An Exploratory Analysis of Accounting Expert System Abstracts

A classification scheme was developed to show trends and categorize articles on accounting expert systems (AES) which were written during the period 1977 to 1989 and abstracted in Brown (1989). The analysis shows that the number of articles on AES has been burgeoning since 1985. The number of introductory articles has declined, as authors have assumed reader familiarity with expert systems concepts. Research in all areas of accounting has been increasing and a wide range of issues in AES has been covered, but with an increasing emphasis on tax and auditing, perhaps due to the influence of large management consulting/accounting firms. Finally, for most subcategories within AES, the focus of the articles along the ES dimension has been on the prototyping and working model stages of development.