Building Communities of Practice in Accounting: A Framework to Link Practice, Research and Education

Abstract

The communities of practice framework has become an essential component of theories of social learning; however, the literature has only been considered in a small number of studies in the accounting domain. This paper reviews the literature on communities of practice, posits that the communities of practice framework can be used to enlighten accounting education, research and practice, and recommends specific approaches and methods to engender a community of practice to encompass and interrelate those accounting constituencies. The notion of communities of practice as an educational framework would lead to the exposure of accounting students to actual practice, particularly in the area of accounting ethics education, by introducing students to accounting realities beyond their readings and class lectures. The intellectual and experiential cross-fertilization afforded by the creation of a community of practice integrating researchers and practitioner would revitalize accounting research, which has become largely irrelevant to practice, and enrich practice with scholarly insights and critique.