Reflections on "Chua, W.F. (2011). In Search of 'Successful' Accounting Research', European Accounting Review, 20(1),27-39"

This article is useful to PhD students who aim to succeed in their research.  Very often, PhD students rightly feel that their choices of topic area, method, supervisor, institution, etc are often highly constrained – although, by and large, they all wish to be ‘successful’. But concepts of success are context-dependent and institutionalized; they are social constructs created by complex networks.

First, this paper points out that accounting research should focus on ideas as opposed to method. The latter is but a means to ends. Research should also make strong and deep connections with practice. A social science must of necessity engage with and make a positive contribution to the communities and societies that sustain it.

Success is socially and manufactured and politics inevitable. Given the multiple forces that shape the manufacture of knowledge, including accounting, it is not possible to ignore the ‘politics’ of successful research. By‘politics’, it refers to the institutionalised networks of significant others who help manufacture ‘successful research’, who help define what is acceptable for publication in top-tier journals, who collectively conclude what counts as interesting, innovative ideas. In addition, these institutionalized networks that call scientific communities tend to hold strongly to their methodological beliefs, much like religious communities. In accounting, there are several such communities, not just the financial economics community that dominate the research. The author also highlights that the concepts forming the body of ‘common knowledge’ might include ‘social embeddedness of accounting numbers’, ‘social construction of meaning’, ‘institutionalised norms’, ‘accounting as actant’, ‘performativity’, ‘loose coupling’, etc.

In testing whether the emerging research topic is appropriate, this paper points out that ‘the best research questions derive from an acute sense of how the world works as opposed to more or less stylized “theories” originating in academia’. So if, as a PhD student you do not know how the world works, spend some time finding out about it. Talk to practitioners, observe their activities, look at the reports and data they use to enable them to act.

Lastly, the author concludes that "Life is very short, and my encouragement to PhD students and to researchers more generally is that each of us conduct research on our own terms, and not wholly on the terms defined by others, no matter how powerful." There is a tendency to view a PhD as a constrained choice but time is the key non-renewable resource that we possess and it seems the height of irrational choice to not expand our choice horizon and to choose our passion.

The Characteristics of Good Researcher

Many textbooks on research methods are filled with guidelines for good research but rarely mentioned what makes a good researches. I have read Judith A Hall (1984) that listed good characteristics of good researches that worth to share with all research students and researchers:

(1) Enthusiasm
Being enthusiasm about what you do is contagious as well as self-motivating. For researches who excel in what they do, choosing a topic, doing research, analyzing and reporting the results are as absorbing and as much 'fun' as a game that requires skills and concentration and fills a person with enthusiasm,

(2) Open-mindedness
Hall (1984) stated:
"Open-mindedness means not being too committed to one's preformed ideas and expectations. Such over-commitment can easily lead to biased research results, as well as blind the investigator to interesting results that don't happen to support or bear directly on the main hypothesis"

(3) Common Sense
Hall (1984) mentioned, "All the book learning in the world cannot replace good sense in the planning and conduct of research". Much effort is wasted when researchers fail to use common sense and instead look only in a convenient place rather than in a place where they are far more likely to find the answers to their questions.

(4) Role-taking ability
In research involves human participants, good researchers must be able to see their study from the viewpoint of the participants. It also means seeing it from the viewpoint of the person who will evaluate it.

(5) Creativity and inventiveness
Quoting Hall (1984): "One must be creative to be a good researcher". This means not only "asking an interesting question in the first place" but also "finding solutions to problems; responding to emergencies during the conduct of the research; finding new ways to analyze data; and coming up with convincing interpretations of results"

(6) Confidence in one's own judgment
Good researchers will aware of the accepted practices in their field and of the points on which their work may be subject to criticism, and will seek advice often and without embarrassment. However, good researchers in the end trust themselves.

(7) Ability to communicate
Research is not just doing, it is the telling. If no one understand your study, or if they can't figure out or remember your results, then you might as well never have done it before.

(8) Care about details
A good researcher is always concern on details, whether preparing a poster for a meeting, a paper for a course, or an article for journal publication. It means keeping complete records, carefully organizing the data, copying and adding numbers correctly, stating facts accurately and proofreading patiently.

(9) Integrity and honest scholarship
Every good researcher knows that integrity and honesty are crucial. Faked results will undermine the credibility of researcher and can also present an imminent danger to the general public.

References:
Hall, J.A. (1984). Instructor manual to accompany Rosenthal/Rosnow: Essentials of behavioral research. New York, NY: McGraw-hill.    

Rosnow, R.L. & Rosenthal, R. (2013). Beginning behavioral research: A conceptual primer. New Jersey: Pearson

My Research Interest

I'm a PhD student from the Research School of Accounting & Business Information System. I studied Bachelor of Accounting and MBA in the University of Malaya, Malaysia. Previously, I worked as an auditor in the PricewaterhouseCoopers for 4 years. Then I decided to join academic career and worked as tutor in the University of Malaya.

My research interest is audit judgmental decision making (JDM).JDM focuses on understanding individual and group judgments and decisions. As an auditor, I understand that is is crucial for auditors to exercise professional judgment in the whole process of auditing. JDM is a sub-discipline of psychology. This research area is suited to my interest as I always have intention to study another degree in psychology.

My thesis basically focus on the auditor-client negotiation. I'm looking at how the audit committees intervene in the auditor-client disputes and the impacts on the auditors' decision making on the proposed audit adjustments. The emphasis of auditing standard on two-way communication between auditor and audit committee has placed much more important roles on audit committee in the auditor-client negotiation process. To examine the negotiation process, experimental research method is considered suitable. A key strength of experimental is that they allow strong causal inferences to be made. Experiments have the advantage of testing the effects of conditions that do not presently exist in practice (e.g. proposed new accounting standards, new audit method), as well as conditions that already exist but not in sufficient volume to examine archivally.

Currently I'm reading literature on the auditor-client negotiation and the JDM research area. I'm welcome any comments and ideas on my research area.