Research diversity in accounting doctoral education: survey results from the German-speaking countries

Recently, researchers have repeatedly claimed that the US mainstream approach to accounting research, which has been characterised by the dominance of positivistic approaches that focus on economic perspectives and that are mostly limited to large-scale archival studies (Williams et al. 2006; Oler et al. 2010), has increasingly begun to influence accounting research in other parts of the world (Hopwood 2007; Khalifa and Quattrone 2008; Lukka 2010). Such concerns have been raised with respect to alternative paradigms emphasising sociological or philosophical perspectives on accounting, paradigms that are often subsumed under the term “critical-interpretive school” (Chua 1986; Ahrens et al. 2008) and that have been influential in countries such as the UK, Australia or New Zealand (Locke and Lowe 2008).

In the German-speaking countries, accounting research has traditionally followed a normative or conceptual approach (e.g. Fülbier and Weller 2008; Messner et al. 2008). Due to strong links between accounting academia and practice, the main purpose of accounting research was to provide insights into and recommendations to practice, for example with respect to interpretations of German accounting law (Küpper and Mattessich 2005; Fülbier and Weller 2008; Messner et al. 2008). However, in recent years empirical accounting research has become more prominent in the German-speaking countries (Perrey et al. 2010; Messner et al. 2008; Lohmann 2012) and literature has claimed that there is an ongoing trend towards US-type positivistic research (Fülbier and Weller 2008; Schäffer 2013).

In spite of such claims, as yet there is little empirical evidence on the extent to which the US mainstream spreads to other countries and the way in which its dissemination is linked to the (local) institutional setting. In this context, our paper scrutinises research diversity and its relations to the institutional environment in the German-speaking area during a period of transition. The definition of research diversity employed in this paper covers two dimensions: accounting journals and research methods. The former dimension finds its justification in journal publications being perceived as the most important output of accounting academics as they form the basis for decisions concerning tenure, promotion or funding (Lee 2004; Gendron 2008; Pelger and Grottke 2015). As a result, “accounting journals are the critical element in the social structure of the discipline” (Schwartz et al. 2005, p. 330). Locke and Lowe (2008) show that academic accounting journals differ with respect to their paradigmatic position. They differentiate between journals following functionalist (positivistic) and critical-interpretive paradigms (for this distinction also see Chua 1986; Chapman 2012). In our study, considering the tradition of accounting research in the German-speaking area, in addition to positivistic and critical-interpretive journals, we also take up German journals in business economics that reflect the traditional local paradigm with a focus on normative research (Fülbier and Weller 2011; Lohmann 2012; Wagenhofer 2006). Our study explores the extent of diversity in terms of awareness of a set of different accounting journals and the quality attributed to these outlets. In addition to considering a set of different accounting journals, as a second indication of research diversity we focus on the research methods employed (e.g. also see Williams et al. 2006; Oler et al. 2010). In identifying specific research methods, we follow the classification by Grochla (1976) and distinguish between verbal-analytical,¹ empirical and analytical modelling approaches. We further divide empirical research into quantitative and qualitative approaches.²

For our study into research diversity we focus on one specific group of academics that “may be the least studied group of individuals in the universe of the accounting discipline” (Fogarty and Jonas 2010, p. 303): doctoral students. For two reasons the latter are a particularly interesting group to study. First, the extent of diversity among those doctoral students who remain in the academy after finishing their PhD is one indicator of the extent of the future diversity in the academy. Second, doctoral education in accounting (and business economics more generally) has recently been subject to major changes in the German-speaking countries. In particular, the introduction of more structured approaches to doctoral education and the emphasis being put on internationalisation and publication activities have changed the form and content of doctoral education in accounting (Pelger and Grottke 2015, 2016).

The present paper aims at understanding the status quo at a time at which these changes were still ongoing and, by considering the context of the institutional setting, attempts to derive implications for research diversity. More specifically, we present explorative empirical findings on the basis of the data retrieved from an online survey among 293 accounting doctoral students from the German-speaking area in autumn 2009. Our study provides a snapshot of research diversity at a particular point in time at which doctoral education was in transition from a traditional model towards a more structured model (Djelic 2008). That the year of our survey reflected a period of transition can most clearly be seen in the fact that the German Academic Association for Business Research (VHB) started its structured doctoral program (ProDok) in 2009 (VHB 2009). Developed with the intention to complement programs at individual universities by offering specialised courses, inter alia in accounting (VHB 2016), the VHB highlights that “with ProDok, the VHB is looking to make it easier for its doctoral students to succeed among the international research competition” (VHB 2016). Moreover, during this time period several broader changes took place that affected accounting academia in the German-speaking area, such as the implementation of the Bologna reform and the rising importance of internationally common performance evaluation criteria (Wissenschaftsrat 2002; DFG 2012; Kieser 2012).³ Our survey data enable us to investigate doctoral students’ perceptions of a set of accounting journals and method choices at a time of a (local) scientific revolution (Kuhn 1996) and to also explore links to factors that reflect the institutional environment of doctoral education.

Hence, we address the following research questions:

First, we focus on the extent to which doctoral students in German-speaking countries are familiar with a set of accounting journals and how they assess the quality of the journals. We show that familiarity with US mainstream journals, European Accounting Review (EAR) and German academic journals is high, while familiarity with Accounting, Organizations and Society (AOS) and, in particular, Critical Perspectives on Accounting (CPA) is far more limited. With regard to the second research question our study reveals that doctoral students in the German-speaking setting use various different methods and that many doctoral students approach their topics with the aid of multiple methods. At the same time, our analysis provides some indications that the structured approach to doctoral education, which goes hand in hand with an emphasis on internationalisation, seems to be primarily related to the adoption of quantitative empirical methods. While empirical qualitative doctoral researchers also tend to be internationally oriented, their absolute number remains relatively small. The number of students pursuing verbal-analytical approaches is still substantial at the time of our survey, but these doctoral students are less related to features of more structured and international doctoral education.

Our study is related to two streams of literature. First, this paper contributes to the critical debate on current trends in accounting research and on the risk of homogeneity triumphing on a global scale (e.g. Hopwood 2007; Khalifa and Quattrone 2008; Lukka 2010) and follows the appeals voiced by Hopwood (2008) to sustain debate on the issues at stake. Part of this literature has focussed on the socialisation of PhD students, however, mostly in US accounting academia (Schwartz et al. 2005; Fogarty and Jonas 2010). The paper by Schwartz et al. (2005) is closest to our study as the authors present the results of a survey they carried out in fall 1999 among 151 accounting students from selected US doctoral programs. They were primarily concerned with the exposure of US doctoral students to different paradigms in accounting research and thus asked doctoral students how familiar they were with 37 accounting journals. Their main finding is that US doctoral students state to be very familiar with the three top mainstream accounting journals [The Accounting Review (TAR), Journal of Accounting Research (JAR), Journal of Accounting and Economics (JAE)], but that AOS enjoys only an average degree of familiarity, while all other non-mainstream journals are largely unknown. Our paper carries out a similar survey for doctoral students in accounting in the German-speaking countries which also aims at understanding the familiarity of doctoral students with different research discourses. However, we extend the approach by Schwartz et al. (2005) as we also consider research methods adopted by doctoral students and relate these to the institutional setting of doctoral education. This enables us to provide more comprehensive observations of research diversity and its relation to certain features of the institutional environment which we use to derive implications for how research diversity might be sustained and fostered.

Second, our paper contributes to literature that sheds light on doctoral education in accounting in the German-speaking area. In their reflective essay, Pelger and Grottke (2015) discuss the repercussions of internationalisation and performance orientation on doctoral students based on their personal experiences and then relate this situation to more general developments in German-speaking accounting academia. Two papers use data from the same survey as the present paper: first, Pelger and Grottke (2016) provide a number of indications that doctoral education moves from a traditional towards a more structured model of doctoral education, which relates in particular to many students attending doctoral courses and participating in international conferences. We link doctoral students’ choice of research methods to this changed institutional setting of doctoral education in Sect. 3.3. Pelger and Grottke (2016) also analyse which factors determine doctoral students’ satisfaction with their supervision and with their doctorate as a whole.⁴ Second, Grottke et al. (2013) analyse differences between doctoral students who want to stay in accounting academia and those who prefer to go into business practice after finishing their doctorate. The authors find that attitudes which might be typically related to ideal type academics are not generally more pronounced among doctoral students with the desire to stay in academia. However, the latter group feels the effects raised by recent changes to performance orientation in academia more strongly in that they are more active on an international level and feel higher pressure to publish than future practitioners. Different from these studies, the focus of this paper is on research diversity as exhibited in doctoral students’ familiarity with different accounting journals and their method choice and on how this is related to factors of the institutional environment.

The paper is structured as follows: in Sect. 2, we describe the design of the survey and introduce the relevant variables. Section 3 presents the results of our survey of German-speaking doctoral students and discusses the limitations of this study. Section 4 offers a summary and a discussion of our results, while Sect. 5 explores possible wider implications of our findings.

We carried out a perception study among German-speaking doctoral students, using a web-based survey (for this approach see, for example, Lowe and Locke 2005). In developing the questionnaire, we conducted two rounds of pre-testing with survey experts, doctoral students from other disciplines and members of accounting faculties. A manual internet search was used to identify all the chairs related to management accounting or financial accounting/auditing⁵ at universities in the German-speaking area.⁶ We found 150 chairs in autumn 2009. The population of doctoral students, as assessed on October 1st, 2009, consisted of 782 doctoral students⁷ mentioned on the websites.⁸ Thus, at that time on average each professor (chairholder) in our sample supervised about five doctoral students.⁹ In October 2009, we sent an initial invitation to take part in the survey¹⁰ and we reminded those who had not yet participated on three occasions after 3 weeks had elapsed, respectively. All the participants remained anonymous. In total, 293 doctoral students completed the questionnaire, which amounts to a response rate of 38.45%—a result which, compared to other recent surveys carried out in accounting academia, is acceptable (Brinn et al. 1996: 34.6%, n ¹¹ = 90; Lowe and Locke 2005: 16%, n = 149, Schwartz et al. 2005: 57%, n = 151).¹²

With a view to assessing the diversity of discourses consulted by doctoral students, we asked them about their familiarity with a set of journals and their perceptions of the latter’s quality, thus combining to a certain degree the approaches taken by Schwartz et al. (2005) and Locke and Lowe (2008).¹³ Against the background of these studies and the German journal ranking JOURQUAL2,¹⁴ we decided to include journals from the following groups; first, three journals standing at the top of the US mainstream were considered: JAR, JAE and TAR. There is little doubt that these journals belong to the positivist or functionalist school of accounting thought (Locke and Lowe 2008). Second, three internationally acknowledged journals were included which represent a more diverse approach to accounting research and which are more closely associated with non-US environments (Lukka and Kasaanen 1996; Qu et al. 2009): AOS, EAR and CPA. AOS and CPA, as assessed by accounting academics, represent the critical-interpretive school (Lowe and Locke 2005), while EAR is regarded as publishing papers from both positivistic and critical-interpretive perspectives (Locke and Lowe 2008).¹⁵ Finally, owing to the lack of German academic journals specialising in accounting (Wagenhofer 2006), we included the four German academic journals in general business economics, Zeitschrift für betriebswirtschaftliche Forschung (ZfbF), Zeitschrift für Betriebswirtschaft (ZfB), Die Betriebswirtschaft (DBW) and Betriebswirtschaftliche Forschung und Praxis (BFuP),¹⁶ that reflect the German accounting tradition with regard to publishing normative research, something which at the time of our survey still accounted for part of the journals’ (accounting) content (Binder and Schäffer 2005; Perrey et al. 2010).

To validate our choice of journals, we asked the participants in an open question to indicate further journals with which they were very familiar (for a similar procedure see Weber and Stevenson 1981). Respondents mentioned a diverse set of more than 120 additional journal titles, the majority of which were practitioner journals. The following journals were mentioned more than ten times: Zeitschrift für kapitalmarktorientierte Rechnungslegung (16), Management Accounting Research (MAR) (13), Der Betrieb (12), Betriebsberater (12), Contemporary Accounting Research (CAR) (11), Journal of Finance (10), and Die Wirtschaftsprüfung (10). All German titles represent professional journals with a focus on financial accounting issues. Closest to this set of journals with seven mentions came the Academy of Management Journal. While the Journal of Finance is a finance journal and MAR is a specialist journal focusing on a sub-area of accounting (management accounting), which is thus not considered in our journal selection, the exclusion of CAR rests on the observation that CAR leaned relatively close to the US mainstream at the time of our survey (Macintosh 2004; Oler et al. 2010; Qu et al. 2009), which has already been reflected in our study via the inclusion of three major US journals.¹⁷ Following Schwartz et al. (2005) and Weber and Stevenson (1981) we included one more journal in the list—a journal which does not, in fact, exist (we labelled this journal Journal of Accounting and Institutions). All 28 participants who claimed to be at least to some extent familiar with this fictitious journal (a value larger than four on a seven-point scale) were excluded from our analysis regarding journal discourses, which reduces the sample for our analyses involving journals in Sects. 3.1 and 3.3 to 265 participants.¹⁸ In the questionnaire, we asked participants to provide their familiarity and quality assessments on a seven-point rating scale (e.g. also cf. Locke and Lowe 2008), ranging from one (not familiar at all; very bad quality) to seven (very familiar; very high quality).¹⁹

We distinguish the following research methods: analytical (mathematical) modelling, empirical (commercial (external) or self-created database, experiments, surveys, case studies, other) and verbal-analytical studies. As doctoral students are not limited to using only one method in their dissertation, we allowed for multiple responses which may, moreover, indicate the existence of overlaps between the different methods.

With regard to the institutional setting in which doctoral education takes place, we decided to focus on variables that reflect the development towards a more structured approach of doctoral education, as outlined, for example, by Pelger and Grottke (2015, 2016). A major change in doctoral education has been the introduction of structured course programs, which were unusual in the traditional model (Pelger and Grottke 2015). Hence, we consider the areas covered by the courses attended by doctoral students. Specifically, we asked whether students attended courses in statistics (Statcourse), economics (Econcourse) or psychology (Psychcourse), as these areas reflect courses that usually form part of US accounting doctoral programs (e.g. Lee 2004). A further change is the increasing interaction with the international research community (Pelger and Grottke 2016). Therefore, we assess the dimension of internationalisation with doctoral students’ responses to the question of whether they attend conferences/workshops abroad (Confabroad) and whether they have completed or planned research stays abroad (Stayabroad). In line with internationalisation, a further trend which increasingly shapes doctoral education is an emphasis on publications in academic journals (Pelger and Grottke 2015). Thus, we asked whether doctoral students are writing a paper-based dissertation (Paperbased). Linked to the increasing focus on publication, we also asked whether they were aware of the JOURQUAL ranking (AwareJQ). Finally, we included variables that enable us to distinguish doctoral students in different groups, based on their specialisation (Management Accounting, Financial Accounting, Other) and their career preferences (Practice, Academia, Undecided).

In this paper, we analyse research diversity among doctoral students in the German-speaking area in a period of transition. With respect to the first research question on doctoral students’ familiarity with and quality assessments of accounting journals, we find that the traditionally predominant role played by national outlets is still present at the time of our survey. There is also considerable awareness of international outlets, in particular those with a US focus and EAR, while critical-interpretive perspectives are less known by doctoral students in the German-speaking area. To some extent, this result can be contrasted with the study by Schwartz et al. (2005). While CPA is unknown to most German-speaking and US doctoral students alike, familiarity with top US journals and with AOS is less pronounced in the German-speaking setting than it is in the US. In line with the observation by Pelger and Grottke (2015) we can conclude that the international orientation by PhD students largely relates to positivistic journal discourses and rarely to critical-interpretive journals. However, we also find that doctoral students are familiar with EAR, a journal which, at least in 2009, still relatively regularly published research from different paradigms (Carmona et al. 1999; Locke and Lowe 2008).²⁷

In this regard, our correlation analysis reveals that familiarity with EAR played a bridging role between positivistic and critical-interpretive paradigms at that point in time.²⁸ The role of EAR in building bridges across different paradigms is important because it exposes doctoral students to different discourses and thus might foster diversity in their own research. This finding highlights how important it is to keep association journals, such as EAR, open to multiple paradigms through open editorial policies (e.g. Oler et al. 2016; Malsch and Salterio 2016) and the choice of editorial board members from different paradigms (Chapman 2012).

With respect to the quality dimension, we find that international journals were more favourably assessed than German journals. An explanation might be the existence of a reverse home bias in that local research is downgraded just because it is German. The latter point can be related to the results of a survey by Brinn et al. (1996) according to which UK academics tend to estimate the quality of their home-country journals to be worse than the quality of the US journals. This result is in particular noteworthy, as a clear majority in the British study even indicated that they do not envisage to make any effort to publish in US journals (Brinn et al. 1996, 2001).

Another reason for downgrading local journals might be that doctoral students’ quality judgements are influenced by the quasi-authoritative quality assessments of JOURQUAL (Kieser 2012). Along this line, in additional analyses we find that if the journal ranking is known, doctoral students consistently downgrade the quality they assign to the German journals (see Table 7). In particular, in Panel A of Table 7 only few differences between the international accounting journals and the German journals are significant which suggests that those doctoral students not aware of JOURQUAL (n = 68) do not perceive major differences in the quality between international and German journals.²⁹

Correlations of journal quality assessments might be interpreted as demonstrating how the traditional German journals, on the one hand, and the US mainstream journals, on the other hand, are each perceived to offer a discourse of a rather uniform type of quality, while EAR, AOS and CPA are too diverse to fall into one of these two discourses. Thus, our findings corroborate that doctoral students perceive the homogenous (monolithic) character of the three positivist US journals that was also noted by Williams et al. (2006) and that contrasts markedly with the low consensus social science research that can be found in critical-interpretive outlets (Lee and Williams 1999). This interpretation is also in line with the observations of Locke and Lowe (2008) who show that the quality assessments of UK and Australasian academics differ with respect to AOS and CPA, while they are rather similar for the three US journals. Furthermore, doctoral students also seem to perceive the traditional German business economics journals as representing a rather monolithic discourse. However, this perception might have changed in the years after our survey was conducted as these journals adopted different strategies. While ZfB followed trends of internationalisation and completely switched to English in 2013, even changing its title to Journal of Business Economics, DBW³⁰ and BFuP remain primarily German-language publications. Already since the year 2000, several issues of ZfbF have been published each year in English under the title of Schmalenbach Business Review which was thus the first English language outlet in the German-speaking area.

With respect to the second research question, on the extent of diversity in the research methods adopted by accounting doctoral students in their dissertations, our results reveal that, overall, doctoral students stated that they take various different approaches—empirical, analytical modelling and verbal-analytical—to their research. Moreover, they frequently declare that they employ multiple approaches in their doctoral dissertations, which suggests a certain awareness of the existence of other approaches. We show that differences exist, particularly over what specific empirical approach is adopted, depending on whether the doctoral student is specialising in financial or management accounting: while management accounting researchers more often use surveys or case studies, empirical research in financial accounting mostly takes an archival approach (using databases). The former finding is in line with results on journal publications in the literature (Binder and Schäffer 2005; Wagenhofer 2006) arguing that data availability might be a major reason for the relative scarcity of archival research by management accounting academics. The focus on surveys and case studies, however, is in contrast to the US where empirical-archival approaches are dominant in management accounting (Merchant 2010). For financial accounting our finding is broadly consistent with the publication analysis produced by Perrey et al. (2010). However, doctoral students in financial accounting seem to use survey data more often than the articles published in academic journals. This might suggest that difficulties are encountered in publishing survey research in German academic journals. That our group of “other” specialisations is less prone to empirical work is something which may be attributable to the large number of doctoral students specialising in taxation in this group, a subject which at least traditionally is less geared to empirical approaches, owing to the lack of data (e.g. Shackleford and Shevlin 2001). Summing up, the diversity in terms of method that we find in our sample from 2009 suggests that there was at least at that time no single focus on the adoption of US positivistic approaches.

With respect to the third research question on the relationship between accounting journals, research methods and the institutional setting, we find that different characteristics of the institutional environment of doctoral education are associated with the adoption of different research methods. A possible interpretation of our results suggests that in particular empirical quantitative research seems to resonate with institutional factors of the new setting of doctoral education. While empirical qualitative researchers also show high levels of international activity, verbal-analytical researchers have little relations to any of the characteristics of the new model of doctoral education. Thus, the forging of stronger links to the international accounting community and the establishment of structured doctoral programs at that time seemed to have coincided, at least to some extent, with quantitative (and partly qualitative) methods being adopted.

In the light of the recent changes that have taken place in doctoral education, our results might suggest that the new way in which doctoral education is now being configured at several German-speaking business schools, with its emphasis on structured course programs, internationalisation and publications in (international) journals, is likely to promote empirical quantitative (and, to a lesser extent, empirical qualitative) research but is neglecting traditional verbal-analytical research.

Taking into account the literature concerned with looming homogeneity in accounting research (e.g. Hopwood 2007, 2008), this might lead to a state of affairs similar to that in the US where the approach to doctoral education is not very diverse across different schools (e.g. Granof and Zeff 2008) and doctoral students are socialised with very clear guidance on what constitutes good and appropriate research (e.g. Panozzo 1997; Beyer et al. 2010). On the one hand, such a homogenous institutional setting of doctoral education might trigger efficiency gains and lead to better-trained doctoral students in the methods offered in PhD programs. On the other hand, it might have an effect on the broader setting of academia as conservative structures that generate homogeneity (Hopwood 2007) are, according to literature from the US, accompanied by a lack of innovation (Kaplan 2011; Waymire 2012) and a stifling of open discourse (Williams and Rodgers 1995; Tuttle and Dillard 2007). Along this line, we find that prospective academics among our surveyed accounting doctoral students tend to rely more on commercial databases than other doctoral students. While one reason for this result might be that the use of commercial databases allows for the more efficient production of research output compared to other, possibly more time-consuming forms of data collection, it also shows that doctoral students aiming at academia tend to employ the method prevailing in the US.

However, an important finding from our empirical evidence for local accounting communities in this regard might be that the institutional change must not necessarily end in homogeneity. The fact that we can observe German-speaking doctoral students choosing qualitative methods to be active at an international level³¹ might indicate the availability of different routes for the future development of academia. While our study indicates that some doctoral students, primarily in management accounting, might be following this route, which might even resonate well with the new performance-oriented academic culture (Messner 2015), the absolute number of doctoral students choosing such a method is, in fact, comparatively small. Moreover, familiarity with AOS and CPA is not widespread among doctoral students. The finding that despite an ever increasing focus on journal rankings, qualitative research has not penetrated doctoral students in accounting affiliated with schools in the German-speaking countries on a broader scale so far might well be due to the traditional lack of critical-interpretive perspectives in German-speaking accounting academia (e.g. Becker and Messner 2005; Power 2004). Whether this route to qualitative and critical-interpretive research is perceived by doctoral students as an attractive option for their own research, might, therefore, crucially depend on how this approach is embedded in doctoral education. Introducing courses on qualitative accounting research, as it was first done by the accounting section of the VHB in 2015 (WK RECH 2015), might be a promising way to maintain and foster diversity in this regard.

On the other hand, the viability of the traditional normative approach may in future be called into question. Indeed, German-speaking researchers employing verbal-analytical research approaches have not managed, or have arguably not even seriously attempted, to promote their normative research approach in the international arena to complement positivistic and/or critical-interpretive research. This might well be attributable to the absence of international networks, something that has its roots in the international isolation that was characteristic for German accounting academics until the beginning of this century (Küpper and Mattessich 2005; Wagenhofer 2006). The national orientation is notable as there has been room for normative research on the international level: for example, EAR and other international journals, such as Abacus or Accounting and Business Research, have published normative papers (Pelger and Grottke 2015). We conclude that if normative research is to be kept as a sustainable alternative in a revised institutional setting, this tradition would need to be incorporated into the structured model of doctoral education by, for example, establishing courses on accounting theory and to be promoted more broadly at an international level. Given the still considerable number of accounting researchers carrying out normative accounting research in the German-speaking area and the fact that this line of research also exists in other parts of the world (e.g. Rutherford 2010 for the UK; Miller and Bahnson 2010 for the US) it might be a fruitful avenue for those researchers to open up more to the international community. Benefits might also arise from combining the German tradition of practically relevant normative accounting research with the theoretical conceptions and qualitative empirical approaches of interpretive or critical research.

Finally, the empirical results presented in this paper open up avenues for future research with respect to similar changes towards internationalisation and structured doctoral education in other countries, particularly in the European Union in the wake of the Bologna process (Djelic 2008), which, however, have different (local) points of departure. In some countries, this development seems to have been concluded a while ago (e.g. France), while elsewhere reforms in this direction have still not been started (e.g. Romania) (for both examples cf. Urdari et al. 2015). In particular, it would be interesting to learn more about the specific (hybrid) forms of doctoral education existing in European countries and their link to the research diversity among doctoral students.