Abstract The article focuses on research directions and perspective in accounting information systems (AIS). Three years ago, the author gave a talk at the 1984 American Accounting Association meeting in Toronto on the topic of research directions for AIS. That speech and the material that was handed out to the audience were actually the first phase of a committee effort by the author and two other AIS researchers to summarize what they believed to be the state of affairs in the research sector of this discipline. The topic of talk of Toronto talk was the need for intellectual rigor in AIS research. Intellectual rigor is certainly a difficult concept to define in any field, but in academic accounting departments the author has a paragon of such rigor and so it is most easily defined in this context by example. At departmental workshops by faculty members and visiting scholars or at dissertation presentations, defense of one's ideas in the markets arena proceeds along quite predictable lines because of the established long-term quality of the cumulative research in this area.
William E. McCarthy (Tue,) studied this question.