ABSTRACT
The main thrust for the use of social theory in accounting research has been to put accounting in its social, organisational and institutional context, and to show how accounting practices affect people and the relationships between them. Lowe and Puxty (1990) state that accountants should aim to understand the total organisational and societal problems of which accounting systems form a part. Accounting is not an essential force in itself that can be improved by incremental but limited jumps, they argue, but accounting systems have to be created that are useful to users in their context. That context though, as we have seen, is very wide. Trainee accountants and auditors are taught that to account for a business, you have to understand that business. Social researchers in accounting need to understand not only the business or organisation under scrutiny but the social and political systems and structures that may only be tangential to the day to day running
of that organisation. How is this done? Accounting is a social practice carried out minute by minute. It forms patterns and leaves traces in society but why these particular patterns, what relationships are formed and what are their consequences? Social theories are explanations of recurrent patterns or regularities in social life and the answer to ‘why’ questions. The starting point for accounting researchers is to ask simply ‘Why is accounting a problem?’ or ‘Is accounting the problem?’ rather than ‘How can accounting be done better?’ which is a question to be asked much later. To uncover the problems, patterns and relationships that accounting
creates in society, and that society creates for accountants, most researchers make use of qualitative primary and secondary data. We carry out empirical research, and combine the results with theory to create explanations. Although this is not a book about methodology and methods, in this chapter I am going to explore the question of research design. By this, I mean the ways in which social theory has been incorporated into the writings of accounting researchers. In particular, I am interested in the way in which empirical research and social theory have been combined. If this is seen as problematic in accounting research, we should not be surprised. It appears to be problematic for all social scientists (Blaikie, 2010; Baert and da Silva, 2010). Some social theories are based on empirical work; others are more philo-
sophical. Social theory ‘[It] is a kind of sociology which does not seek to define its expertise in terms of its empirical research skills, but in terms of its ability to provide an overview of a kind that is not intended to be “tested” by empirical research’ is how Savage and Burrows (2007) describe the problem in their essay ‘The coming crisis in sociology’ which challenges the lack of development in empirical work and the privileging of theoretical writings. Applying grand theory in the analysis of empirical work is always going to be problematic but it can be done successfully. The question is whether to bring the theory into the research design or whether to let the data guide one to a particular theory. In this chapter, therefore, I am first going to explore how social theory
and empirical data go together and what the aims of researchers could be. I am then going to look at the types of paper written in accounting. The central part of the chapter is an examination of three papers, chosen because they tell us a great deal about what accounting was used, by whom and why, and the consequences. This is not always the case. We might get more about the social and organisational context rather than the accounting or more on why certain social theories fit the research topic. These papers are
more in line with my idea in this book, that accounting and social theory is about the use, misuse and abuse of accounting communication by people over time and across spaces, and the effects this has on social relationships.
