Whither Accounting Research? A European View

“Whither Accounting Research?” is the question raised by Hopwood (2007) in an essay documenting a growing sense of unease about the state and direction of accounting research. This paper addresses this question by focusing on the European Union, discussing the causes for a narrowing of topics and methods in research and proposing some remedies. Specifically, it connects academia’s understated performance in developing research relevant to European Union society with the widespread practice of assessing academic quality based on journal rankings, which tends to reward conformity to the US-mainstream. The paper promotes a view of accounting research that is strongly embedded in its economic and socio-political context and deals with the fundamental objectives and constitutional setting of the European Union. Consistent with this view, it develops novel research questions and discusses possibilities for changing the European scholarly debate towards more innovative and influential research.