Editorial

Citation

Evans, S. (2013), "Editorial", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 26 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-07-2013-1406

Editorial

Article Type: Literature and insights From: Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Volume 26, Issue 7

No time to stop

I’m sure that you have been very busy lately. Working hours have been going up despite the notion that computers and other technological wonders would help to provide more time for relaxation in our lives. You may gain some vicarious pleasure each time a global survey announces that people in your country rank very highly for hours worked, but it doesn’t help you deal with the increasing demands for more output in your own situation, does it? It may even make you feel worse by comparison with all those go-getters.

One answer to such challenges that students sometimes embrace when their courses seem to get on top of them popped up again recently when an acquaintance said she had identified wholesale plagiarism in some essays. In fact, in two cases the papers they had purchased from the same paper mill were ones that had been from other students who failed in the course just weeks before. Questioned on this, one of the students responded that the site in question had stated that the material available was only for research purposes, so its use did not constitute plagiarism. Another said that they deserved at least a Pass because the site said that all of the papers there were “of superior quality”. Brave responses, indeed, or stupid ones.

Underlying all of this is the philosophy that you can get someone else to do the work for you and still take the credit. And no, that’s not simply called delegation.

One of my favourite books is Pierre Bayard’s How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read (2009). You might conclude from the title that it is a bluffer’s guide, although it is actually a very entertaining series of chapters about different ways in which reading can be understood. As a whole, the book actually prompts one to undertake more reading. One of the situations he contemplates is that of having to attend a book club when you have not read the book in question. What could you then sensibly say about the text without resorting to SparkNotes? That is also one of the circumstances contemplated by Patricia Marx in her article, “How to outsource yourself” (2013), when as an experiment she outsources commentary on Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past to take to her own book club. In fact, she also commissioned a paragraph about outsourcing to be included in her article, just to see what might turn up.

What harried things we are. If only the days were longer and there were more of them … but then we would fill that time too, and not necessarily with leisure. In this issue, being time poor is the topic of Helen Irvine’s “Research rap … an unfinished work”, particularly plotting the trajectory of PhD study. Dianne Dean contributes another entertaining short story, this time on the idea of choosing a career, and Lee Parker addresses the problem of not so much being unable to slow the demands of work as being addicted to it.

As the poet William Henry Davies wrote:

A poor life this, if full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

I wish I had said that. Perhaps Davies could ghostwrite the next Literature and Insights for me while I pretend to be reading my students’ essays – all their own work, of course.

Your own creative contributions can be submitted via ScholarOne (see footnote on previous page), and your email correspondence is always welcome, of course, at: mailto:steve.evans@flinders.edu.au

Acknowledgements

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ) welcomes submissions of both research papers and creative writing. Creative writing in the form of poetry and short prose pieces is edited for the Literature and Insights section only and does not undergo the refereeing procedures required for all research papers published in the main body of AAAJ. Author guidelines for contributions to this section of the journal can be found at: http:www.emeraldinsight.com/products/journals/author_guidelines.htm?id=aaaj

Steve Evans
Literary Editor

References

Bayard, P. (2009), How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read, Bloomsbury, New York, NY

Davies, W.H. (1911), Leisure, available at: http://allpoetry.com/poem/8494373-Leisure-by-William_H_Davies

Marx, P. (2013), “How to outsource yourself”, The New Yorker, pp. 32–35