internationally have Australasian accounting academics had in social accounting research?2 2. What has been the focus of the Australasian social accounting research? 3. What is the level of concentration in Australasian social accounting research? That is, is there a broad or narrow group of individuals involved in the research activity? To answer the above questions, a review was be made of the papers being published in a number of leading international accounting journals. This review in turn allowed us to also address the following additional question: 4. Which accounting journals appear relatively more likely to publish social accounting research?

This short paper has explored the role of Australasian academics within social accounting research. It has been written to promote discussion. On the basis of the sample of journals chosen, it would appear that Australasian researchers are ‘punching above their weight’—that is, on a per capita basis they seem to produce more publications in the area than their overseas counterparts. However, of some concern is that whilst social accounting research has been published by various journals on a fairly uniform basis for the period of our analysis, a limited number of researchers appear responsible for the majority of the publications coming from Australasia. A similar review might indicate a similar feature in other countries (for example, if we were to exclude the work of Rob Gray, Dave Owen and Jan Bebbington from UK output we might find a drastically reduced level of published social accounting research from that region).15 This limited involvement is despite various initiatives that have been put in place to encourage social accounting research. To stimulate further debate (and we do believe that more debate is necessary given our findings) we conclude the paper with some outstanding issues that we consider warrant further investigation: • Why do ‘top 5’ accounting journals (and some other journals) fail to publish social accounting research despite the increasing prominence of social and environmental accounting within the business community? Is the lack of publications due to filtering choices of editors, or because of journal selections being made by potential authors? Are the low publication rates of social accounting research within the ‘top’ journals likely to change in the near future—and what might be needed to create such change? • Why aren’t there more entrants into the social accounting publishing population? What initiatives other than those already utilised will increase the participation rate? Should current social accounting research leaders take responsibility for the limited numbers of people generating publications in the area (are any of their actions, or inactions, creating a ‘closed shop’?), and what should they themselves do to encourage more widespread involvement? • At the school or department level within universities, are new researchers being encouraged or discouraged from entering the field of social accounting research? • What influence do studies of research journal quality have on junior academics when determining areas for research? Further, what impacts will government initiatives such as the Research Quality Framework have on participation rates in social accounting research? • Related to the above point, what actions, if any, should senior social accounting researchers take to make it known to Research Quality Framework Assessment Panels that published studies of accounting journal quality are to be used with caution given the fact that the journals typically identified as being of the highest quality do not publish particular types of accounting research. • How do experienced social accounting researchers rate various journals and how do such ratings differ from the journal ratings exercises currently available? Further, what factors influence the submission decisions of experienced social accounting researchers? • What attributes of accounting academics impact perceptions (and hence responses to surveys and questionnaires) about accounting journal quality? • What factors contribute to Australasian researchers contributing a disproportional percentage of the publications in the area of social accounting research? Further work related to the above issues may provide necessary background knowledge to help promote social accounting research across a broader population of researchers, and may help to safeguard the future of those individuals who have elected to pursue a research career focusing on social accounting issues.