Accounting Research and Policy Making: An Overview

Accounting, time and again, is echoed by leading scholars of the discipline as an evolutionary social technology. A look into its history reveals many conflicts, crises, and resolutions in response to changes in environment and social needs. Besides, increasing challenges from non-accounting information sources require continued re-examination of the accounting core. In response to these external events, research agenda have been continuously changing. A great deal of contemporary research in the subject has consistently focused on the process of reporting regulations, particularly on accounting policy formulations. This may be due to the fact that policy formulation is viewed as a social process for which policy makers incredibly consume research information. A systematic overview of research is presented in the paper in order to highlight how research direction in accounting discipline has continuously and consistently been shifting and how it influences policy makers. It becomes apparent that many scholars view accounting research making no substantial progress and we are living with the same accounting model designed a century ago. Keeping in mind the challenges faced by accounting discipline at present, an attempt is made here to make a value addition to the existing scant literature by delving into some important issues in the future role of accounting research.