This commentary is based on the remarks I made as the chair of the panel on “the future of management accounting research” on the occasion of the Management Accounting Research 25th Anniversary Conference at the London School of Economics in April 2015. The three panelists’ contributions are published in this issue immediately following this commentary, and cover perspectives on management accounting research “in context” related to the panelists’ chosen applications of industry, regulation or regulatory “shocks”, and informatics or, especially, “big data”. The audience at the conference also wanted to hear my views on the future direction of the journal as the then-incoming Editor-in-Chief of Management Accounting Research. I offer a few thoughts on this in the second part of my commentary.