دانستن مکان یک شخص : توزیع دانشگاهیان حسابداری جدید به بازار کار بخش بندی شده

New academic accountants tend to believe that there is a singular academic labor market that will receive them as they approach the completion of their doctoral programs. In such a world, the caliber of their ideas would be judged according to their ability to make a contribution to the knowledge of discipline. However, past research suggests that a prestige structure exists for doctoral programs such that a candidate’s ability to be placed at a school is a function of his/her doctoral programs position in that hierarchy. In this world, limits exist upon possible placement for most candidates such that the caliber of their work will not be a determinative factor in their placement. Various divisions of the doctoral schools in accounting show that movement to higher groups is difficult for all groups. The higher-tier schools are more able to place their graduates in the same tier. Falls to lower tiers are especially likely for the graduates of the lower prestige groups of doctoral schools. This paper seeks to help participants in the labor market, doctoral candidates and those that hire them, obtain a more informed appreciation for their realistic prospects. In this way, an achievable expectation should lead to more efficient placement behavior.

This paper has attempted to provide important descriptive information about the market for newly graduated accounting academics. For these purposes, we have tried to substitute a direct measure for the many indirect ones that have been offered in other ranking studies. We suggest the existence of a serious competition among doctoral programs to not only place their offerings within the general preferred sector (other doctoral programs in the discipline), but also with the specific schools that dominate the doctoral school labor market. This iterative exercise (see Appendix B for an illustration) asserts the need for the construction of a placement hierarchy of schools that is not only specific to academic accounting, but only that has been built from the actual labor market decisions of market participants over many years. The arrays offered in Tables 1 and 2 could be understood narrowly as a broad description of the academic accounting labor market in the US. To the extent that what people think of the candidates that join their schools is a reflection of what people think of the schools that trained those candidates, the array also works as a systematic way to consider institutional prestige. The former sense is intuitive since the very data used in its construction is the hiring of new faculty talent. The claim to the latter interpretation depends upon the motivations of the parties that make these placement decisions. Departments of accounting wishing to maximize the research-producing value of their membership want more people that have been trained at the schools that have proven track records of research success. Candidates want to be associated with the environments most likely to help further their careers. These are likely to be programs that are held in high esteem by the collective. Thus, placements are inevitably about the institutional status judgments of the academic community. All the placements in the data involved candidates for positions with unique personal attributes. Some of these might make them distinctly more or less appealing as faculty members to schools. They also bring research work and interests that might have varying potential to influence the discipline and to magnify the scholarly productivity of current in-house faculty. These factors no doubt enter into decisions to extend and accept employment offers. However, unlike the institutional prestige demonstrated by this paper, individual factors tend not to be systematic and therefore are likely (at least with a large enough sample) to cancel each other out. Any predictable direction for their expression, especially as it pertains to the caliber of research, would probably parallel the social esteem dimension. Personal characteristics also are denied expression if candidates are eliminated from consideration based on the insufficient prestige of their doctoral institution. The present research confines itself to the record created by the placement of new accounting faculty. By excluding ‘‘seasoned’’ hires, it does not do justice to the entirety of recruitment/placement efforts in the accounting discipline. The consideration of experienced faculty is likely to be qualitatively different in that individuals’ post-graduation accomplishments play a larger role. This factor should reduce dependence on the institutional prestige of the candidate’s credentials in offers of employment. In this way, placement may be less easy to predict and may depict more idiosyncratic and opportunistic matches. This unconsidered part of the labor market requires sustained future examination. The attempt to specifically rank schools according to their placement results could have been conducted. Such an approach would have made too much out of the available data. The nature of institutional prestige does not lend itself to such ordinal precision. Instead, a ‘‘fuzzy set’’ approach has been taken. The grouping of schools align with the loose inter-subjection agreement that exists regarding the existence of a group of schools that might be considered, if not elite, then superior. Perhaps a similar consensus exists about schools not known for their work in the doctoral arena. This paper is not engaged in the process of clarifying these perceptions. However, what people think about institutions tends to be enacted through the receptivity that people bearing the imprimatur of those schools receive in employment markets. This paper can be viewed as a study of the aspirations of labor market participants. Departments hire people they think will be productive and contributing faculty members. Candidates take positions where they think their goals will be best supported. These aspirations do not always materialize. This paper implies that decision-makers may be too influenced by institutional status, and might be better off attempting to make more detailed investigations of the match between person and position. Since this paper was not designed specifically to explore this point, its function is to suggest such as an inquiry for future research. This paper assumes that quality scholarship can be done by doctoral students in all sectors of the academy. If this is not true, and good work can only be done by those trained at the best schools, a different interpretation of the placement results would be appropriate. In that case, people from other schools do not get placed at the good schools because their work does not measure up to appropriate standards. The paper discounts the prospect of such an ‘‘efficient market’’ even if the basis for a self-fulfilling prophecy might exist. Again, more research is needed to distinguish between perception and reality. The most practical advice that this paper offers to doctoral students resides in the documentation of the infrequency with which ‘‘up-stream’’ placement occurs. Put bluntly, doctoral students should not expect to achieve employment at schools well beyond the reputation of their doctoral programs. Doctoral students should attempt to evaluate the position of their program in the labor market hierarchy as a first step toward generating realistic expectations.