Graduates' vocational skills for the management accountancy profession: exploring the accounting education expectation-performance gap

Howcroft, Douglas

Abstract

This paper focuses on understanding the vocational skills required by graduates and assessing the competence of graduates for the management accountancy profession. It explores ‘expectation gaps’ by examining whether the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), practitioner employers and university educators have different expectations with regard to the important vocational skills for graduates. The research aim is to generate a greater understanding of the factors that create identified expectation gaps between the above stakeholders and to explore the implications of any gaps.

The research was conducted by interviewing stakeholders and a survey of university accounting educators in UK and Ireland business schools. Expectation gaps between the stakeholders were identified. These expectation gaps appear to exist owing to conflicting views on the purpose of university education. The paper contributes to the growing debates about the general role of Higher Education (HE) in society and the role of university accounting educators in supplying graduate trainee accountants for the management accountancy profession.

Citation

Howcroft, D. (in press). Graduates' vocational skills for the management accountancy profession: exploring the accounting education expectation-performance gap. Accounting Education, 26(5-6), https://doi.org/10.1080/09639284.2017.1361846

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 7, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Aug 14, 2017
• Deposit Date: Jul 12, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 15, 2019
• Journal: Accounting Education
• Print ISSN: 0963-9284
• Electronic ISSN: 1468-4489
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 26
• Issue: 5-6
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09639284.2017.1361846
• Keywords: University accounting education, Expectation gaps, Vocational skills, Educational objectives
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/877629
• Publisher URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09639284.2017.1361846
• Additional Information: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Accounting Education on 14 August 2017 available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09639284.2017.1361846
• Contract Date: Jul 12, 2017