PRAGMATIC PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH TO WEIGHTING CORPORATE DISCLOSURE IN ACCOUNTING RESEARCH

The philosophical perspective which underpins any research is fundamental to the outcome of the inquiry and the applicability of its findings. Generally, accounting research was dominated by the interpretive philosophical paradigm during the ‘golden age’ of accounting research, while contemporary accounting research has been largely dominated by positivism. Notwithstanding the popularization of the two dominant paradigms in accounting research, and particularly positivism in corporate disclosure research, many scholars have clamored for the proliferation of an alternative paradigm in accounting research. Pragmatism which is widely considered as a ‘middle-ground’ philosophical perspective between the two dominant paradigms has gained some recognition among accounting researchers but has largely remained obscured in the literature. This article tries to bring to light an alternative approach to benchmarking extent of disclosure in accounting research based on a pragmatic perspective. It prescribes an approach which requires accounting disclosure researchers to weight disclosure based on a matrix of soft or hard disclosure versus news worthy or general information to capture the relative signaling strength of each individual disclosure item. It further concludes that pragmatism can help bring new insights to accounting researchers by altering the way they perceive specific accounting issues.