Higher education challenges: accounting and finance academia in a research-led teaching universities

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to explore problems facing the recruitment of accounting and finance staff in research-led universities. “University accounting and finance (A&F) departments are experiencing difficulty in attracting and retaining suitably qualified staff” (Duff and Monk, 2006, p. 194). The literature identifies a number of reasons for the shortage of A&F phenomenon (Duff and Monk, 2006; Smith and Urquhart, 2018), including, the wide salary gap between academe and industry profession, difficulty in achieving publications in highly rated journal, high workload in teaching and marking due the limited number of A&F staff.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper provides new insights for the use of the grounded theory and how the theory has been generated from the semi-structured interviews.

Findings

This study has resulted in eight main challenges emerged, and a final theory has been generated. Implications of this research on business schools are valuable in research-led universities, the A&F staff recruitment strategies and the A&F research strategies in research-led universities.

Originality/value

The novelty of this research is based on the induction of the challenges that a business school faces, as a case study for a research-intensive teaching-led UK university, in recruiting new A and F appointees and retaining existing members of staff.

Citation

El-Tawy, N. and Abdel-Kader, M. (2022), "Higher education challenges: accounting and finance academia in a research-led teaching universities", Journal of Financial Reporting and Accounting, Vol. 20 No. 2, pp. 279-296. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFRA-01-2020-0007