PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose a framework (pragmatic constructivism) for a new paradigm for accounting practice. The paradigmatic base of practice is an important element in explaining, understanding, justifying and defending practice.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is designed to argue the case for the use of pragmatic constructivism as a basis for the development of a paradigmatic foundation of accounting practice. To achieve this, pragmatic constructivism is explained and its application to accounting is illustrated and contrasted with the traditional paradigm of realism.FindingsThe analysis shows how the use of a less reductionist paradigm than realism can assist accountants both in the creation of a rationale and a defence for practice.Research limitations/implicationsThe analysis is exploratory in the sense that a new paradigmatic framework is outlined and used to illustrate its potential to develop a paradigm for practice. The creation of a full practice paradigm for accounting is beyond the scope of one paper. Hence this analysis should be viewed as only a first step towards developing a paradigm of accounting practice.Originality/valueThe proposal of pragmatic constructivism for this purpose is novel to the accounting literature. The value of its application lies in its potential to explain and defend accounting practice.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the contribution made by the balanced scorecard (BSC) in regaining the practice relevance of management accounting research.Design/methodology/approachUsing discourse analysis, the paper investigates the speech genre in use in main BSC texts.FindingsThe authors' analysis reveals that the BSC is defined in a way that can provide management with a type of general overarching model. However, the model lacks realistic scholarly characteristics and instead it exhibits characteristics of a myth speech genre. This is especially so in the presentation of the central concern with cause‐effect statements in the BSC.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors' analysis, therefore, suggests that methodological issues relating to the usage of cause and effect statements must be solved if research, such as that carried out in the BSC development, is to become more relevant to practice. To overcome this problem and regain research relevance, the paper recommends a more scholarly speech genre, giving more attention to various usages of inferential statements and specifically a pragmatic constructivist perspective for analyzing construct causalities.Originality/valueThe paper advocates a scholarly methodological basis as a requirement for accounting innovation to enable it to solve practice problems in a way that improves practice and hence increases relevance of research.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to enhance the relationship between research and practice. It addresses the question: How can practitioners’ use of generalisations be understood, with a view towards producing research-based generalisations that facilitate use in practice? Design/methodology/approach Language games are used to explore generalisation in practice, and the framework of pragmatic constructivism is adopted to characterise the generation of practice generalisation. Findings Practice is conceptualised as a complex set of clusters of organised actions run by a set of applied generalisations and driven by human intentions. Practice also encompasses reflective activities that aim to create the generalisations and reflect them into the specific circumstances to create functioning practice. Generalisations depend on underlying concepts. The formation and structure of concepts is explored and used to create the construction and use of different types of generalisation. Generalisations function as cognitive building blocks in constructing strings of interconnected functioning activities. Managers make their own functioning generalisations that, however, do not satisfy the research criteria for acceptable generalisations. The research/practice gap is shaped by the very different language games played. Research limitations/implications If research is to be useful to practice, the generalisations produced must methodologically articulate the types of generalisation that pervade the methods with which practitioners construct functioning activities. Further research has to give more insight into such processes. Originality/value The paper contributes insight into both the generalisation debate and the research/practice gap debate.

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