Wayne Thomas, University of Oklahoma

Alessandro Ghio, ESCP

Accounting Horizons aims to bridge accounting academics and non-academics (e.g., practitioners, standard setters, and regulators) by publishing rigorous academic research and thought-provoking perspectives that are pertinent to the accounting profession. Most accounting research in the past few decades uses archival, experimental, or analytical methods, rather than other research methods, such as literature reviews, surveys, interviews, and field studies. Accounting Horizons recognizes that these other research methods have an important role to play in bridging the gap between academic research and accounting practice.

Literature review articles can inform academics about what knowledge has been discovered and where gaps exist. These articles can be particularly useful to non-academics who are interested in the given topic and seek insights from research. Literature review articles in Accounting Horizons should focus on specific topics relevant to practice and be written for both academics and non-academics who are interested in the topic, using plain language and avoiding jargon.

Surveys, interviews, and field studies allow researchers to gather input from non-academics on important accounting issues. This research can inform academics about what research questions are relevant to practice and what phenomena urgently need in-depth investigation. This research can also inform non-academics by providing evidence on issues that they deal with in practice. The journal welcomes research using positivist, interpretive, or critical paradigmatic lenses.

To encourage research articles using these other research methods and reduce authors' uncertainty regarding the outcomes of their research efforts, this call uses a two-stage review process. In the first stage, authors should submit a two-page research proposal including the proposed title, planned research method(s), a summary of motivation, the execution plan, the expected impact on academic literature and accounting practice, and a reference list. For qualitative methods, the execution plan should include a brief discussion of the intended use of theory or an explanation of why a descriptive approach without theory is more appropriate. Authors are allowed to submit a proposal for a study for which data have already been collected. The proposal will be evaluated by an editor with domain expertise, resulting in either an encouragement to submit the completed article or a rejection.

In the second stage, authors will be given six months to submit a completed article, with additional time available for data collection. The submission may include up to 30 pages of text and 40 pages in total. The submission will typically be assigned to the editor who evaluated the proposal in the first stage. The goal is to conditionally accept the first revision of the completed article, but acceptance is not guaranteed due to poor execution or failure to follow reasonable recommendations of the review team. However, no manuscript will be rejected in the second stage because of lack of contribution or relevance to practice.

Potential topics

• Literature review articles on topics relevant to accounting practice
• Survey research on important accounting issues
• Interview-based research gathering input from practitioners and non-academics
• Field studies in accounting contexts
• Qualitative research using positivist, interpretive, or critical paradigmatic lenses
• Research methods beyond traditional archival, experimental, and analytical approaches

Timeline

• December 31, 2026: Deadline for submitting research proposals. This is an open call that will continue accepting submissions until this date.
• February 18, 2027: Deadline for submitting completed article following first-stage approval of research proposal.

Anaïs Boutru, Université Paris-Dauphine, PSL

Linda Rouleau, HEC Montréal

Géraldine Schmidt, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Albéric Tellier, Université Paris-Dauphine, PSL

Management research has long been populated by celebrated cases that have achieved the status of founding myths. Cases such as IBM's blindness to personal computing, Xerox's strategic myopia toward the graphical user interface, Nokia's fall to smartphones, the Mann Gulch fire, and Elton Mayo's Hawthorne experiments have become ubiquitous in the field's collective memory. These 'cold cases', endlessly cited and taught, structure ways of thinking and provide a shared foundation of representations that are central to the construction of epistemic communities.

Despite their pervasive influence, few studies scrutinize the empirical robustness, theoretical validity, or performativity of these emblematic cases. In management research, particularly in qualitative research, the risk of circularity is significant. Researchers working with inevitably heterogeneous and incomplete material may, even unconsciously, select data that confirm their theoretical priors, set aside disconfirming evidence, and ultimately favor demonstrations of the 'as if' type.

Management research's pursuit of 'theoretical gaps' has often privileged the production of new concepts at the expense of verification, reinterpretation, or falsification. This predilection leads to a stratification of knowledge where certain studies become canonical and generate 'halo effects', while others sink into oblivion not because they are invalid, but because they do not fit the dominant narratives of the discipline.

The aim of this special issue is to 'reopen the files of management' by challenging established truths, revisiting myths, excavating forgotten cases, and analyzing the processes of canonization and erasure that structure disciplinary memory. Famous cases such as Kodak, IBM, Enron, and Nokia must be regarded as epistemic artifacts, produced, reproduced, and sometimes distorted by scholarly communities, bearing narrative, moral, and institutional dimensions.

M@n@gement has established itself as a privileged venue for critical, reflexive, and interdisciplinary approaches in management research. This special issue continues this tradition by inviting the community to undertake an archaeology of its own knowledge. Revisiting 'cold cases' means interrogating how management research constructs its own history, its certainties, and its silences. It is a call to strengthen the cumulative and self-critical dimension of the field by restoring a rightful place to research grounded in the replication of experiments, the challenging of established findings, and recontextualization.

At a time when researchers are constantly pressured to produce 'new' knowledge, this special issue proposes to rehabilitate slow, reflexive research capable of revisiting taken-for-granted assumptions, reopening closed debates, and reinvigorating the controversies that are constitutive of knowledge production.

Potential topics

• Reexamination and reinterpretation of canonical management cases (IBM, Xerox, Nokia, Kodak, Enron, etc.)
• Empirical robustness and theoretical validity of emblematic cases in management scholarship
• Performativity of famous cases and their role as epistemic artifacts
• Processes of canonization and erasure in disciplinary memory
• Circularity in qualitative management research and issues of confirmation bias
• Role of founding myths in structuring management thinking and epistemic communities
• Halo effects and the stratification of knowledge in management research
• Forgotten cases and alternative narratives in management history
• Critical reexamination of the Hawthorne experiments and other foundational studies
• Replication, falsification, and verification in management research
• Archaeology of management knowledge and disciplinary self-reflexivity

Timeline

• October 14, 2026: Pre-submission workshop (online)
• December 31, 2026: Full paper submission deadline

Timeline

• March 31, 2027: Submission deadline