Accounting Article Analysis: Domain and Method Theories Comparison

This report provides an analysis of two articles related to accounting. The first article focuses on distinguishing between domain theory and method theory in management accounting research, exploring their relationship and application. It highlights how these theories are often intertwined and can be difficult to differentiate. The second article examines how politicians influence budgeting in public sector organizations, using the position-practice concept within structuration theory. The analysis reveals that budgets may serve as ceremonial tools with limited impact on actual practices. The report identifies domain and method theories within both articles, demonstrating how the first article's domain theory of budgeting is applied in the second article's discussion of political influences on medical expenses. The study indicates that the method theory relates to how the government impacts budgeting.

Running head: ARTICLE ANALYSIS
ARTICLE ANALYSIS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1ARTICLE ANALYSIS
Article Comparison
The first article largely focuses on the concepts of the Domain theory and the Method
theory in the field of accounting. The article aims to focus on how the two different roles of the
particular theories can be distinguished and how these are connected in the field of management
accounting and research. A conceptual framework was developed in order to understand and
determine the relationship and difference between the two theories and identify the theoretical
arguments which can be used set with certain examples. It was found in the results that, there
exists various levels of relationship between the domain theories and the method theories and the
study has mainly focused on the former. As both the theories can be taken to be moving field,
their overall interaction tends to add to the particular feature. The study found that these two
theories are intermingled and often form a sub section of ach other which makes it difficult to
distinguish between them. Moreover, the study also indicated that the motivations for the various
method theories which are applied need to be identified in the accounting research. According to
(Lukka and Vinnari 2014), the domain theory is a set of knowledge on a certain topic area which
is present in a field or a domain, one of them being the management accounting. On the other
hand, the method theory is defined as a Meta level conceptual system which assists in the
studying of the substantive issues in the domain theory which are identified at hand.
The second article examined the influence of the politicians on the preparation of the
related budget in the field of public sector organizations. The theoretical concept is based on the
position and practice concept which can be applied in the structuration theory. The study was
able to find that there did not exist any impact of the budget on the medical practice and in line
with this, the budget could simply be adopted as a ceremonial tool. In regard of this, it can be
rightfully mentioned that the field of domain theory and the method theory has been applied

2ARTICLE ANALYSIS
subtly in the passage whereby, the concept of the budgeting and the manner in which it is
generally used for the hospital and thereby planned by the government can be identified as the
Domain theory which spoke of the budgeting as a procedure in the field of accounting and how it
was being influenced by the Governmental and political connotations (Mutiganda 2016). The
method theory relating to the case could be identified as the conceptual system which could be
used in understanding how the government influences the budgeting which is the domain theory
in this case. Hence, in the field of budgeting and accounting, the domain theory from the first
article has been applied to the discussion in the second article whereby the importance of
budgeting will be assessed and the manner in which it influences the medical expenses was also
identified (Mutiganda 2016). Here the external political influences served as the domain method
theory whereby how the procedure of budgeting which was just ceremonial in nature has been
discussed and the theoretical concept of position practice has been applied.

3ARTICLE ANALYSIS
References
Lukka, K. and Vinnari, E. (2014), "Domain Theory and Method Theory in Management
Accounting Research", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 27 No. 8, pp. 1308-
1338.
Mutiganda, J. C. (2016), "How Do Politicians Shape and Use Budgets to Govern Public Sector
Organizations? A Position-Practice Approach", Public Money & Management, Vol. 36 No. 7,
pp. 491-498.