A review of accounting research in internationalising journals in the South African region

Abstract

Background: This study analyses the accounting research articles published by South African journals.Aim and setting: A review of accounting research in internationalising journals in the South African region that publish accounting research.Methods: The characteristics of accounting articles were analysed. Five journals were analysed, including the four internationalising journals, Investment Analysts Journal, Meditari Accountancy Research, South African Journal of Business Management, and South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences and one local journal, South African Journal of Accounting Research (SAJAR).Results: The findings of this study will be of interest to journal editors, authors who would like their research to make an impact and be cited, as well as university research administrators and government higher education policy-makers.Conclusion: The analyses show that many of the highly cited articles have been published recently, boding well for the citation statistics of these journals in future and indicating some success in their efforts to internationalise. The citations of SAJAR lag behind the citations of the internationalising journals. Each journal publishes articles that cover different subject area(s). Within accounting research, accounting education and social and environmental accounting are popular areas of research, whereas taxation; the public sector; and management accounting are not well represented among published articles during 2015–2016 in these five journals. About half of all accounting articles claim their insights will contribute to the accounting literature, with much smaller percentages claiming to contribute to management, policy-making and practice. The most prolific authors and most prominent universities to some extent follow the most popular subject areas, with a social and environmental researcher, Warren Maroun, featuring strongly, and his university, the University of the Witwatersrand, being prominent. Large proportions of authors of 2015–2016 articles are from outside of Africa, speaking to the success of the internationalisation efforts of the internationalising journals, whereas SAJAR mostly publishes articles by African authors.

Burnout, employee engagement and self-perceived employability in the South African public sector

“…Public sector employees in South Africa do experience symptoms of BO (Lehohla, 2016). Several factors contributing to BO have been identified, such as low self-esteem or low confidence (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001); a high workload and lack of resources (De Villiers & Hsiao, 2017;Schaufeli et al, 2009). Public sector employees in South Africa's government tend to be affected by these factors, making them susceptible to BO.…”

A review of integrated thinking research in developed and developing economies

“…At the same time, most of the research is being published in international journals which do not necessarily have developing economies as a focal point. This may be the result of pressures at some universities to publish only in certain journals (De Villiers and Hsiao, 2017). There may also be a tendency amongst the most well-known international journals to prioritise findings from countries with most political influence and/or the largest economies.…”

“…Integrated reporting and thinking are framed using different theoretical lenses. Much of this builds on principles examined extensively by the earlier environmental accounting movement including, for example, the role of integrated reporting in bolstering legitimacy (Beck et al, 2015), how integrated reporting is co-opted in impression management (Atkins and Maroun, 2018;Hassan et al, 2019;Haji and Anifowose, 2016) and how integrated reporting adds value by reducing information asymmetry (De Villiers and Hsiao, 2017;Barth et al, 2017).…”

“…The journal was first published by the University of Pretoria in South Africa before being included as part of Emerald's suite of journals. Whilst MEAR is a well-respected international publication, it maintains its links with the South African accounting research community and is an example of a journal with roots in a developing economy and an “internationalising” agenda (De Villiers and Hsiao, 2017). Other than MEAR , no other journals based or originating in a developing economy are included in Figure 4.…”

Bibliometric Analyse of the Articles in the Field of Accounting Education and Turkey’s Position

“…Bu çalışmada muhasebe eğitimi alanındaki çalışmaları bibliyometrik analiz tekniği kullanılarak incelenmiştir. Bibliyometrik analizi önceki çalışmalarda belli bir veya birkaç dergiyi temel alarak belli bir tarihte ilgili derginin tüm yayınlarını inceleyerek (Brown, 1996;Carmona vd., 1999;de Villiers & Hsiao, 2017;Gamble, 2019) yapanlar olduğu gibi, belli bir konuyu temel alarak (Dumay vd., 2016;Guthrie vd., 2012) yapanlar da mevcuttur. Bu çalışma muhasebe eğitimi konusunu temel alarak yapılmıştır.…”