Emerging streams of institutional theory in accounting research: current status and future directions

This paper aims to reflect upon the emerging streams of institutional theory, their application and influence on the accounting research of the last decade. Specifically, the paper’s ambition is to review and understand the role of institutional logics (IL), institutional entrepreneurship (IE) and institutional work (IW) in accounting research. These streams of institutional theory become increasingly valuable in accounting research for their explanatory capacities. At the same time, but their application, especially in a combined form, can also raise criticalities within theoretical pluralism agenda. We compile a structured literature review of articles published in scientific journals in the accounting field (levels 4 and 3 in ABS list). We examine the way how current accounting literature utilizes the selected institutional streams of accounting theory, how the theories or their combination (if any) are justified and used in a flow of argument for the understanding of accounting practice.