Reflections on "Jacobs, K. (2012). Making Sense of Social Practice: Theoretical Pluralism in Public Sector Accounting Research, Financial Accountability & Management, 28(1), 1-25."

I read this article while I did my assignment on research methods. I find this paper is particular useful to those who are going to study PhD in public sector and young researchers as well. In fact, this paper won the John Perris Prize for the Best Paper in 2012 in Financial Accountability & Management.  Few useful findings and advice from this paper are highlighted as follows:

(1) This paper presents different theoretical approaches used over the last 16 years in public sector accounting research.  Specifically, Jacobs is able to explain each of these theories in details and the application of these theories to theorize the public sector research problems.

(2) Jacob observes that public sector accounting research continues to accommodate a very large proportion of work without any clear theoretical base alongside studies explicitly mobilising a diverse set of theoretical perspectives.

(3) This paper reports the trends of popular theoretical approaches in public sectors research. Two popular theoretical approaches were neo-institutional and economic theory.  There are other theories used in the past such as Foucauldian theory, Habermas, Political Theory, Organisational Theory and Actor Network Theory.

 

(4)  There is a trend of combined or blended theories in public sector accounting such as 'orgainisational theory and neo-institutional theory' and 'Bourdieu and neo-institutional'. Jacobs highlights that there is danger that some combinations of theories could be conflicting and contradictory. The advice is the researchers should be able to explain and justify both their use of respective theoretical models and any blending of theory in their works.

(5) Theory and case should be both connected and help us to 'make-sense' of our problem. In other words, researchers should be able to explain how their theory 'reconstruct' the accounting issues.

The above views and findings are particular useful to the call for the need for more informed modes of theorizing. Theory is an integral part of whole research process and theorizing must start right from when a research idea is conceived and must be part of the research process until when the research outcomes are achieved. (Chua & Mahama, 2012).

Interestingly, this paper is subsequently commented by Modell (2013) and then, a reply written from Jacobs (2013) to this comment. One useful advice provided by Jacobs' reply paper (p. 111, 2013) is "We should do our best to construct our research arguments to be clear and coherent. However, we should be willing to change our theoretical stance when they do not make sense and show a far higher level of reflexitivity in research design and presentation."        

References

Chua, W. F., & Mahama, H. (2012). On theory as a 'deliverable' and its relevance in 'policy' arenas. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 23, 78-82.

Jacobs, K. (2012). Making sense of social practice: Theoretical pluralism in public sector accounting research. Financial Accountability & Management, 28(1), 1-25.

Jacobs, K. (2013). Making sense of social practice: Theoretical pluralism in public sector accounting research: A reply. Financial Accountability & Management, 29(1), 111-115.

Modell, S. (2013). Making sense of social practice: Theoretical pluralism in public sector accounting research: A comment. Financial Accountability & Management, 29(1), 99-110.