Analyzing Institutions of Higher Education and Researchers in the Accounting Field through their Academic Production

Abstract

   This paper examines Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) and researchers in the Accounting field by analyzing their academic production. The analysis addresses five specific focuses: similarities and disagreements; central or peripheral location; most common themes; most productive researchers, and cooperation networks among the institutions with the highest number of publications. Thus, this descriptive-exploratory study, which draws on both quantitative and qualitative analysis, relied on documental research and analyzed 657 articles. These texts were published in the proceedings of several events: 268 articles from the Universidade de São Paulo Congress of Controlling and Accounting, 316 papers published in the proceedings of the EnANPAD events (2006 and 2007), 47 from the ANPCONT event, and 26 from the EnEPQ meeting (2007). Some important findings are: the existence of two predominant groups with similar characteristics, and each of these groups represents 48.28% of the institutions being investigated; the central role of Universidade de São Paulo (pole I) and Universidade da Bahia, Fundação Capixaba de Pesquisas em Administração Contabilidade e Economia, and Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (pole II); the thematic areas of 'Controlling and Management Accounting' and 'Accounting for External Users' lead the academic production in the Accounting IHE, whereas 'Education and Accounting Research' is less commonly investigated in the studies; 38.66% of the reviewed papers were written by authors from different institutions, which means that 89 papers resulted from cooperative work.