It is not our intent to criticize any of these suggestions. In fact, we believe that if each were followed, there would be a
radical and beneficial change in the accounting research agenda. Our concern, rather, is to understand why there has been so
little progress in implementing change in the past and why the action items of the Pathways Commission are at risk of
becoming merely a symbolic gesture.
We argue that the suggestions for change are largely ineffectual due to two closely related phenomena: first, Giddens’
(1984) notion of time-space distanciation, and second, that most of the proposed changes are operationalized at ‘‘moment
three’’ of the Barley and Tolbert (1997) model; that is, the moment at which actors either replicate or revise the existing
scripts.
Giddens (1984) describes time-space distanciation as the extent to which institutions become self-perpetuating over
time. He suggests that as time-space distanciation increases, the ability of individual actors to effect change is diminished. In
essence, as institutions become self-perpetuating over time, the opportunity for agents internal to the system to generate
change decreases. In the accounting research context, the extensive literature documented earlier suggests that the current
structure is characterized by substantial time-space distanciation. There is therefore a low probability that agents internal to
the system can effect change even if they wish to do so.
Closely related to this concern, then, is the fact that most change suggestions tend to apply at the moment at which
actors either revise or replicate the existing script (moment three of the Barley and Tolbert (1997) model). Recall, however,
that Barley and Tolbert describe the most likely outcome as replication because actors typically need some kind of
contextual change or resource shift in order for them to question current scripts. There must be some reason for actors to
reinterpret the script; absent such a reason, revision is unlikely. Coupled with the time-space distanciation issue, this
almost guarantees that there will be little real incremental change. This is borne out empirically in the constant failure of
the efforts of any AAA president (e.g. Rayburn, 2006; Sunder, 2006) to effect lasting change despite identifying the same
phenomenon. To understand these problems further, we apply them to several legitimate change suggestions that have
been made.