Case studies in accounting research

In January 1996, we co-hosted an ICAEW-sponsored conference, Beneath the Numbers; Reflections on the Use of Qualitative Methods in Accounting Research. The conference in turn gave rise to an edited collection (Humphrey and Lee, 2004), The Real Life Guide to Accounting Research: A Behind-the-Scenes View of Using Qualitative Research Methods (hereafter RLGAR). Both the conference and the book were intended deliberately to provide ‘behind the scenes’ views or ‘insider accounts’ of what it is like actually to conduct qualitative accounting research and the types of lessons that people providing such accounts had gained from their experiences, rather than offering prescriptive, textbook accounts of how to do qualitative research. The capacity to organize a conference that was based on critical reflections of peoples experience of using qualitative research methods in accounting was an expression of how far qualitative research methods such as case studies had been practised and progressed at that point, more than twenty years ago. As the conference provided the start of collaboration between the two of us, we use it as a landmark in this chapter to provide a reflective, joint account about the development and use of case studies in accounting prior to 1996 and then through the intervening years, closing with some consideration of their future potential.