Poetry, prose, literature and insights

Poetry, prose, literature and insights

The text in this paper is written in the form of a poem. The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the destruction of value and passion of research by presenting the elements that are ruining this passion. The inspiration of this was Parker and Guthrie’s (2019) comment that accounting research suffered when science dominated universities privileged the science and medicine focussed impact factors, when most of the accounting journals were not even included in the rankings.

The poem is written in free verse, which mimics the nuances and cadences of spoken English. Frequent media coverage of university rankings and outcomes of research assessment exercises and the close monitoring of academic research grants and publications have become fashionable clichés. The poem is an outcome of careful collection and coordination of different research papers that have highlighted the impact of research assessment exercises. The ideas shared in the poem ring so true to the hearts of the authors who are accounting scholars themselves.

Poem about university evaluation exercises