I was recently asked to participate in a study of “why co-author in accounting research?”

While it strokes ones ego to be asked, at the same time I am struck with the thought – what can we learn from such a study that will help us understand and interpret accounting better????

Are we as a research community so anal that we now need to study why some work at the research production function in groups while others go it alone?

If the scholars doing this has been sociologists studying obscure professional groups on a comparative basis I could see some knowledge being created that might be usable in a broader context. However, no matter how I look at this study I cannot understand how it does more than appeal to the prurient interests of accounting researchers.

That begs the question that I am going to reflect on and share my thoughts about over the next little while – what makes a good research question.

This in part stems from my observations at the two recent mid-year meetings I attended – no one sets out to do irrelevant research yet much is deemed just that. How did we get from here to there???