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1. Introduction
What “good” qualitative accounting research is has been the subject of a lively debate. Various conceptual contributions have reflected on how qualitative accounting research should be assessed, and its quality proven (e.g. Lukka and Kasanen, 1995; Ahrens and Dent, 1998; Ahrens and Chapman, 2006; Baxter and Chua, 2008; Lukka and Modell, 2010; Parker, 2012; Messner et al., 2017; Parker and Northcott, 2016; de Villiers et al., 2019). This study complements this literature by providing an exploration of the practical ways in which scholars demonstrate and assess the quality of qualitative accounting research.
Understanding how qualitative accounting scholars understand, internalize, interpret, and translate research quality criteria is of particular importance, in light of (1) the critical relationship with the quantitative accounting approaches, (2) the multiplicity of potential quality criteria, and (3) the difficulties faced by qualitative researchers in processes of research assessment. “Mainstream” accounting scholarship has been generally described as embracing predominantly quantitative approaches (de Villiers et al., 2019), and relying on established quality criteria, such as validity and reliability. In the qualitative accounting arena, similar to wider trends in social sciences, “alternative” criteria have been increasingly suggested (for example, Lukka and Modell, 2010). In spite of this, it has been pointed out that qualitative studies tend to be criticized not necessarily (or not only) for their actual shortcomings, but for being evaluated as if they were quantitative studies (for example, de Villiers et al., 2019). Even when specific criteria are adopted for qualitative studies, these tend to be less established, multiple and variable (Lukka and Modell, 2010; Parker and Northcott, 2016). As Parker and Northcott (2016, p. 1117) put it, in the qualitative field, “[…] demonstrating the credibility of research conducted arguably admits a greater degree of democracy than the quantitative approach to establishing validity.” Moreover, reliance on forms of rankings, and existing measures of performance are seen as penalizing interdisciplinary, interpretive and qualitative researchers (for example, Gendron, 2013; Guthrie et al., 2019). It has thus been suggested that qualitative researchers, having internalized a habit to compare themselves with the quantitative community, may rather need to recognize that the aims of qualitative and quantitative studies are different, and they thus cannot be evaluated on the same bases (de...