Research-practice gap in accounting journals? A topic modeling approach

Abstract

PurposeA gap between research and practice is commonly perceived throughout accounting academia. However, empirical evidence on the magnitude of this detachment remains scarce. The authors provide new evidence to the ongoing debate by introducing a novel topic-based approach to capture the research-practice gap and quantify its extent. They also explore regional differences in the research-practice gap.Design/methodology/approachThe authors apply the unsupervised machine learning approach Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) to compare the topical composition of 2,251 articles from six premier research, practice and bridging journals from the USA and Europe between 2009 and 2019. The authors extend the existing methods of summarizing literature and develop metrics that allow researchers to evaluate the research-practice gap. The authors conduct a plethora of additional analyses to corroborate the findings.FindingsThe results substantiate a pronounced topic-related research-practice gap in accounting literature and document its statistical significance. Moreover, the authors uncover that this gap is more pronounced in the USA than in Europe, highlighting the importance of institutional differences between academic communities.Practical implicationsThe authors objectify the debate about the extent of a research-practice gap and stimulate further discussions about explanations and consequences.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper to deploy a rigorous machine learning approach to measure a topic-based research-practice gap in the accounting literature. Additionally, the authors provide theoretical rationales for the extent and regional differences in the research-practice gap.

Understanding and improving the language of business: How accounting and corporate reporting research can better serve business and society

“…Whereas the social benefits of corporate reporting research ultimately materialize in improved practices and policies that advance societal goals like resource allocation efficiency and distributive justice, individual researchers' private benefits may only be indirectly linked to those societal impacts, if at all. In fact, many have observed a growing 'research-practice gap,' (e.g., Rutherford 2011;Federsel et al 2022)-a disconnect between a detached research system that provides private benefits to researchers, and research that creates societal value by helping practitioners and policymakers solve problems. Therefore, the demand for the latter is unlikely to reach the researchers directly.…”