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2. The notion of paradigm and debates around it - The notion of paradigm was coined by Thomas Kuhn in 1962 in his treatise “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, now already a modern classic in the philosophy of science. The notion refers to the set of practices that define a scientific discipline during a particular period of time. Paradigms are about several things, most notably about what is to be studied, what kind of research questions are supposed to be formulated in relation to these subjects, with what methods these studies should be conducted, and how their results should be interpreted. In short, Kuhn (1962) argued that scientific disciplines tend to have periods of “normal science”, when researchers tranquilly work ‘within the box’ of the ruling paradigm. However, it is not untypical that research findings gradually start to bring forth anomalies, which do not fit into the current paradigm and persuade researchers to start thinking ‘outside the current box’. Sooner or later a new paradigm emerges to challenge the current one and thereafter a paradigm shift becomes a possibility. A number of clear examples of paradigm shifts can be found from various disciplines. A major one comes from physics, where Einstein’s theory of relativity replaced Newtonian mechanics, positioning the latter as a particular case of a more general theory. With hindsight, Kuhn’s notions of paradigms and their dynamics may look innocent and almost self-evident, which is typical of most significantly innovative ideas once they have broken through and become ‘facts’ (Latour, 1987). However, when it was developed, it was revolutionary as it meant a major relativistic move in the philosophy of science: it implied that the values of researchers and their academic communities play a fundamental role in the scientific enterprise–it is not just neutral cognition that drives science and its development. In the philosophy of science, there have been several post-Kuhnian debates; some of them took place only a relatively short time after the publication of Kuhn’s book—e.g., those around Feyerabend (1975) and Lakatos (1977, 1978). Another notable period of paradigm-related debates was witnessed in the 1990s, when the so-called Science Wars broke out. It was a series of intellectual battles between “postmodernists” and “realists” about the nature of scientific theories. Postmodernists questioned the objectivity of science, leading to a huge variety of critiques on scientific knowledge and method in a number of disciplines, and especially in studies of science and technology (e.g., Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Latour, 1987). Realists countered that surely there is such a thing as objective scientific knowledge and that postmodernists are mixing political agendas with science. The peak of this counter-attack was the book by Gross and Levitt (1994) with the telling title: Higher Superstition: The academic left and its quarrels with science. Another more infamous peak was the so-called “Sokal affair” in 1996. Physicist Alain Sokal got a paper published in Social Text, which he subsequently (in another journal, Lingua Franca) admitted to be a pure hoax. His purpose was to ridicule postmodernists by demonstratinghow easy it is to publish pure nonsense in their journals (Sokal, 1996a,b).1 the accounting research community. The earliest of them dealt with the issue of whether there are paradigms in accounting research and, more particularly, whether accounting is actually a multi-paradigmatic discipline (Wells, 1976; Hakansson, 1978; cf. Locke and Lowe, 2008; Vollmer, 2009). A little later a debate emerged around “positive accounting theory” (PAT): a term coined by Watts and Zimmerman (1978, 1979, 1986). Although PAT was critically evaluated by several accounting researchers (e.g., Christenson, 1983; Tinker et al., 1982; Hines, 1988; Arrington and Francis, 1989; Boland and Gordon, 1996), it nevertheless managed to get a notable foothold in the thinking and operating models of numerous accounting scholars. The arguably multi-paradigmatic nature of accounting research returned to the limelight in the debate rooted in Burrell and Morgan’s (1979) taxonomy of paradigms in the social sciences (e.g. Tomkins and Groves, 1983; Chua, 1986; Tinker, 1986). A more recent management accounting focused debate followed the publication of a paper by Zimmerman (2001), which painted a relatively gloomy picture of the outputs of empirical management accounting research. Several responses were published in the European Accounting Review (No. 4, 2002), fundamentally arguing that Zimmerman’s evaluation was very biased due to the narrowness of his philosophical and methodological premises (Hopwood, 2002; Ittner and Larcker, 2002; Luft and Shields, 2002; Lukka and Mouritsen, 2002). The most recent debate within accounting research circles has dealt with the possibility and nature of straddling paradigms in accounting research (Kakkuri-Knuuttila et al., 2008a,b; Ahrens, 2008; cf. Hopper and Powell, 1985).