Reforming accounting as a STEM discipline

• Political reframing and academic designation approaches do not make accounting a true STEM discipline. • Accounting can be best reformed as information systems in order to be classified as STEM. • Four examples are given to illustrate how accounting can be reformed. • Small steps are recommended to make curricular and institutional change. There has been some effort to push the recognition of accounting as a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) field through congressional legislation and the designation of academic accounting programs by individual schools. In this paper I argue that such legitimization is insufficient and that the accounting profession can best accomplish its stemmatization goal by reforming accounting as an information systems discipline. Such reform would necessitate a meaningful change of the accounting focus from rules to information systems design, implementation, and data analytics. I use four examples to illustrate how such reform might be carried out and discuss potential pitfalls and obstacles.