Accounting judgment and decision making research in top-tier accounting journals (1971-2005)

There have been several audit monographs and reviews published on audit judgment and decision making research. These monographs/reviews have strengthened this strand of research by providing insights and suggesting avenues for future research. Though of equal importance, no such comprehensive reviews have been published so far for the research undertaken in the domain of accounting judgment. A review of the accounting judgment and decision making research published during 1971-2005 in the five top-tier accounting journals is reported in this study. This paper adds to the extant literature on accounting judgment and decision making in the following four ways. First, it describes the characteristics and significance of these papers and suggests avenues for future research. Second, it reviews and evaluates the theoretical and methodological strengths and weaknesses of these studies. Third, the thematic and methodological review of accounting judgment and decision making research presented in this paper may be useful to improve the research method, theory development and hypotheses formulation stages of future studies. Finally, the analysis presented in this study may also provide the necessary impetus to strengthen this strand of research in future.