۱- Introduction

۲- Influences on doctoral education and students

۳- Theoretical framing

۴- Method

۵- Findings

۶- Discussion

۷- Conclusion

References

Abstract

This paper uses observation and semi-structured interviews, informed by limited auto-ethnography, to examine the experiences of accounting doctoral students at a North American business school. Analyzing the findings with a theoretical approach to understanding scientific activity (Knorr-Cetina, 1981), this study investigates the influence of networks of academic supervisors, colloquia facilitators, and other doctoral students on the socialization of developing accounting academics as they learn the research process. The paper demonstrates that these resource-relationships play a key role in the formation of the doctoral student in relation to their respective field. The paper also demonstrates the influence of the particular methodology they are learning, as part of the socialization process. The degree of the field-specific methods’ indeterminacy influences the students’ perception of limits to their freedom and innovation. Building on previous research, the paper challenges the opposition of interpretive accounting research to a positivist/functionalist mainstream: the paper shows that despite the potential provided by the Inter-disciplinary stream’s indeterminacy of what constitutes “good research”, such opposition limits innovation and freedom.

Introduction

Don’t be afraid of the numbers This suggestion, made by a leading mainstream accounting researcher to the author, at the AAA Lake Tahoe colloquium, seems to exemplify the assertions made by Panozzo (1997). Contrasting the (then) emerging European accounting research perspective with the US tradition, Panozzo used the context of doctoral education to depict the reproduction of positivist accounting research dominance by the exemplification of ‘‘good” research through the AAA doctoral colloquium. Chua (1996) described such mainstream notions of ‘‘good” research as NIRD research: ‘‘new, innovative, rigorous and defensible” (Chua, 1996, p. 131). The underlying meaning of this NIRD thesis is that quality research is quantitative, underpinned by economic, psychology and mathematics theories, and adheres to an accepted format. Panozzo contended that the European context was lacking in such a rigid research tradition, and instead reflected a multivocal variety of different ontological bases and approaches for research methodologies. This resulted in an environment more open to different notions of what constitutes good research, where: ‘‘European doctoral students looking for practical guidance are left, at best, with the awareness of both fragmentation and consequent paradigm variety and with doubts concerning the identity and cohesiveness of the academic community they belong to.”