In his 2006 plenary address as the American Accounting Associations Presidential Scholar, Anthony Hopwood concluded that accounting research has become increasingly detached from the practice of the craft . . . [as well as] too cautious and conservative, too rigid and traditional, and insufficiently attuned to grapple with the new, and to embrace novel insights and bodies of knowledge (Hopwood, 2007, pp. 1365-1370).

With reference to the academic literature, discuss the extent to which positive accounting theory (PAT), with its emphasis on rationality and self-interest, still has an important role to play in understanding accounting practices.