Social mobility via elite placements: working class graduates in elite accounting and banking firms

ABSTRACT

Little research attention has been paid to the effect of yearlong placements in elite accounting firms and investment banks on the social mobility of working class graduates. Using the framework of Bourdieu, this paper examines the link between placements and employment destinations of eight cohorts of accounting and finance graduates from a non-elite British university. We find that elite professions are most likely to recruit graduates who have already gained the ‘right’ professional habitus through the successful completion of yearlong placements in the same elite firms in that particular field and/or with better degree averages. Social mobility of working class graduates taking an elite placement is evident after controlling for gender, age, ethnicity and degree average. The findings indicate that working class graduates need to consciously and continuously modify their class specific dispositions so that they can fully engage with higher education and elite placement experiences to achieve social mobility.     

Personality preferences of accounting and non-accounting graduates seeking to enter the accounting profession

The aim of this study is to investigate the relative personality preferences of accounting and non-accounting graduates seeking to enter the accounting profession. This study is motivated by the recent changes within the Australian accounting profession to encourage non-accounting graduates to enter the discipline, a key motivation for which is a perceived need to attract a greater diversity of individuals to pursue careers in accounting. Using the personality preferences (as measured using the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator [MBTI]) as an indicator of diversity, the results of this study signify that accounting and non-accounting graduates seeking to enter the accounting profession are likely to share similar personality preferences. The implications of this finding for a range of stakeholders associated with the accounting profession, and for matters such as stereotypical images of accountants, graduate recruitment, and university and professional curriculum development are discussed.     

Examining the Usefulness of an Accounting Work‐readiness Program as Perceived by Employed Program Graduates

This study investigates the usefulness of an Australian accounting work‐readiness program as perceived by international accounting graduates. Using logistic regression, the study reports the results of a survey of 186 graduates who completed the program in the period 2010–2013 and are now employed in either accounting or non‐accounting roles. The results show that graduates who were employed in an accounting role perceived internships and critical thinking skills to be the most useful curriculum components of the work‐readiness program in obtaining their employment. The findings have implications for various stakeholders, in particular educators and professional bodies involved in the curriculum design of the work‐readiness program. The government also has an interest in the value of this program as they grant visas for international students to study in Australia and fill a skills shortage in the profession. The results also provide insights for other Western economies that attract large numbers of international graduates as skilled migrants.     

Accounting Education and the Prerequisite Skills of Accounting Graduates: Are Accounting Firms’ Moving the Boundaries?

The current requisite skills of accounting graduates guide the graduate attributes delivered by university learning outcomes. A recent trend by Australian accounting firms to outsource accounting services may impact on accounting graduates if entry‐level tasks normally completed by graduates are sent to offshore processing centres. This study examines the impact of the outsourcing of accounting services by Australian accounting firms and classifies the current requisite skills for accounting graduates identified by accounting firms. Following a review of the current academic literature, a positivist approach using empirical data is taken in this paper. The responses elicited from a survey questionnaire mailed to a random sample of Australian accounting firms provide information for the data analysis. One of the most widely outsourced services identified is the preparation of income tax returns, which has been identified as a key area where graduate accountants normally learn the basic skills required to phase them into the profession. Accounting firms that considered the outsourcing of accounting services would change the 12 ranked prerequisite skills for graduates presented in this paper in order of importance.     

The Acquisition of Generic Skills of Culturally-diverse Student Cohorts

The changing nature of higher education and the structure of graduate labour markets have increased emphasis on employability and graduate outcomes. Universities have responded to this changed environment by embedding generic skills in the curriculum. This paper examines the generic skills that students perceived they acquired in their accounting studies in preparation for graduate employment. Given the changed background profiles of students studying accounting degree in Australia, and the employment difficulties they encounter on graduation, the study specifically addresses the perceptions of students from diverse cultural backgrounds. The findings demonstrate that, overall, students believed that their accounting course assisted in developing generic skills, while differences in perceptions were identified between different cultural cohorts. The research highlights the need to develop educational practices which embed generic skills development in the curriculum in a way that maximises the opportunities for culturally-diverse student cohorts to enhance their employment outcomes on graduation.     

Syrian women accountants’ attitudes and experiences at work in the context of globalization

The purpose of this study is to explore how globalization is impacting on the experiences of Syrian women accountants working in the accounting and finance professions. The study uses postcolonial theory to interpret face-to-face in depth interviews with female accountants and in particular their experiences and attitudes regarding wearing or not wearing the hijab in Syria. Insights from the interviews reveal that Syrian women accountants have been able to use the practice of veiling in order to negotiate greater opportunities for access to work in a patriarchal context. Nonetheless, the increased influence in recent years of private/Western accounting and finance firms has mainly hindered women, especially veiled women’s ability to access and progress at work. The study suggests that the issue of female clothing for Muslim women is still overemphasized in the East and West. The paper argues for the need to go beyond the politics of the hijab and to focus on addressing broader socio-political, cultural and global conditions that are contributing to Syrian women’s marginalization in the accounting and finance professions, and beyond.     

GAAP,GFS and AASB 1049: perceptions of public sector stakeholders

Efforts by Australian standard‐setters to harmonise public sector financial reporting resulted in AASB 1049, which sought to bridge the divide between generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP)‐based and government finance statistics (GFS)‐based financial statements. However, whether AASB 1049 has resulted in information that is considered appropriate for the public sector has not been examined. We explore this issue by comparing the requirements of AASB 1049 with the responses from a survey of public sector stakeholders on the appropriate accounting treatment and presentation of selected financial items. The analysis suggests consensus with AASB 1049 on presentation issues but less consensus on accounting treatments.     

Developing Accounting Students' Listening Skills: Barriers,Opportunities and an Integrated Stakeholder Approach

Accountants and employers of accounting graduates consider listening to be among the most important communication skills that graduates possess. However, accounting education practices that develop students' listening skills are uncommon. Further, in the case of listening development, the current approach of prescribing that educators do more to rectify students' skill deficiencies overlooks barriers that prevent greater incorporation of listening instruction in the accounting curriculum. An alternative integrated stakeholder approach to develop students' listening skills is proposed. Informed by a broad range of education literature, the approach identifies cross-disciplinary listening development best practice and barriers to the widespread implementation of such practices in the typical accounting programme, before determining and assigning interrelated listening development roles to key stakeholders who will benefit from improved student listening. While student listening development is feasible under the proposed approach, shared contributions by accounting students, the profession and educators are needed to achieve enhanced skills outcomes.     

会计人才能力需求与本科会计教育改革:利益相关者的调查分析

本研究利用焦点团体访谈和问卷调查方法,探讨中国本科会计教育改革的问题。通过对会计师、会计学生和会计教师三类会计教育利益相关者的结构化访谈和问卷调查,研究不同利益相关者在会计毕业生能力项目和会计教学方法两个方面的期望认知。研究结果表明,不同利益相关者之间对部分能力项目和教学方法存在认知差异,教师是否接受海外教育背景对这两类项目的认知差异不显著。根据研究结果,我们分析了其产生的原因以及对中国会计教育改革的启示。     

研究生培养机制与就业保障问题研究

随着高校研究生招生规模的不断扩大,出现了研究生培养质量无法保证、研究生就业困难等问题。综合了国内学者针对研究生培养机制存在的各种问题,归纳了导致研究生就业困难的诸多原因,对研究生培养机制与就业的现实状况进行了文献归纳．发现研究生培养机制存在的诸多弊病已经成为制约中国研究生就业的重要因素,而完善研究生培养机制将有利于研究生就业保障机制的建立。此外,还评述了通过完善研究生培养机制而促进研究生就业的保障机制,并对目前研究的方向性问题进行了简略叙述。     

国外高校毕业生就业服务体系与启示

近些年,我国高校毕业生就业形势日趋严峻,受到了全社会的广泛关注。国外高校在解决就业问题方面已经形成了值得我国借鉴的经验和做法,尤其是成熟有效的毕业生就业服务体系,对于指导我国高校毕业生就业服务体系的建立健全,解决高校毕业生就业问题,具有重要意义。     

Governance and compliance in accounting education in Vietnam – case of a public university

Prior research suggests that despite the mass development of higher education in Vietnam recently, the quality of higher education is declining. This study aims to understand the impact of the education reform on the quality of university accounting education by investigating the involvement of different stakeholders in accounting education within one leading university in Vietnam. The findings from the interviews of key stakeholders suggest that accounting education in Vietnam is driven by reduced state control, growing institutional autonomy and increasing external guidance. This has come at the expense of reduced academic self-governance as lecturers have discretion in curriculum delivery at the individual course level, but little input into the decision-making at the school or university level and minimal participation in the curriculum development process. The findings enable regulators and decision-makers to better understand the dynamics between stakeholders in accounting education to enhance accounting graduates’ competencies and outcomes.     

The Business Cycle,Investor Sentiment,and Costly External Finance

The recent financial crisis shows that financial markets can impact the real economy. We investigate whether access to finance typically time‐varies and, if so, what are the real effects. Consistent with time‐varying external finance costs, both investment and employment are less sensitive to Tobin's q and more sensitive to cash flow during recessions and low investor sentiment periods. Share issuance plays a bigger role than debt issuance in causing these effects. Alternative tests that do not rely on q and cash flow sensitivities suggest that recessions and low sentiment increase external finance costs, thereby limiting investment and employment.     

Big Data Opportunities for Accounting and Finance Practice and Research

We examine the research opportunities for the use of ‘big data’ in accounting and finance. The purpose of the study is to present a snapshot of big data academic research in information systems, accounting and finance, and to highlight areas for further research in accounting and finance. The research question addressed in this work is: What are the major themes in existing research in big data and where are the resulting gaps in the accounting and finance literature? An analysis is presented of 47 accounting, finance and information systems journals from 2007–2016. We identify and sample the relevant literature to derive a taxonomy of themes. These themes are presented as a conceptual matrix in which the themes from the taxonomy are used as concepts, and the matrix identifies where they appear, and where there are potential areas for further research. Prior research in big data in accounting, finance and information systems falls into six themes. The six under‐researched areas of big data in accounting and finance are risk and security, data visualisation and predictive analytics, data management and data quality. Increased research in these areas will lead to improvements in industry practices, and opportunities for cross‐disciplinary research.     

Editorial to Introduce the Bloom and Webinger Forum

Abstract

Undergraduate accounting students in Australian universities are dissatisfied with the feedback that they currently receive. Recent evidence from the Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ, a national survey of Australian university graduates) suggests that the accounting discipline ranks poorly on assessment feedback when compared to other disciplines. This finding aligns with the results of local university data, which also shows that students appear dissatisfied with feedback. Similar results can be found in other jurisdictions, as noted by the Higher Education Academy in the UK. Given the importance of feedback to enhancing students' learning, these results are of concern to accounting academics and other stakeholders, including professional accounting bodies and graduate employers. To date, few studies have sought to understand in a comprehensive manner the relatively poor performance in feedback scores in the discipline of accounting. This exploratory study seeks to address this gap by investigating the reasons underlying students' dissatisfaction. We report on students' perceptions obtained from a large survey of Australian undergraduate accounting students across 12 universities. Over 2600 students responded to the survey. Our findings indicate that accounting students value feedback that is individualised, detailed, constructive and timely, and that currently they are not receiving feedback with these attributes.     

Who should teach what? Australian perceptions of the roles of universities and practice in the education of professional accountants

This paper addresses the respective roles and responsibilities of universities and practitioners in educating professional accountants. The issues are explored by a review of the literature in accounting and other professions regarding the respective roles of universities and employers in the development of both technical and non-technical knowledge and skills of professionals, particularly accounting practitioners. The literature review suggests that critics of university-based education fail to recognise (a) the changes that have occurred in the roles and responsibilities of accounting practitioners, and (b) the opportunity costs necessarily associated with providing generalist accounting degrees. Universities and employers have comparative advantages for the development of different types of professional skills and knowledge. These insights are extended by way of a series of interviews with Australian accounting practitioners, representatives from professional accounting bodies, recent accounting graduates, and accounting students about their perceptions of the respective responsibilities and roles of universities and employers. Although some interviewees recognised that universities cannot be ‘all things to all people’, there was a tendency to expect universities to have the major responsibility for the development in accounting graduates of both technical and non-technical knowledge and skills. Such perceptions tended to understate the responsibilities and comparative advantage of employers and result in unrealistic expectations about the outcomes of a university education. Employers need to be made more aware of the resource and other limitations associated with university programs and should develop meaningful opportunities for learning and reflection within workplace contexts.     

Twenty years of minority PhDs in accounting: Signs of success and segregation

This study examines the minority status of the 3213 individuals who have earned U.S. accounting PhDs in the last 20 years and considers the relative progress along the academic pipeline of minority graduates. Overall, this study indicates that minority accounting PhD graduates are making greater progress along the academic pipeline than that indicated in many other disciplines. However, the study finds that while accounting doctoral graduation rates of minorities are increasing they have not reached parity with population rates or academia in general. While the overall cohort of minority graduates appear, on average, to have patterns of employment and promotion similar to the non-minority graduates, recent minority PhD graduates are attending significantly lower ranked schools than either earlier minority graduates or their more recent non-minority peers and are gaining employment in lower ranked institutions than their non-minority peers. The findings suggest that while there are signs of success in minority progress, there are also signs of segregation.     

Do Accounting Graduates’ Skills Meet The Expectations of Employers? A Matter of Convergence or Divergence

This study investigates the emphasis placed on technical and generic skills developed during undergraduate accounting courses from both the graduate and employer perspective. It is motivated by two issues. First, calls by the accounting profession and international education committees regarding the professional adequacy of graduates. Second, by the challenge facing educators and professional bodies to ensure accounting courses equip graduates with the necessary skills to add value to business. Data obtained from 174 graduates from an Australian university is compared with the perceived needs of a sample of employers. Major findings suggest that, while both groups acknowledged the importance of technical accounting skills, employers require a broad range of generic skills that graduates indicated were not being adequately taught in their accounting degree programme. Against this backdrop of skills convergence, the greatest areas of skills divergence from the employers’ perspective were those of team skills, leadership potential, verbal communication and the interpersonal skills of graduates.