The Australian Accounting Academic in the 1950s : R. J. Chambers and Networks of Accounting Research

This article examines the challenges faced by an Australian accounting academic, R. J. Chambers, in the 1950s, in breaking into the accounting research community; at that time almost entirely located in the United States and the United Kingdom. For academics outside the networks of accounting research publication in these countries, there were significant, but not insurmountable obstacles to conducting and publishing accounting research. We examine how these obstacles could be overcome, using the notion of “trials of strength” to trace the efforts of Chambers in wrestling with intellectual issues arising from post-war inflation, acquiring accounting literature from abroad, and publishing his endeavors