Abstract In this paper we report the results of an empirical investigation of the relation between research productivity and teaching effectiveness for 473 accounting faculty members at 31 U.S. universities. We created a survey instrument to gather data from university administrators including student ratings of teaching effectiveness, accounting department administrators' ratings of faculty research productivity and teaching effectiveness, and each faculty member's actual publication rates for journals and textbooks. We addressed the following questions: (1) Is there a systematic (positive or negative) association between teaching effectiveness and research productivity? (2) Are certain dimensions of teaching effectiveness consistently associated with greater research productivity? (3) Which publications (academically- or practice-oriented journals or textbooks) have the stronger association with teaching effectiveness? These questions are among those central to the current debate about the role of accounting research and, in particular, its relationship to the quality of accountancy education. Persons on one side of this debate, which apparently has been fueled by more general criticisms of the U.S. educational establishment (National Commission on Excellence in Education 1983), higher education (Blumenstyk 1990), and university business education (e.g., Porter and McKibbin 1988; Linden et al. 1992), suggest that at least part of the alleged education deficiencies are attributable to an overemphasis on research. Yet others argue that research is critical to the university mission and that education is enhanced, not harmed, by research (Beaver 1992; Miller 1992). Heretofore, however, the debate as applied to accounting has occurred in an evidential vacuum. The empirical evidence reported in this paper is an attempt to begin filling that void and thereby, help accounting education/ research stakeholders become more informed debate participants.
Bell et al. (Wed,) studied this question.