Accounting and the COVID-19 pandemic two years on: insights, gaps, and an agenda for future research

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has imposed numerous constraints, caused enormous disruptions and has been associated with more than 5.8 million deaths worldwide (at the time of writing). It also raised opportunities to imagine a new environment. Accounting academics have been involved in studying and thinking about the questions this poses for research and practice. Accounting scholars have explored the responses to the pandemic crisis and provided important insights about its impact. However, there is relatively little research into how accounting scholarship has contributed collectively to understanding and challenging the effect of the COVID-19 crisis. As accounting scholarship had time to grow, this seems an opportune time to offer a preliminary assessment and an early indication of the emergent themes and challenges. This paper aims to bring together and reconcile insights from an understandably fragmented literature and propose an agenda for future research. The paper provides a conceptual consolidation of published scholarship by establishing connections and identifying key challenges and opportunities. Building on a systematic review of publication patterns across 53 academic journals, the paper analyses the themes explored in the literature as investigated by accounting researchers and identify important gaps. A structured analysis can help identify the role and relevance of accounting scholarship in a way that might not be as clear when examining individual aspects.