Writing a literature review in Behavioural Accounting Research

Auditors' Professional Identities: Review and Future Directions*

“…First, we began with a core group of qualitative papers known to us as being “classic” or “seminal” studies as discussed by Andiola et al (2016, 476) in their guide to writing a literature review in behavioral accounting. Andiola et al (2016) recognize this method of starting with seminal works to be one valid way of beginning a search for relevant studies.…”

“…First, we began with a core group of qualitative papers known to us as being “classic” or “seminal” studies as discussed by Andiola et al (2016, 476) in their guide to writing a literature review in behavioral accounting. Andiola et al (2016) recognize this method of starting with seminal works to be one valid way of beginning a search for relevant studies. Taking these works as our starting point, we traced each paper's citations and citing papers using Web of Science to find papers that either cited or were cited by the original papers.…”

“…As we read the 22 selected papers and reviewed prior guidance on writing literature reviews, we recognized the need for a conceptual structure to organize our review. After significant consideration and discussion, we chose to organize our papers based on one of three common techniques for structuring literature reviews as described by Andiola et al (2016, 475)—that is, “based on key characteristics of the subject matter (e.g., unit of analysis, features of the setting).” Our structuration is based on the organizational level, as we synthesize the journey from new potential hire through to partnership and following a break from professional practice. After reviewing each study in the sample, we categorized findings based on five groups organized by role: (i) aspiring auditors vying for a position at a professional services firm (PSF); (ii) staff auditors new to the organization and actively engaged in audit work; (iii) managers, charged with organizing and running multiple audit teams; (iv) partners, responsible for client procurement and retention of client work; and (v) ex‐auditors, able to reflect on the profession from a distance.…”

Literature reviews of qualitative accounting research: challenges and opportunities

“…The volume of research published in academic journals and other outlets has significantly increased over the past few decades (Booth et al , 2021; Kraus et al , 2021), and business research, including accounting research, is no exception (Andiola et al , 2017; Dyckman and Zeff, 2015; Kraus et al , 2020; Kunisch et al , 2018, 2023; Paul and Criado, 2020; Snyder, 2019; Zeff, 2019). Hence, researchers, especially junior scholars such as PhD students, may find it difficult to stay up-to-date in their area of interest and recognize which relevant and interesting research questions remain to be answered (Petticrew and Roberts, 2012; Kraus et al , 2021).…”

“…Regardless of the specific scholarly advantages of a literature review, we can further distinguish two ways in which literature reviews are integrated into the research process: they can result in standalone papers and/or inform a broader research project that may, for instance, be geared toward further empirical, formal/analytical or conceptual work QRAM 20,3 (Andiola et al, 2017;Booth et al, 2021;Jesson et al, 2011;Petticrew and Roberts, 2012). In fact, Petticrew and Roberts (2012) argue that a literature review should be conducted at the start of any research project, particularly PhD theses, to avoid overlooking research relevant to the project at hand.…”