‘In the aftermath of crisis: Reflections on the principles, values and significance of academic inquiry in accounting’: Introduction

Abstract

Through a select number of essays from leading accounting scholars, this special debating forum reflects on how the international academic accounting profession has responded in the aftermath of Enron and other recent corporate scandals. The presented combination of personal experiences and reflections of individuals working in North America, Australasia and Europe offers some intriguing insights of the nature of different educational arenas and the particular obligations that accounting educators must assume and respond to in the future. This introduction to the special debating forum explains its remit, summarises each individual contribution and analyses the main messages and implications to emerge from the forum.

Keywords:

• Crisis
• corporate scandals
• principles of academic inquiry
• post-Enron
• accounting education
• educational reform
• learning from international experience
• university and professional accounting curricula

Notes

¹For example, see Revsine (2002), Verrecchia (2002), Arya et al. (2003), Demski (2003), Entwistle (2003), Herring (2003), Kinney (2003), Largay (2003), PricewaterhouseCoopers (2003), Briloff (2004), Oliverio (2004), Williams (2004) and Wyatt (2004). The new millennium also triggered a number of reflective pieces pre-Enron on the future of accounting and auditing education (e.g. see Albrecht and Sack, 2000; The 2000–2001 Auditing Section Education Committee, American Accounting Association, 2003) or the nature of accounting scholarship (e.g. Demski, 2001; Kinney, 2001). Certain pieces (e.g. Mathews, 2001; Craig and Amernic, 2002; Wilson, 2002; Howieson, 2003) took a more international focus, although some of these spent considerable time assessing and responding to the work of Albrecht and Sack (2000) in the USA.

²In the process of putting this special debating forum together, there have appeared in print Enron-dedicated special issues – for example, see editorials by O'Connell (2004) in Critical Perspectives on Accounting and a special 2003 ‘Speaking out’ section of Organization (Volume 10, Number 3, pp. 549–594), although a significant proportion of this material was concerned with analysing the Enron case rather than explicitly addressing the role of accounting academics and accounting education. Guest editors have also completed special issues on professionalism and ethics in (US) accounting education (in Issues in Accounting Education – see Gaa and Thorne, 2004) and a critical response to managerialism in the Academy (Critical Perspectives on Accounting – see Saravanamuthu and Filling, 2004). Ravenscroft's powerful plenary address to the British Accounting Association's Special Interest Group on Accounting Education (Bournemouth, 2003) has also recently been published in a revised form (see Ravenscroft and Williams, 2004), while Amernic and Craig (2004) have put forward their own post-Enron agenda for the reform of accounting education.