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European Accounting Review

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'If only there were simple

solutions, but there
aren't': some reflections
on Zimmerman's critique
of empirical management
accounting research
a
Anthony Hopwood
a
Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
Published online: 10 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: Anthony Hopwood (2002) 'If only there were simple solutions,
but there aren't': some reflections on Zimmerman's critique of empirical
management accounting research, European Accounting Review, 11:4, 777-785, DOI:
10.1080/0963818022000047073

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 The European Accounting Review 2002, 11:4, 777–785

‘If only there were simple solutions, but there

aren’t’: some reflections on Zimmerman’s
critique of empirical management accounting
research
Anthony G. Hopwood
Saı̈d Business School, University of Oxford
Downloaded by [Northeastern University] at 19:38 18 November 2014

ABSTRACT
Although having some sympathies with Zimmerman’s critique of Ittner and Larcker’s
review of the empirical management accounting research literature, this analysis points
out how Zimmerman has too easily allowed his own prejudices to influence both
his assessment of the empirical management accounting literature and his recommen-
dations for improvement. Particular emphasis is put on analysing Zimmerman’s
classification of the accounting research literature and his unproblematic optimism in
the potential of economic modes of understanding.

1. INTRODUCTION
Gutsy blunt articles can sometimes be quite useful. Avoiding the delicacies of
normal academic language, speaking from the heart as well as the head can reveal
some of the underlying perspectives and prejudices that shape academic action.
Zimmerman’s critique of empirical research in management accounting is just
such a piece of writing. Thoughtful in places, its spirited style nevertheless offers
us an insight into the wider preferences and preconceptions that inform and
mobilize Zimmerman’s analysis. A fascination with ‘the mainstream’, a retreat
from the international academic community towards a primary concern with
‘North America’ and a glorification of the status and potential of economics, ‘the
premier social science’, all infuse Zimmerman’s analysis. The result is a
fascinating rhetorical exercise that most likely says more about Zimmerman
than what Zimmerman was supposed to be analysing.
That is not to say that a critical analysis of the Ittner and Larcker (2001) review
was not justified. It was. Although Zimmerman is at pains to say that the

Address for correspondence

Saı̈d Business School, University of Oxford, Park End Street, Oxford OX1 1HP, UK

Copyright # 2002 European Accounting Association

ISSN 0963-8180 print=1468-4497 online DOI: 10.1080=0963818022000047073
Published by Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd on behalf of the EAA
 778 The European Accounting Review

problems reside with the literature being reviewed rather than the review itself, I
fear that this is being too kind. Ittner and Larcker made a clear decision to attempt
to analyse a diverse and quite extensive body of literature in terms of a value-
based management framework that is more reflective of prevailing fashions in
management consultancy rather than the accumulation of research wisdom and
experience. Right from the beginning of their review they buy into notions of
change in both research and practice without providing any empirical base for
their sweeping generalization. The earlier intellectual origins of the present
emphasis on value-based measurements are ignored. Many non-American ante-
cedents of new forms of costing and multiple performance measures remain
hidden. The similarities between the present wave of enthusiasm for a balanced
scorecard and earlier concerns with management-by-objectives are not identified.
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And the partialities introduced into their review by limiting the analysis to
‘organisation-level studies that use archival or survey data to examine issues
related to the VBM perspective’ (p. 350) are not considered.
Although Ittner and Larckner note the ‘faddish nature’ (p. 356) of the
managerial accounting literature, they themselves situate their analysis within a
value-based management framework that has emerged from consultancy prac-
tices. The probability is that this too will prove to be as faddish as earlier
consultancy offerings. Ignoring the fact that a mass of organizational research
would be deeply critical of the appropriateness of using the six highly rationalized
stages of the value-based model for serious organizational analysis, Ittner and
Larcker nevertheless orchestrate their whole review around these stages, thereby
distancing themselves from numerous bodies of cumulative research literature
that have tried to engage themselves with the process of understanding organi-
zational dynamics and form. Although they are critical of how ‘research topics . . .
tend to disappear as the next big managerial accounting ‘‘innovation’’ appears’
(p. 356), Ittner and Larcker themselves succumb to some of the minimalist
analytics of what is currently fashionable.
Seen in such terms, perhaps Zimmerman’s critique was a generous one, even a
kind one. That, however, is not the primary concern of the present analysis.
Rather than offering an alternative critique of the review provided by Ittner and
Larcker, the aim is to delve into the fascinating commentary on it provided by
Zimmerman.

2. ZIMMERMAN’S MODE OF CRITIQUE

It is unfortunate that Zimmerman does not have a greater familiarity with the
extensive and diverse body of literature capable of being reviewed by Ittner and
Larcker. But he does not. Rather than being able to focus on some of the
cumulative insights identified in such recent reviews as Chenhall (2003) and Luft
and Shields (2003), Zimmerman has no other alternative than to agree with the
substantive conclusions offered by Ittner and Larcker and focus instead on
the outlets for publication and the research which he might have done if only
 Some reflections on Zimmerman’s critique 779

he were a researcher in the area. ‘I agree with [their] generalizations’, proclaims

Zimmerman. Despite his lack of familiarity with a wider body of literature in the
area, surveyed by Ittner and Larcker, Zimmerman can state that ‘the failure to
produce a substantive body of knowledge is not IL’s fault. The authors have
faithfully discharged their responsibilities to survey the literature. The failure lies
with the literature itself ’ (p. 412). Without any obvious awareness of the very
diverse traditions of empirical inquiry in the management accounting area,
Zimmerman nevertheless felt able to say that the literature ‘focuses on describing
current accounting practice’ and ‘has failed to take [the] next step’ to develop
‘theories . . . to explain what was observed and to predict phenomena yet to be
observed’ (p. 412).
Not being able to comment on the substantive nature of the body of literature
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which he is indirectly commenting upon, Zimmerman adopts a number of

discursive strategies. The first is a rather bizarre but nevertheless very revealing
analysis of and commentary on the journals in which different research traditions
are published. The second is an analysis which builds on the partiality of the
Ittner and Larcker review to construct a conception of the field as pre-theoretical
and in need of the type of research strategies and approaches with which
Zimmerman is himself associated. The resulting analysis is a mixture of wise,
opinionated and partial reflections. If nothing else, it is revealing of the concerns
and prejudices of the author.

The accounting mainstream

Zimmerman clearly has a fascination with ‘the mainstream, North American
journals’. ‘Why are so many of the studies cited by [Ittner and Larcker] published
outside the mainstream’ (p. 412) he wonders. Categorizing the references to the
nearest percentage point, he compares and contrasts the citation patterns of
the various literature reviews miraculously finding that those bodies of literature
grounded in economic and financial understandings are more prone to citing the
economics and finance literature!
At one level, ‘the mainstream, North American journals’ are merely those
edited in North America which publish research of an economic, financial or
statistical nature. Zimmerman excludes at least one journal from this category, the
Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance, thereby making it clear that he is
taking account of criteria other than disciplinary orientation and country of
editing. Although the inclusion of Contemporary Accounting Research enables
the designation of the region of the subset to be North America rather than the
USA, that need not be a stable inclusion with recent changes in the editorial
profile of the Canadian journal.
But the whole orientation of Zimmerman’s remarks suggests that more than
mere disciplinary and geographical origins are at stake. Read with the subsequent
analysis of the factors constraining what Zimmerman sees as good empirical
management accounting research, it is clear that a strong normative dimension
 780 The European Accounting Review

enters into his notion of ‘the mainstream’. Zimmerman thinks that good research
is published in the mainstream journals and indeed that research ought to be of
this form.
But I sense that even more than a normative imperative is at stake. The notion
of ‘the mainstream’ refers not only to an evaluative dimension but also to a power
dimension as well. ‘The mainstream, North American journals’ constitute a locus
of power in an academic system that is characterized as much, if not more so, by
careerist-oriented rather than curiosity-oriented research. Within an academic
system that consists of a hierarchy of individuals operating in a hierarchy of
institutions, the mainstream journals provide the clues as to the acceptability of
different research and thereby promotion and reputational strategies that have a
very powerful effect on individual research choices. Certainly many individual
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academics operate as if the mainstream journals operate in this way, at least in the
United States. As a consequence, a great deal of research operates within
the paradigms established by these journals. Innovation is thereby much more
difficult and extremely risky in career terms, often being constrained to
the established few. At a more micro level, concerns are articulated about the
necessity to cite the editors and potential reviewers of papers when submitting
to such mainstream journals, if only to minimize subsequent editorial requests to
manage citation patterns. For society journals within the mainstream, and
particularly for The Accounting Review, there is a very complex politics
surrounding the nomination of Editors and a great deal of investment in
managing the editorial process such that editorial discretion is reduced.
Of course many of these characteristics of the ‘mainstream journals’ are
compatible with a healthy, lively and innovative research culture. They can
ensure a focus on standards and quality and they can facilitate the emergence of a
cumulative research tradition, where real advances in knowledge can be recog-
nized, rather than a research culture that is characterized by an excess of
individual idiosyncrasy and diversity.
I sense that in the early days at least some of the journals that are now part of
‘the mainstream’ achieved these positive outcomes under the guidance of strong
and often quite idiosyncratic editors. This was because at least for some of these
journals, their position within ‘the mainstream’ had to be achieved. Initially
established as outsider journals, operating on the moving fringes of the North
American academic establishment, they had a reputation for quite radical displays
of disciplinary innovation, questioning of established academic and professional
parameters, and a lively disrespect for the prevailing academic hierarchy.
Such days are now largely gone and the more sedate operation of ‘the
mainstream’ journals is increasingly seen to be resulting in academic conformity
and conservatism that is endangering the knowledge-creating reputations of the
journals themselves. No less a person than the current President of the American
Accounting Association, Joel Demski, has used his presidential year to promote
the need for ‘reinvigorating accounting scholarship’. Specifically he has been
trying to encourage his North American academic colleagues ‘to focus on [a]
 Some reflections on Zimmerman’s critique 781

topic, without reference to method, section, or interest group’ so as to ‘increase

trade among our various specialities and put accounting per se back in the center
of our scholarly activities’ (Demski, 2002). Even within the context of the
research reviews commissioned by Zimmerman and his editorial colleagues and
published alongside the Ittner and Larcker review in the Journal of Accounting
and Economics, there are signs of a pessimism about the cumulative conse-
quences of the academic control structure practised by ‘the mainstream, North
American journals’. In his commentary on Verrecchia’s (2001) review of the
accounting literature on models of disclosure, Dye (2001: 230–1) outlines a very
telling indictment of the cumulative consequences of careerist-oriented main-
stream research:
I have come to three general observations, all of which I find to be unfortunate. First,
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much of the literature has become computational rather than conceptual. That is, rather
than articulating some new idea, much of the research has pursued the detailed working
out of some known concept, . . . I find this to be unfortunate both because I think the
profession is desperately in need of new ideas, and because in practice, the particular
parameterisations employed in these detailed models almost certainly do not correspond
to anyone’s conception of the ‘real world’, and hence will turn out to be of limited
usefulness in empirical studies.
A second and related trend is to avoid studying big problems . . . I think that you have
to go back and ask: what is it that distinguishes accounting from all other fields of
business? It is the emphasis on standards, the standard-setting process, on the accrual
concept, and on how investors and other financial statement users process accounting
information. . . . In my opinion, none of these bigger picture issues is being addressed in
the research surveyed in the text [of the Verrecchia survey].
The final trend I think is unfortunate is what is happening to the average age of
researchers. . . . This may be the most worrisome trend of all. We have not stimulated
enough interest with our problems or methods to attract much new blood into the field.
And, even more unfortunately, unless we reverse our retrograde tendencies to defend the
research already produced, we have little prospect of altering that trend in the future.

As this assessment illustrates so clearly, there are an increasing number of

influential voices in the North American academic accounting community who
are critical of the cumulative consequences of the careerist power-oriented
strategies of ‘the mainstream, North American journals’. Although Zimmerman
may not be one of those concerned, some of his editorial colleagues on the
Journal of Accounting and Economics undoubtedly are. They have expressed
concerns about the increasing conformity of submissions, seeing too many new
papers as offering too minimal an extension of existing knowledge as a result of
following conservative careerist strategies of research rather than more curiosity-
oriented ones. Introducing a competition amongst newly qualified doctorates to
try to simulate and reward genuinely innovative accounting research, they were
still disappointed by the consequences. Indeed, increasingly recognizing the
difficulty of compiling exciting issues of the journal, the Editors of the Journal
of Accounting and Economics considered commissioning a series of major
reviews of the literature in their domains of inquiry. Somewhat paradoxically,
Zimmerman’s public pride and confidence in ‘the mainstream, North American
 782 The European Accounting Review

literature’ might itself be a reflection of the increasing unease with its conse-
quences.
All the evidence points to the fact that Zimmerman provides a far from
authoritative analysis of the contours of the accounting research literature, let
alone one that is influenced by an apparent disciplinary xenophobia and a nascent
nationalism.1 Let it not be forgotten that in the pioneering days of the new
accounting research so much of the intellectual vitality of the North American
literature stemmed from the contributions of Australians, Scandinavians, Indians
and others. At its most creative, the vitality of that literature reflected an openness
and a willingness to experiment that is very different from the closure of
Zimmerman’s position.
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Commenting on the empirical management

accounting literature
Many of Zimmerman’s comments on the empirical management accounting
literature are wise and helpful. Although some reflect the partialities introduced
by reviewing the field indirectly through the organizing lens and selection criteria
imposed by Ittner and Larcker, others reflect the genuine difficulties of research-
ing modern management accounting. There are data problems. In all probability
these are even underestimated by Zimmerman. Management accounting is neither
a unitary nor a homogeneous phenomenon. In practice it usually consists of a
bundle or assemblage of different practices and techniques, at best only loosely
coupled. Costing, budgeting, planning, performance evaluation, investment
appraisal and other procedures often operate in semi-autonomy of one another,
capable of being linked in different ways in different organizations. Although
recent enterprise-wide information systems might have imposed a greater degree
of integration on them, in practice the extent of actual implementation and use can
and does still vary, making research even more difficult. To characterize these
difficulties in terms of ‘poor data’ reflects the concerns of careerist research
strategies rather than the research challenges that could well excite and motivate
those with a deeper and more genuine intellectual curiosity.
Organizational and sociological traditions of inquiry in the management
accounting area also have articulated concerns about the limitations of atheore-
tical research. Although Zimmerman’s analysis might be interpreted in terms of
bestowing on economics a more privileged position for theoretically oriented
inquiry, in practice this is far from being the case. Serious organizational,
sociological and other researchers have also regretted the unproblematic rise of
seemingly applied research. From my perspective, the real problems with much of
contemporary applied inquiry stem from the amazing speed with which a
seeming solution was found for a complex and fascinating problem (Kaplan,
1983). Hardly before the problem had been adequately formulated, a solution or
even a series of solutions (e.g. the balanced scorecard as well as a new form of
costing) had been found. It was as if there had been an intermingling of a problem
 Some reflections on Zimmerman’s critique 783

in search of a solution and a solution (or rather a set of solutions) in search of a

problem (March and Olsen, 1986; March, 1987) rather than any more conven-
tionally conceived process of problem solving. To the extent that such an
intermingling has been in operation, it has had a profound impact on the direction
of intellectual inquiry in the management accounting area, encouraging a focus
on the superficial rather than the substantive and on the fashionable rather than
the enduring, most likely limiting the extent of any genuine increase in knowl-
edge and understanding. I therefore agree with Zimmerman’s misgivings about
the consequences of the focus on the fashionable, although I am not convinced
that his analysis of the issues at stake is as thorough as it should be.
I can even share Zimmerman’s interest in increasing the involvement of
economics research in the management accounting area, although I stop a long
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way short of endowing this with the exalted status attributed to it by Zimmerman.
Economics is one of a number of social science knowledges or modes of
understanding that have the potential to enrich our appreciation of the issues at
stake in the emergence, functioning and impacts of management accounting
practices. Whilst different modes of understanding are capable of providing
different insights into the same phenomena, to endow any one of these with a
truth status superior to the other requires a huge leap of faith rather than any more
analytical form of philosophical inquiry. This is particularly so because different
bodies of knowledge seem to be capable of providing insights into different
aspects of the emergence and functioning of accounting practices. Economics is
particularly relevant for attempts to couple our appreciations of management
accounting to different forms of market organization, notions of interested
behaviour, and different forms of incentivization both in and around the
organization. But economics may be less useful for casting light on more
culturally based modes of emergence and functioning for calculative systems.
The extent to which forms of management accounting become subject to the
influences of fashion, for instance, may constrain the exploratory power of
economic modes of explanation. Zimmerman seems well aware of the potential
for such a state of affairs. Equally, if management accounting practices are
reflections of the homogenizing tendencies of consultancy firms rather than
outgrowths of the varying functionalities of different enterprises, then at best
more complex modes of economic explanation may be required. Such possibi-
lities suggest that Zimmerman’s discussion of research emphases on control or
decision-making forms of explanation is far too simplistic. Not only is it possible
for control and decision-making rationales for management accounting develop-
ment and configurational arrangements to co-exist but also quite different, more
externally oriented cultural modes of explanation are possible (Meyer, 1984,
1986). To date the latter such explanations have existed outside economics
knowledge structures.
Even to the extent that economic explanations are useful and insightful, there is
no reason to expect that they would be free of the difficulties that constrain
organizational and sociological modes of explanation. Although when stated in
 784 The European Accounting Review

their simplest form, economic analyses can seemingly offer elegant and genera-
lizable modes of explanation, in practice they too can be and invariably are as
sensitive to changes in the underlying characterization of the model and changes
in key parameters as are organizational and sociological modes of explanation. So
rather than offering a regime of simple and elegant insights, economic analysis
will also result in more contingent forms of understanding that have many
similarities with contingency models within organization theory (Gordon and
Miller, 1976; Otley, 1980; Chapman, 1997).

3. CONCLUSION
Zimmerman (2001) was right to analyse the limitations and dangers of the
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empirical management accounting research literature emphasized in Ittner and

Larcker’s (2001) review. I share many of his worries and would also articulate
several of his recommendations for improvement, albeit in somewhat different
form. However, Zimmerman went on to use the critique as a context for revealing
a number of his own prejudices and preconceptions. Whilst this undoubtedly
was a useful and insightful revelation for students of the politics of the
contemporary accounting research community, the preferences so displayed
need to be interpreted with some caution when used as bases for taking the
research literature forward. Although economics is a powerful and useful
discipline, it is also one that suffers from many of the same constraints and
problems as other social science disciplines.

NOTE
1 It needs to be remembered that assessments and prestige rankings of accounting
research journals vary significantly by country. See, for example, Ballas and
Theoharakis (n.d.).

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