Exploring the impact of 4IR on skills and personal qualities for future accountants: a proposed conceptual framework for university accounting education

Tsiligiris, V ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5478-3464 and Bower, D, 2021. Exploring the impact of 4IR on skills and personal qualities for future accountants: a proposed conceptual framework for university accounting education. Accounting Education. ISSN 0963-9284

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Abstract

The fourth industrial revolution (4IR) presents many opportunities and challenges in a digitised world of work. This paper draws on a systematic literature review of recent research published by accounting professional bodies outlining the impact of digital technologies on the accounting profession. By taking advantage of this work this study critically assesses the types of skills and personal qualities that graduates as future accountants will need and explores the implications for accounting education and university curricula. The analysis reveals that necessary skills for future accountants may be summarised into four categories: a) Ethical skills; b) Digital skills; c) Business skills; and d) Soft skills. The analysis reveals ‘adaptability’ and ‘lifelong approach to CPD’ as the two essential personal qualities for future accountants. The practical implications for university accounting education are summarised in a proposed conceptual framework. The proposed conceptual framework: 1) acts as a roadmap for universities to align their accounting curricula with the developments in professional body syllabi; 2) helps university accounting education teachers to update, enrich, and refocus their teaching and learning approach to the requirements of the 4IR; and 3) promotes the coordination and rationalisation of the skills and personal qualities currently pursued by employability agendas at university, course, and module levels.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Accounting Education
Creators:	Tsiligiris, V. and Bower, D.
Publisher:	Informa
Date:	11 June 2021
ISSN:	0963-9284
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1080/09639284.2021.1938616 DOI 1442772 Other
Rights:	© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Divisions:	Schools > Nottingham Business School
Record created by:	Laura Ward
Date Added:	02 Jun 2021 15:28
Last Modified:	14 Jun 2021 11:10
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/42967

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