Metaphor has been used in other scientific disciplines to assist in discovering new concepts and organizing the view of research phenomena. This paper attempts to provide rationale for the use of a navigational metaphor, and other metaphors, to evaluate existing accounting theory and to further accounting discourse. The positive accounting theory paradigm paradigm is evaluated using a defamiliariation technique based on the navigational metaphor. The author suggests that the field of accounting, as well as accounting research, might benefit by emulating the approaches used by navigational science in solving their crisis with respect to the computation of longitude, particularly in the use of external referents.
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