Post-Hofstede diversity/cultural studies: what contributions to accounting knowledge?

International audienceSince Hofstede published his book, The consequences of culture, numerous comparative studies have flourished and built on the well-known five-dimension model. In 1999, two critiques were addressed to these pieces of work. Bhimani (1999) critiqued their homogeneity and poor ability to enhance our understanding of accounting. Knowledge claims articulated, claims addressed, datasets and methods, and theoretical frameworks were always the same, which has inevitably led to predictable conclusions and contributions to scientific knowledge. For their part, Harrison & McKinnon (1999) stressed that all these studies had failed at explaining the determinants of accounting situations and practices. These two critiques called for alternative cultural/diversity studies in accounting research, promoting new settings, theoretical frameworks, and methods. In that context, our paper aims at critically reviewing the situation of diversity/cultural accounting research ten years later. This research purports to analyse the contributions of post-Hofstedian research to accounting knowledge. To this end, we selected all papers published by international accounting journals in 2009 and dealing with culture or diversity. In total 68 papers fell within our remit. We coded each of them with respect to the criteria of Bhimani's (1999) critique: knowledge claims and debates, means deployed (empirical site, theoretical framework, methods employed) and ultimately contributions to scientific knowledge (empirical, theoretical and methodological). We found that post-Hofstedian research offers large variety of approaches and contributions to knowledge, which, compared against the outcome of Hofstede-based studies, is quite a scientific revolution (as defined by Kuhn, 1970). Despite diversity and discontinuity, all these publications have in common that they make culture part of the social environment in which an accounting situation is observed. This leads all authors to spend room making that context clear to the reader before conceptualisation commences. In other words, post-Hofstedian research unbound culture, accounting, organisations and society