Abstract

One of the most crucial elements of the accounting and accountability process, accounting communication has been a phenomenon of interest to accounting researchers particularly, but not exclusively, over the past 40 years. Nonetheless, they have represented but a very small cohort amongst the overwhelming majority of accounting researchers who have paid this issue little attention. Intuitively, it remains the case that if accounting communication is ineffective in constructing its messages, reaching its target audiences, and communicating message encoders’ intended meanings to decoders and maintaining feedback loops then the exercises of measurement, calculative sophistication, standards promulgation and management control systems serve little point. Yet despite its ‘minority group’ research culture, the corpus of research literature in this field has steadily grown both in volume and, more importantly, in subject-matter reach.