Podejścia do badań naukowych w rachunkowości
Main approaches to scientific research in accounting

Summary/Abstract: This paper offers a synthetic description of three major approaches to accounting research (research perspectives), identified by W.F. Chua (1986): the mainstream perspective, interpretative perspective and critical perspective. Depending on the adopted perspective, researchers work under different assumptions about the nature of the physical and social reality, the ways of gaining new knowledge, and the relation-ship between accounting theory and practice. The paper is based on material obtained by the author through studies of selected items of the literature of the subject, mostly publications in the English lan-guage, and is intended to induce accounting researchers in Poland to devote more attention to the inter-pretive and critical perspectives on accounting research, which so far have been used in our academic community only to a very limited extent. After examining the nature of accounting theory development, the author presents a classification of approaches used in accounting research as well as related research methodologies, and provides information about scientific journals interested in publication of articles presenting results of research conducted from the mainstream as well as from alternative perspectives.

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