A profession in peril? Accounting academia in the brave new world of corporatized higher education

This paper examines the effects of corporatisation on accounting academics with reference to an in-depth case study of PBS, a research-intensive English business school which strongly embraced marketised approaches to higher... [ view full abstract ]

This paper examines the effects of corporatisation on accounting academics with reference to an in-depth case study of PBS, a research-intensive English business school which strongly embraced marketised approaches to higher education after the appointment of a dean with a background in the American financial services industry. It discusses how, at PBS, accounting research became marginalised as the dean directed research funding towards business disciplines he deemed more likely to deliver top-ranked publications and large research grants, and how accounting teaching, curriculum design and the administrative hierarchies of the business school increasingly came to be dominated by teaching fellows with backgrounds in private sector accountancy tuition. The paper concludes that in an increasingly corporatised English higher education system, accounting academia, as defined by original research and research-informed teaching, is in danger of disappearing.