A NOTE ON INSTITUTIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ACCOUNTING LITERATURE

EDWARD A. DYL University of Wyoming

and

MARTHA S. LILLY Colorado State University

It is generally agreed that an important dimen- sion of a university’s academic quality is the research productivity of its faculty, particularly as measured by their publications in leading scholarly journals. The primary objective of this study is to identify the institutions that have been most productive in publishing research in scholarly accounting journals over a recent period and to measure the degree of concentra- tion of accounting research among these institu- tions.

There have been a number of studies analyz- ing the publication rates of various accounting faculty (see Bazley & Nicolai, 1975; Andrews & McKenzie. 1978; Windal 198 1). However, none of these studies differentiated between refereed academic journals. which serve as media for dis- seminating the results of scholarly research, and practitioner-oriented journals and magazines, which tend to be more topical in their orienta- tion. Because the focus of this study is on scho- larly research in accounting. we consider only publications in refereed academic journals.

METHODOLOGY

We examine publications in seven scholarly journals over the four year period from 1978 to I98 1, The seven journals examined are basically

those listed as scholarly academic journals by Hendrickson ( 1980): Abacus, Accounting Organizations and Society, the Accounting Review, the International Journal of Account- ing Education and Research, the Journal of Accounting and Economics, the Journal of Accounting Research and the Journal of Busi- ness Finance and Accounting. Our sample of scholarly journals is much larger than those employed in earlier studies, which invariably examined only two scholarly journals - the Accounting Review and the Journal ofAccount- ing Research. Our study reflects the veritable explosion in the number of scholarly refereed accounting journals that occurred in the 1970’s. New scholarly accounting journals that com- menced publication during the 1970’s include the Journal of Business Finance and Account- ing ( 1974) Accounting, Organizations and Society ( 1976) and the Journal of Accounting and Economics (1979). Although the majority of these journals are edited in the United States, Abacus (Australia) and Accounting Organira- tions and Society and the Journal of Business Finance and Accounting (both U.K.) are also included. Our study thus provides an interna- tional perspective on accounting research, at least in terms of the English-speaking world, not found in earlier work.

Each issue of these journals published in the

171

four year period from 1978 to 1981 was in a similar study of research in the field of examined and the institutional affiliation of the finance KIemkosky & Tuttle ( 1977) found only author(s) of each article was noted. In the case one non-U.S. institution (the University of of joint authorship, equal fractional credit was British Columbia) among the top 25 institutions given to each school with no distinction being appearing in their ranking of contributors to made between senior and junior authorship. research in the field of finance. Articles and notes were considered as publica- Regarding the institutional concentration of tions, but comments, replies and correspon- research in accounting, we see from Table 1 that dence were excluded from the count. Essen- the top ten institutional contributors to account- tially we followed Windal’s conventions in this ing research accounted for 23% of the total regard, except that we used fractional credit number of articles during the period (i.e. 104 whereas WindaI allocated one publication to articles) and that the “top 25” institutions each institution in the case of joint authorship by accounted for 45% of the total number of arti- two faculty members at different institutions. cles. On the surface this would appear to be a

relatively high degree of concentration when one considers the many hundreds of universities

RESULTS offering accounting programs. For example, Has- selback ( 198 1) lists 74 U.S. universities offering

Table 1 ranks academic institutions according doctoral programs in accounting and presuma- to the total research contributions of their facul- bly the presence of a doctoral program suggests ties appearing in seven scholarly refereed jour- a research oriented university. However, it is nals during the four year period from 1978 to again possible to compare our results to those of 1981. One striking aspect of this ranking is that KIemkosky & Tuttle ( 1977) with regard to finan- it differs dramatically from earlier studies, such cial research. In their study of finance articles as Windal’s ( 1981) which included both scho- appearing in eleven finance and economics jour- larly journals and practitioner-oriented nals during the 1960’s and 70’s, the top ten magazines. Only ten of the schools shown in institutional contributors accounted for 3 1% of Table 1 also appeared in Windal’s “top 25”. From the total number of articles and the top 25 con- this result we infer that the production of scho- tributors accounted for 53% of the total. larly research in the field of accounting is not Although it appears that the institutional source necessarily highly correlated with the writing of of accounting research is not as concentrated as state-of-the-art practitioner-oriented articles. is the case with financial research, it remains

Another notable difference between our noteworthy that 45% of the total articles results and those of earlier studies is our finding observed in our study were attributable to only regarding the international distribution of scho- 25 institutions. Also note that the degree of con- larly research in accounting. Our ranking of the centration varies considerably from journal to institutional source of accounting research journal, with well over 50% of the articles in the includes seven universities located outside the Accounting Review and the Journal ofAccount-

United States. Although this result is partly ing Research and almost all of the articles in the explained by our inclusion of three journals Journal of Accounting and Economics being edited outside the United States, the general pat- attributable to the “top 25” institutions. tern appears to be that U.S. authors frequently publish in non-U.S. journals and that non-U.S. researchers frequently published their results in RESEARCH OUTPUT PER FACULTY 1MEMBER journals edited in the United States. The com- munity of accounting scholars appears to be Information pertaining to research output per more international in scope than is found in the faculty member is also of interest, particularly to other functional fields in business. For example, accounting administrators seeking some stan-

172 EDWARD A. DYL and MARTHA S. LILLY

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174 EDWARD A. DYL and MARTHA S. LILL’t

dard to evaluate the output of their faculty. This information is shown in Table 2 for the univer- sities in our “top 25” listing. Information about the number of faculty members at United States and Canadian universities was obtained from Hasselback ( 198 1). Similar information for non- American universities was obtained directly from the individual institutions. Full-time faculty members were defined as individuals holding professorial rank and possessing the doctoral degree. This definition represents an effort to exclude temporary teaching faculty for whom the institution presumably has no research expectation. In addition, assistant professors lised as “ABD” were also excluded.

Table 2 reveals considerable variation among institutions in the number of scholarly publica-

tions per faculty member during the four year period. The average for the four year period was 0.48 articles per faculty member, or an annual rate of publication of 0.12 articles per faculQ member. On the surface. this would appear to be an incredibly low rate of research output per faculty member. For example. consider this rate of publication in the context of standards for promotion and tenure. At the end of the normal six year probationary period for assistant profes- sors, the average faculty member at these pre- sumably research-oriented universities would have published only 0.‘2 of an article. We did consider the hypothesis that assistant professors may do all the publishing and then retire from the publishing arena upon being granted tenure, but in looking at the academic rank of authors

TABLE 2. Scholarly publications per faculty member

Total scholarly Publicationsper publications Yumber of faculty member

1978-1981 faculry 1978-1981

1. Chicago 1630

2. Stanford 12.50

3. Lancaster (U.K. ) 12.20

4. NYU 11.00

5. SUNY 10.70 6. NewSouth Wales(Australia) 9.00

7. Washington 8.40 8. Iowa 8.20 9. Manchester (U K) 8.20

10. Cornell 7.90

1 I. California, Berkeley 7.80 12. Illinois : 50

13. Rochester 7 30

1-i. Tel Aviv (Israel) 7.10

15. Texas 700

16. Sydney ( Alistralia) - 00

17. British Columbia (Canada) 6.80 18. UCLA 6.80

19. Sourhern Califorma 6.00

20. Victoria ( N.Z. ) 6.00

2 1. South Carolina 5.80

22. Pennsylvania i 50

23 Florida 5.50

2-1. Pittsburgh 5.30

25. Harvard -t.50

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A NOTE ON INSTITI ITIONAI. CONTRIHlITIONS TO THE A<:<:OIINTING LITERATlIRl! 1’5

(which was reported in five of the journals in our sample) we found no pattern to support this hypothesis.

A more appealing explanation is simply that the results of this study, while interesting. must be taken with a grain of salt. Although our sample of scholarly refereed journals is far broader than that considered in earlier studies, many con- tributions to accounting research are published in journals outside the accounting field. For example, such material frequently appears in finance journals, economics journals and man- agement science journals. In addition, there are many specialized areas in accounting - such as taxation and management information systems - where the research in these areas does not frequently appear in the general interest academic accounting journals comprising our sample, but rather in more specialized journals. However, despite the shortcomings, our results remain of interest as a basic indicator of the rate of research output by individual faculty mem- bers at major research-oriented institutions.

SIJMMARY

Our finding that 45% of the scholarly articles appearing in the accounting journals we examined were authored by faculty members at only 25 institutions suggests that accounting research is to a considerable degree concene trated in the 25 major programs that we iden- tified. An additional interesting aspect of our results in that Table 1 reflects the international distribution of accounting research. Seven non- U.S. universities are ranked in our “top 25”. which is remarkable when we note that no non- U.S. university appears in any previous study of the institutional source of accounting research. Finally, we note that the number of publications per faculty member in the accounting profession appears to be surprisingly low, although this may be because even our relatively large sample of scholarly refereed accounting journals does not include many of the potential avenues for the dissemination of scholarly research in account- ing.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andrews. W. T. & McKenzie, P. B., Leading Accounting Departments Revisited, The Accounting Review

(January 1978)~~. 135-138. Baaley, J, B. & Nicolai, L. A., A Comparison of Published Accounting Research and Qualities of Accounting

Faculty and Doctoral Programs, The Accounling Review (July 1975) pp. 605-609. Hasselback, J, R., Accounting Faculty Directory, 1980-8 1 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 198 1). Hendrickson, H. S., Journals for Accountants, TheAccounfingRevietu(October 1980)~~. 707-718. Klemkosky. R. C. & Tuttle, D. L., The Institutional Source and Concentration of Financial Research,

Journal ofFinance (June 1977) pp. 901-907. Windal. F. W.. Publishing for a Varied Public: An Empirical Study, The Accounting Review (July 1981)

pp. 653-658.