Epistemological role of theory and research in accounting

Abstract

This study argues that the theory is an integral part of the scientific research and, therefore, indispensable to scientific development in accounting. To support this claim, we resorted to the theory of science from epistemology and philosophy of science, arising from the development of scientific language, expressed in syntactic and semantic approaches. In scientific practice, the choice of a theory occurs from certain virtues of the same as well as its success or failure is assessed by observation and experiment testing. In the accounting literature, the use and the construction of theories, which agrees with the suggested in this work were observed. Future research can investigate: the phenomenon of theory building in the area in order to discover which view prevails: the syntactic or semantic; the ways that these models are being tested; the results and the development of models and theories that do not yet exist, following the logic of scientific language treated here.

Keywords

• Teoria
• Teoria científica
• Pesquisa em contabilidade