Research choices

In our B852 tutorial today we discussed several questions:
1. Do you think that research in accounting and finance (or any business discipline) is going to be driven by issues of interest to practitioners?
I think we said no, not just such practical issues, but also theoretical ones. No, because there are forces and motivations acting on academic researchers to produce research based on theory.

2. What do you think are likely to be the differences between research topics that emanate from practical issues and research topics that are inspired by more theoretical issues?
Whilst research topics that arise from practical issues may have immediate relevance, the relevance might be limited to that particular area or field. In contrast, research arising from theoretical issues might have more generalisable applications.

3. What are the attributes of a ‘good' research question or topic?
Starting with the concept of ‘goodness', which is a philosophical debate on its own, I think that ‘good' depends on who is assessing it, so goodness is a subjective thing.
A good research question must be something of interest, and doable. What is a good research question to me may not be to my supervisor, and that matters, because he is assessing my work. So a good research question is also a question that is of interest, not only to me but also to a wider community. It has to be something that other people what to debate, that others want answered, so that question exists in a society, a political society of its time. And a good question for one time may not be for another era. Hence, when I come to propose my topic for my PhD, I need a research question that will be of interest to me for three or four years because I'm going to be doing a lot of work on it, but also of interest to my targeted supervisor. If I don't find an interested supervisor then I won't be doing the PhD.