© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2002 Feature article Rites of passage and the self- immolation of academic accounting labour: an essay exploring exclusivity versus mutuality in accounting scholarship Rob Gray, James Guthrie and Lee Parker * Abstract The changes in public sectors of many western democracies, particularly as applied in public funded universities, have led to an environment where students have been redefined as customers, organisations and their pro- grams have been redefined as fee generating and services have been recon- stituted as commercialised competitive activities in the open marketplace. Work in this ‘new’ Higher Education Sector (HES) environment has been construed as fee generating and cost incurring, subject to financial control and evaluated for its tangible, measured outputs. This paper considers the contemporary attitudes in accounting and management academia to what constitutes research and scholarship, using Australia and the UK as case examples. From this perspective, it is argued that the changing HES envi- ronment is transforming and commodifying research into a homogenised, measured and traded commodity. This commodity is then traded in the new academic marketplace in forms such as departmental research rank- ings, appointability of candidates for professorial positions, departmental and individual academic competitiveness for research grants, and univer- sity eligibility for government research funding. In addition, we contend that this commodification is exhibiting a convergent tendency, in that the tradable currency shows signs of reductionism to a common form of measurement, that is, to refereed research journal articles. This paper seeks to further open up discussion and debate on these issues from both acad- Address for Correspondence: Rob Gray, Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research, University of Glasgow, Scotland, Email: r.h.gray@accfin.gla.ac.uk * Acknowledgements: The authors are indebted to the comments and critiques provided by colleagues attending seminars presented at Deakin, Macquarie and Monash Universities in Australia, and Dundee University in Scotland. In addition, the comments by attendees at the authors’ presentations at a number of conferences are gratefully acknowledged. The authors would also like to express their appreciation to research assistant Dr Armen Gakavian of Macquarie Graduate School of Management. Furthermore we appreciate the support given by the Directors of MCB University Press who awarded the authors a quality research grant which made this project possible. Finally, we have been greatly assisted by critiques from Professor Hugh Willmott (UMIST) and Professor Richard Laughlin (Kings College, University of London). The responsibility for the contents of this paper nonethe- less remains entirely that of the authors.