Understanding and improving the language of business: How accounting and corporate reporting research can better serve business and society

Rolf Uwe Fülbier () and Thorsten Sellhorn ()
Additional contact information
Rolf Uwe Fülbier: Universität Bayreuth

Journal of Business Economics, 2023, vol. 93, issue 6, No 5, 1089-1124

Abstract: Abstract Financial accounting, the core of corporate reporting, is often characterized as the ‘language of business’. Over the last roughly 100 years, and using an evolving set of theories, methods, and data, scholarly work in this area has been contributing to our understanding of this language and how to improve it. This paper seeks, first, to characterize the field with a focus on its evolution in the German-speaking area, where, like elsewhere, normative research traditions interested in improving practice have been making way for positivist approaches that seek a detached understanding of ‘what is.’ Second, we discuss the changing users and institutional parameters that are reshaping corporate reporting, followed by our personal view of ‘wicked’ societal problems and challenges that corporate reporting might be able to help alleviate. Finally, we discuss directions in which research might evolve in order to address these issues, in order to make corporate reporting more useful for serving not only economic actors, but also society and the environment more broadly.

Keywords: Accounting research; Digital transformation; Research assessment; Sustainability reporting; Societal relevance; Transparency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11573-023-01158-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jbecon:v:93:y:2023:i:6:d:10.1007_s11573-023-01158-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/11573

DOI: 10.1007/s11573-023-01158-4

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Economics is currently edited by Günter Fandel

More articles in Journal of Business Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().