Personal Transferable Skills in Accounting Education

Kim Watty, Beverley Jackling, Richard M.S. Wilson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317977209
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The development of generic skills (often referred to as 'soft skills') in accounting education has been a focus of discussion and debate for several decades. During this time employers and professional bodies have urged accounting educators to consider and develop curricula which provide for the development and assessment of these skills. In addition, there has been criticism of the quality of accounting graduates and their ability to operate effectively in a global economy. Embedding generic skills in the accounting curriculum has been acknowledged as an appropriate means of addressing the need to provide 'knowledge professionals' to meet the needs of a global business environment.

Personal Transferable Skills in Accounting Education illustrates how generic skills are being embedded and evaluated in the accounting curriculum by academics from a range of perspectives. Each chapter provides an account of how the challenge of incorporating generic skills in the accounting curriculum within particular educational environments has been addressed.

The challenges involved in generic skills development in higher education have not been limited to the accounting discipline. This book provides examples which potentially inform a wide range of discipline areas. Academics will benefit from reading the experiences of incorporating generic skills in the accounting curriculum from across the globe.

This book was originally published as a themed issue of Accounting Education: an international journal.

Introduction

Kim Watty,^* Beverley Jackling,^** and Richard M. S. Wilson,^***

*Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia, **Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia, ***Loughborough University, UK

The skills set and competencies required by accounting graduates have changed significantly over the past 50 years. Global markets, technology and a heightened focus on the public interest imperative of accounting information are but some of the driving influences. Not surprisingly, research and discussion about personal transferable skills (also referred to as generic skills, soft skills, employability skills, attributes and/or competencies) in higher education generally, and in accounting education specifically, have received increased attention in the literature. In an environment of increasing accountability which exists in higher education, various stakeholders have voiced their concerns about accounting graduates who lack many of the personal transferable skills necessary for employment as accounting professionals in a global workforce. As a consequence, those involved in accounting education have often been criticised for failing to provide opportunities for accounting students to develop these important personal transferable skills within the curriculum.

It is often noted, however, that these criticisms have also been levelled at graduates from other practice-related disciplines, including engineering, architecture, law, medicine, economics and finance. Whether personal transferable skills are best defined in a discipline-specific or trans-disciplinary context is a debate which continues in the literature.

Given the vocational nature of the accounting discipline, the views of future employers and professional accounting bodies are important in the design of current and future accounting programs and courses. While some undergraduate students may elect to continue their formal academic studies following graduation, most will seek full-time employment, and some will continue studying for professional accounting qualifications to achieve professional status. Given this approach following graduation, a focus in accounting programs is the provision of work-ready graduates thus highlighting the links between accounting education, skills and employment. Stated differently, the development of personal transferable skills provides an opportunity to bridge the gap between education and employment. We are not suggesting here that accounting graduates should be accounting professionals upon graduation; however, we are acknowledging that they should have the technical ability and a personal transferable skill set to become professional accountants, if that is to be their chosen occupational field.

Increasingly, professional accountants are required to exercise high-level skill development and application in their judgement, decision-making, problem-solving, communications and critical thinking. This list is not exhaustive but it is indicative of the personal transferable skills expected in an increasingly complex global market. In accounting education, the global movement toward the use of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) (a principles-based standards framework) provides a recent example of the heightened need for graduates who are learned in more than the technical aspects of the discipline. A principles-based approach requires well-developed critical thinking and problem-solving skills as financial statements which conform to IFRS are based on estimates and judgements. This approach contrasts with a rulesbased approach in which students of accounting as well as practitioners have traditionally relied on a set of prescriptive rules to be applied to a specific financial reporting situation.

The development of personal transferable skills in accounting education has been discussed in various contexts and this has raised many interesting questions. For example: should personal transferable skills be embedded within the accounting curriculum? How do we assess the attainment of personal transferable skills? What role do employers play in identifying the personal transferable skills most relevant for accounting graduates?

Together, the contributions that follow provide additional insights which address these questions and, in so doing, raise further questions and identify future challenges.

The initial chapter by Anna Jones challenges the assumption that personal transferable skills are trans-disciplinary and that they cannot be defined separately from their educational and professional context. Using in-depth interviews with Australian academics across five discipline areas, evidence is provided which highlights the unique, discipline-specific conceptualisations of three generic attributes—problem-solving, critical thinking, and communication. The chapter concludes by recognising that personal transferable skills are shaped by the fact that their professional and disciplinary context assists academic staff with the concept of embedding their development and assessment as part of curriculum design.

The next four chapters focus on changes in practice designed to enhance the development of personal transferable skills in accounting programs.

Identifying the dimensions of a hypothesised structure of the expectation-performance gap of accounting education in a New Zealand setting is the focus of the chapter by Bui and Porter. Based on a review of the literature, a framework to identify the unique components of the expectations-performance gap is proposed, tested and evaluated. Semi-structured interviews with key stakeholder groups —graduate employers, recent graduates, accounting educators, and final year students —were undertaken to test the framework. The authors conclude that, by identifying the components of the expectations-performance gap, educators are better placed to narrow the gap by focussing on causes which are linked to each component.

The next chapter by Gracia adds valuable insights into students’ experience of and orientation to workplace learning. Using student interview data from the U.K., Gracia reports on the impact of students’ expectations and conception of workplace learning on their transition to an extended (48 weeks) supervised period of work experience. Reporting on the students’ conceptions of supervised work placements provides important insights into an area of the curriculum in accounting education which is receiving much attention in the personal transferable skills discussion. The findings indicate that students with a ‘technical’ conception view the supervised work placement as an opportunity to develop their technical competence, while those who display an ‘experiential’ conception are more likely to view the placement as an opportunity to develop personal skills and abilities beyond the technical.

Willcoxson, Wynder and Laing provide readers with an extensive discussion of a ‘whole-of-program’ mapping process designed to review the teaching of personal transferable skills in an Australian university accounting program. This chapter incorporates templates which may be modified or adapted should others wish to undertake a similar mapping process. This may be particularly useful given the global focus on assurance of learning outcomes. Importantly, the changes that occurred as a result of the mapping process are of interest given the increased focus on the ability of students to interact, collaborate and initiate resulting from the project. The authors refer to the ‘lively discussions’ among academics which occurred as part of the process—an aspect of program improvement to which many readers will relate.

Focussing on students at the graduate level, the chapter by Fortin and Legault reports the implementation and evaluation of the usefulness of a mixed teaching approach in developing/improving personal transferable skills in Canada. The views of accounting students regarding the usefulness of the mixed teaching model in the graduate program were investigated. The findings reveal that the students found the activities to be useful in developing the competencies investigated. These findings were validated by the responses to a questionnaire by the students’ workplace supervisors who indicated that students had very good or excellent competency levels. Furthermore, results on the CA Uniform Evaluation attest to the high level of academic and professional skills possessed by the students participating in the program.

Using student focus groups, the research conducted by Stoner and Milner in the U.K. analyses the effects on students of a project to integrate personal transferable skills in two first year subjects—Management Accounting and Business Statistics. This chapter reports on the students’ voice and informs readers of the importance of understanding how the authors’ efforts to embed the development and assessment of employability skills are perceived and interpreted by this critical stakeholder group. Further, the authors remind us of the complexity of integrating personable transferable skills into the curriculum and, in a refreshing evaluation of their project, they note that ‘difficulties were expected, but not to the extent encountered’.

The chapter by Awayiga, Onumah and Tsamenyi examines employers’ perceptions of the adequacy of the knowledge and skills (specifically professional and information technology skills) of accounting graduates entering the profession in Ghana. Research of this nature considers the importance of contextualising accounting education at different stages of political and social development occurring throughout the world. The findings of this chapter inform the development of accounting education in Ghana and, potentially, in other developing countries. Interestingly, the research concludes that the skills and knowledge requirements of accounting graduates from Ghana are no different from those required in other, more economically-advanced, countries. In particular, this chapter highlights the international perspective of personal transferable skills required by accountants in meeting the requirements of the global economic community.

The final chapter by Keneley and Jackling examines the acquisition of personal transferable skills by culturally-diverse student cohorts studying accounting in Australia. The study is motivated by the increased proportion of international students studying accounting in Australia and the concerns expressed that the personal transferable skills of these students have not met the expectations of employers. The study investigates the extent to which students perceive that their undergraduate accounting degree studies have contributed to the development of their personal transferable skills with a focus on the differences between local and international students. The findings illustrate that perceptions of the development of many of these skills in the accounting curriculum differ between local and international students. Of significance is the finding that, when compared with local students, international students view the academic environment as an important source of personal transferable skill development. The study provides the impetus for the further extension of inquiry by educators to capture a more complete picture of skill integration in the accounting curriculum. In particular the study highlights the need to develop educational practices which embed personal transferable skill development in the curriculum in a way that maximises the opportunities for culturally-diverse student cohorts to enhance their employment outcomes on graduation.

Consistent with the world-wide level of interest and focus on personal transferable skills in accounting education, as noted above, we have contributions in this volume from academics located in a variety of countries — specifically Australia, Canada, Ghana, New Zealand and the U.K.

In summary, these contributions provide a broad range of perspectives on a topic of interest to all in accounting education. Together they add to our understanding of the many issues and challenges faced in the development of personal transferable skills in accounting education. Not surprisingly, and given the nature of personal transferable skills, many of these contributions will resonate with colleagues from disciplines other than accounting.

Generic Attributes in Accounting: The Significance of the Disciplinary Context

Anna Jones

University of Melbourne, Australia

ABSTRACT Generic skills and attributes are a significant issue in accounting education as a consequence of the changing business environment and a perception that graduates are not equipped for the workforce of the twenty-first century. Until recently, generic attributes have been poorly theorised and defined and have been viewed as separate from the disciplinary context. This paper examines the nature of generic attributes and presents a conceptual overview for theorising generic attributes. It reports the findings of a qualitative study which investigated the relationship between disciplinary culture and generic attributes. This study found that academics’ conceptualisation of generic attributes is influenced by the culture of the discipline in which they are taught. This has profound implications for accounting education as this paper argues that generic attributes must be understood as part of the professional and scholarly practice of accounting and so taught as integral to disciplinary practice.

Introduction

Over the last 15 years there has been an increasing focus on generic skills and attributes and a considerable body of research in this area (AC Nielsen Research Services, 2000; Assiter, 1995; Australian Council for Educational Research, 2001b; Barrie, 2006; Beckett and Hager, 2002; Bennett et al., 2000; Bowden et al., 2000; Clanchy and Ballard, 1995; De La Harpe et al., 2000; Dearing Commission, 1997; Department of Education Science and Training, 2005; Drummond et al., 1998; The Association of Graduate Recruiters, 1995). However, despite the interest in generic skills and attributes there remains disagreement about how they can best be understood, defined, situated, taught and assessed. This paper argues that generic attributes in accounting are shaped by disciplinary and professional knowledge and skills. In arguing this, the paper draws on a recent study which examined the ways in which academic staff conceptualised generic skills (Jones, forthcoming). The study found that the ways in which generic attributes are constructed are profoundly influenced by the disciplines in which they are taught. This conceptualisation of generic skills situates them as part of the professional and scholarly practice of the discipline rather than external to it (and hence imposed upon it). While this study did not include accounting directly, this paper draws on the accounting literature to inform the disciplinary perspective. The paper argues that the ways in which the subject is conceptualised influences what is taught and how. This has serious implications for accounting as it points to the importance of conceptualising generic attributes in relation to the context in which they are taught and the context of the future professional needs of graduates.

While the term generic skills is used in much of the literature, the term attributes is used here, as it used in much of the more recent literature (c.f. Barrie, 2006), because of the problems with the term skill, which suggests clear, definable and measurable outcomes. These definitional problems will be discussed in detail.

Much of the literature has outlined the need for accounting graduates to be employable, which requires both knowledge and skills. The concern regarding deficiencies in the education of graduates entering business employment, including accounting, was voiced a decade ago in the UK by the Dearing Commission for the National Committee of Inquiry in Higher Education (Dearing Commission, 1997) and was echoed in the USA (The Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, 2000). The importance to employers of both content knowledge and more generic ‘capabilities’ was emphasised (The Association of Graduate Recruiters, 1995) with a focus on skills such as problem-solving, communication and teamwork. However, the identification of generic attributes and the associated question of their transferability from the university to the workplace is not a simple one (Atkins, 1999).

This emphasis on generic attributes remains current in higher education policy in Australia. The policy paper Our Universities: Backing Australia’s Future, Assuring Quality (2005) argues for the promotion and testing of generic attributes through the Graduate Skills Assessment (Australian Council for Educational Research, 2001a). The assumption underlying this is that generic skills (the term ‘skills’ is used in the Graduate Skills Assessment project) are transdisciplinary, identifiable and measurable. It is assumed that key generic skills can be identified, defined, tested and measured in isolation from the disciplinary context. This paper challenges this assumption that generic skills are transdisciplinary and so can be defined separately from their educational and professional context.

Underlying these broad descriptions of graduate outcomes are a number of unexamined assumptions. While governments, university policy makers and employer groups argue for the importance of generic attributes and, while there may be some agreement as to the attributes which are important, if one closely examines the ways in which these attributes are defined, there is a distinct lack of clarity. Barnett (1994, p. 80) argues that the language and objectives around generic skills used by industry and by the university are not necessarily congruent:

Questions are also begged in the view that the transferable skills required for a successful economy are the same metacognitive skills ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Generic Attributes in Accounting: The Significance of the Disciplinary Context
• 3. The Expectation-Performance Gap in Accounting Education: An Exploratory Study
• 4. Accounting Students’ Expectations and Transition Experiences of Supervised Work Experience
• 5. A Whole-of-program Approach to the Development of Generic and Professional Skills in a University Accounting Program
• 6. Development of Generic Competencies: Impact of a Mixed Teaching Approach on Students’ Perceptions
• 7. Embedding Generic Employability Skills in an Accounting Degree: Development and Impediments
• 8. Knowledge and Skills Development of Accounting Graduates: The Perceptions of Graduates and Employers in Ghana
• 9. The Acquisition of Generic Skills of Culturally-diverse Student Cohorts
• Index