coping with transnational financial reporting, international financial statement analysis);

financial reporting in emerging capital markets (Chapter 6); and managerial issues
(Chapter 7: Budgeting and performance evaluation, global risk management, transfer
pricing and information technology).
Regarding end-of-chapter materials, each chapter ends with discussion questions,
exercises, and sometimes cases. Web assignments are also provided. Discussion questions
correspond to chapter materials. Many of the exercises involve practical evaluation of
domestic and foreign annual reports. For the instructors use, PowerPoint lecture outlines
are provided for each chapter.
The strengths of International Accounting: A User Perspective are twofold. First, in a
concise way, the book effectively covers the essential subjects of an international
accounting class. Second, different from the average textbook, this book cites a great deal
of scholarly research, which makes it a helpful reference book for the international
accounting researcher. The weaknesses of the book stem from its strengths. First, the book
may be too concise for some instructorsjust seven chapters, and not all traditional topics
are included. For example, given todays business environment, the book would have
benefited from materials on business ethics and corporate social responsibility. Second,
some students will not appreciate the way the author connects the books topics to
scholarly research. In many ways the book reads more like a research paper than a
textbook. Thus, the strengths of the book are also its weaknesses.
L. Murphy Smith
Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77845- USA
Christopher Humphrey, Bill Lee, (Eds.), The Real Life Guide to Accounting Research
A Behind-the-Scenes View of Using Qualitative Research Methods, Elsevier,
Oxford, UK, 2004, 539 pp., (539 pages, USD 100, EUR 100, 0-08-043972-1)
1. General
This book is an unusual collection and I imagine it was a major project to
coordinate. The editors, in fact, allude to what seems to me to have likely been a
difficult process which clearly extended over a much longer time than appears to have
been the original expectation. A number of features of the book are exceptional and
perhaps extraordinary.
This is a very considerable tome, extending to 30 chapters and involving in all 46
authors. Other points to note are the variety of the contributions. The individual chapters
vary greatly in interest, style, readability and authority. The book contains a number of
chapters, which I consider to be gems, providing great insights on research for both
experienced and novice researchers, alike. Some chapters will likely be of more help to
new researchers, others to more experienced researchers, but some of the contributions are
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Book reviews 294
a must read for both experienced and inexperienced researchers. This is not easy to achieve
in unison.
The book consists of five sections:
1. the meaning of research
2. managing the research process
3. collecting and analyzing data
4. publishing and dissemination
5. interdisciplinary perspectives
Producing a worthwhile review of such an extensive and expansive text is difficult. By
design the book is highly diverse. Qualitative research approaches cover a vast array of
alternatives and when combined with the editors aim to go behind the scenes to get
personal stories of research experiences even more diversity is produced. In part, the result
is an academic text which is far too diverse for me to recommend as the basis of a research
methods course, but it certainly contains some must read material for budding researchers.
The text is just too much and too big to face postgraduate students with. Although, I would
also not feel comfortable recommending this entire book to postgraduates, there are
notable contributions in each of the main sections that offer keys to understanding and
applying qualitative approaches in accounting. I will pick out those that struck me as
particularly valuable.
The book contains some remarkable contrasts which ought to help convince research
students that the research journey is indeed a very personal experience. There are examples
of these personal journeys in section one. I found myself completely enthralled reading
Lofts chapter (bNice Work: Writing a Ph.D. Thesis in AccountingQ). For me the draw was
not merely Lofts journey to Foucauldian enlightenment, though this is certainly
extraordinary, but the folk tales of an array of researchers I have come to regard as
legends of qualitative and critical research. Some begin to sound quite human in Lofts
account. Loft somehow makes mundane her research experiences in an environment that
seems to switch casually between the extreme loneliness of research and writing and
interruptions occasioned by encounters with a veritable whos who of the authors who
framed the dcriticalT accounting project.
The theme of the research act as a personal journey, can be found in other sections. In
section two Burns provides a highly anecdotal perspective on his early research path
(bConfessions of a Research AssistantQ). Burns describes the anxiety of differentiating his
doctoral research fromhis work within a larger research project. He talks of the difficulties of
finding an identity while acting as research assistant, doctoral student and lecturer. The
context is so specific that it may not apply to many others, but readers might still draw
interesting parallels with their own experiences.
At times it is not easy to see clearly the reason for one chapter being in one section rather
than another. In many ways trying to impose sections goes against much of what some
elements of qualitative research is about. Examples include chapter 17, in section three,
where Ahrens delivers a carefully crafted and thoughtful piece on the nature of access and
the alternative imperative of engaging with organizations (and presumably individuals) in
more or less formal ways. Ahrens appears to argue that in some cases it is in the researchers
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interests and the interests of the research to avoid committing too early to highly detailed
agreements as to what the researcher will do and what access he/she will be restricted to.
In section two Bedard and Gendron writing about their experiences of case research
into the modus operandi of audit committees (bQualitative Research on Accounting: Some
Thoughts on What OccursQ), recount experience that adds to the advice we might take
from Ahrens. Bedard and Gendron warn us against becoming too tied up with negotiations
of access at the organizational level. They extol the virtues of informal access, of being
able to approach individuals and develop access and their research questions gradually as
they come to understand the research questions better. Bedard and Gendron argue, in
opposition to conventional wisdom, that approaching individuals may produce better
quality research access. They suggest that trying to arrange access at the level of the
organization can often prove ineffective. There are shades of Ahrens in the experiences
these authors recount.
Bedard and Gendron also give a good deal of emphasis to the requirements for ethical
research practices in relation to both the research objects and the research funding bodies. I
think it is clear that some research questions would be more amenable to the type of
individual-research-object approach which these authors describe and in other instances an
organization based approach may be necessary.
Lapsley also expresses concerns about access (bMaking Sense of Interactions in an
Investigation of Organizational Practices and ProcessesQ), but has a rather different and
perhaps controversial solution. In chapter 11, Lapsley takes concerns about the ethics of
research and access to an extreme. He appears to argue in favor of covert studies of
organizational environments by relating such an approach to that used in some types of
clinical research. Lapsleys approach stands in marked contrast to the approach to ethics
discussed by Bedard and Gendron, and seems to me to be a dangerous path to take qualitative
research down.
A number of authors address issues of access and allude implicitly to the difficulty of
balancing the expectations of both research participants and funding agencies. McSweeney,
in chapter thirteen (bCritical IndependenceQ), describes problems he experienced in
balancing research and ethics while retained as a trade union advisor. He talks of the
pressures on the individual of being in a dfiduciaryT relationship with a key player in the
research environment.
In chapter 9 (bManagement of a Research TeamQ), Broadbent and Laughlin give us as
transparent an account of what middle range thinking means to the researcher and the
research process as I have read previously. Their description of a very long association in a
research team environment and with a particular methodology is informative and intriguing.
Section 3 titled bcollecting and analyzing data,Q is the largest section of the book (ten
chapters). I found the chapters in the section of mixed interest and, I think, quality. There are,
however, some exceptional discussions in this section. For example, the Ahrens chapter I
referred to earlier together with very different and distinctive pieces by Anderson-Gough
(bUsing Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software: Respecting Voices within
Data Management and AnalysisQ) and ODwyer (bQualitative Data Analysis: Illuminating a
Process for Transforming a dMessyT but dAttractiveT dNuisanceTQ). These authors provide
excellent and detailed descriptions on aspects of data collection, manipulation, and the way
in which they try to link to theory and identify themes. These are valuable contributions for
Book reviews 296
both new researchers and those more experienced writers and researchers who may wish to
consider different qualitative techniques. ODwyer provides a brilliantly careful outline of
his doctoral research project, giving a detailed account of the steps taken in data coding and
interpretation. Anderson-Gough has produced an insightful and thoughtful contribution on
busing computer assisted qualitative data analysis software.Q
My favorite chapter in this section is by Scapens (bDoing Case Study ResearchQ). There is
some commonality between Scapens and ODwyer in that one of the aspects which is
particularly well illustrated by the former is the use of mind maps as a conceptual tool. Both
authors refer to the use of such a tool as part of their ways of making sense of the vast
amounts of research material produced in qualitative case studies. Scapens makes this
technique come alive with some useful illustrative examples of mind maps he has used. He
provides a wide-ranging treatise on case research, which is probably no surprise given his
experience. Rather like the Ahrens contribution, Scapens produces an insightful contribution
which seems to me to contain much common sense about carrying out qualitative research
and working toward a case story. There is an interesting discussion of the pros and cons of
taping research interviews that provides valuable reminders of some of the difficult choices
faced by qualitative researchers. Scapens devotes a very convincing section to the use of the
charts, diagrams, and the mind map approach. He uses the section in part to help emphasize
the complexities of typical case research. This is one of the most practical sections in the
book and well worth careful consideration. But the use of visual methods in the
interpretation process is not without dangers. One of the cautions I would raise is that
diagrams can be dangerous simplifications of the research context, potentially giving
impetus to overly simple interpretations of complex settings. Diagrams can reveal but can
also conceal, impacting on our thinking and ideas too heavily. Scapens suggest that charts
and diagrams can be of immense value in the act of translating the research data into research
story. He also provides a brief but instructive discussion of issues of writing up results,
including those common difficulties encountered regularly in the review process of the
authenticity and plausibility of the research story. This section of the chapter concludes with
some interesting comments about the publication process in terms of what it means to have a
theoretically informed case study.
This brings us to part four of the book which considers bpublishing and dissemination.Q
Here there are two very interesting contributions, chapters 24 and 25, from the editors of
two well respected international journals, both of which publish a significant number of
qualitative papers. The authors (Guthrie, Parker and Gray, bRequirements and Under-
standings for Publishing Academic Research: An Insider ViewQ for AAAJ; Kari Lukka
(bHow Do Accounting Research Journals Function? Reflections from the InsideQ) for
EAR) present good descriptions of the behind-the-scenes aspects of the academic journal
submission and review process. Along the way they provide useful insights and advice for
authors. Some of this advice might seem rather prosaic to experienced authors, but I
certainly wish Id not had to learn some of it by the trial and error route. This is again great
value for new researchers and authors.
Part five of the text brings in binterdisciplinary perspectives.Q Here I found interesting
insights into organizational psychology in chapter 29 (bRaising the Profile of Qualitative
Methods in Organizational ResearchQ by Cassell and Symon), but from my perspective the
jewel in crown of the whole book is chapter 28 written by Harry Collins (bQualitative
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Methodology in Practice: My ExperienceQ). I have to admit that this might again simply
reflect personal biases as Collins is a founding father of the sociology of science studies,
an area I have found of great interest. Collins provides a great escape from the depths of
despair that many doctoral researchers often experience (see Loft in chapter six for a
wonderfully happy ending but with some clearly excruciating moments). In contrast,
Collins describes the, at times, fortuitous nature of the research environment. He argues
how important it is bto stay light on your feetQ and that bnearly every piece of fieldwork I
have ever undertaken has turned to. . . disappointment. . . but when I decided that I must
have been looking for something else all along, that something else, turned out to be much
more interestingQ (p. 488).
2. Conclusion
Given the seminal articles produced by Collins, this is a nice way to sum up some of the
most interesting insights in this book for me. They are twofold: the excitement and
unpredictability of the research process and the constant need to consider your options in
relation to the research site and the questions you think you will be able to answer.
Research must be planned and the researcher must be committed to the research process (if
you like the quest for knowledge and understanding), but it is best not to fit oneself for a
straightjacket too early.
Alan Lowe
The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
Christian Leuz, Dieter Pfaff, Anthony Hopwood (Eds.), The Economics and Politics of
Accounting International Perspectives on Research Trends, Policy, and Practice,
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004 (404 pages, o58.00, ISBN: 0-19-926062-1)
The volume gathers together fifteen authoritative contributions, thanks to which it is
possible to trace the trends in Accounting, assuming an international perspective and an
original point of view, that of the economic and political dimensions.
The choice of referring to an international perspective allows for the delineation of the
evolution of Accounting, concentrating on the great phenomena that have characterised
the past few years and that promise to affect the very way of understanding the scientific
area during the next few years. In this sense we can interpret some of the issues and
proposals developed by the authors in the individual chapters, as in the case of fair value
evaluations, or Goodwills evaluation, or the transition to IAS/IFRS, or moreover the
relationship between financial reporting and models of corporate governance. The
topicality of the themes that are dealt with and the potentiality connected to their
development are such to render them evident and to include how much future exists in
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Book reviews 298