A Citation Analysis of the Accounting Information Network.

The article examines the flow of messages between the accounting system and other knowledge systems, in particular the information flow between the academic and applied accounting networks. The accounting knowledge system falls within the social science knowledge system and is made up of three subsystems: an academic, a management accounting, and a professional system. This paper is based on the analysis of citations in seventeen accounting journals for the period January 1968 to December 1969. Accounting lies within the social science knowledge system. In this study, the number of messages passed to accounting from the other social sciences and the number of messages passed to accounting from nonsocial science knowledge systems is recorded with a column tabulating the proportion of messages transmitted to accounting from other knowledge systems. The proportion of messages passed to accounting from the other social sciences is similar to the proportion passed to sociology and politics and is greater than the proportion of messages passed to psychology and economics.