Myth, Paradigms and Academic Accounting Research: A Comment on “Reading and Understanding Academic Research in Accounting” (Gordon and Porter, 2009)

Gordon and Porter (2009) provide a guide to reading and evaluating the academic accounting literature aimed at Master’s students and “future practitioners.” While the article has value as a guide to the historical publishing norms of a certain type of research, this comment argues that it provides a paradigm-specific view of what constitutes accounting research and an overly stylized view of the research process that contributes to the “myth of the scientific method.” If we want students and practitioners to appreciate academic accounting research, we need to expose them to the variety, limitations and excitement of research. This comment hopefully opens a debate on how we should introduce accounting students to academic research.