What is Accounting? Many accounting scholars have confronted this question, often paired with a rejection letter from an editor, or a dismissive criticism in a workshop. Don’t feel bad–as Anthony Hopwood noted, Ball and Brown (1968)—now a foundation of financial accounting research—was rejected by The Accounting Review, “the reason for the rejection being that it was not accounting.” Now, of course, it is one of the seminal works in accounting, simply for showing that stock markets react to earnings announcements.
For some reason, accountants keep letting their gatekeeping instinct overpower desires to make the most of what accounting could be.