Methodological reflections on historical case study and interpretive accounting research

Commenting on our study of a German university under the Nazi regime, Fülbier (2021) outlines a research agenda on the manifold ways in which the Nazi doctrine affected institutions of higher education, going beyond the scope of our original article (Detzen and Hoffmann 2020). With this reply, we seek to complement his commentary, by reflecting on methodological considerations emanating from such an agenda. We discuss (i) historical case-based research, (ii) questions of ontology and epistemology in interpretive accounting research, and (iii) the notion of what constitutes accounting in a specific research context. We hope that our reply, along with Fülbier’s (2021) commentary, inspires further research on accounting’s role in totalitarian regimes.