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The purpose of this study is to identify the professional skills and competencies of accountants that support a successful implementation of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The authors further investigate the extent to which professional accountants have developed these skills through professional training.

In the survey, Indonesian accountants were provided with a list of 47 skill items under nine categories of professional skills and were asked to rate the importance of each skill item and to indicate the level of priority given to the development of the skill items in the professional training they have undertaken. Their responses provide insights into the skills needed for applying IFRS and the adequacy of professional training in providing these skills.

The authors find that accounting judgement is considered to be the most necessary skill for applying IFRS. Likewise, the findings show that ethical skills and certain generic skills are also perceived to be necessary for adequate application of IFRS, while skills relating to cultural sensitivity are viewed as least important. The findings further demonstrate that professional training programmes need to emphasise the development of judgement and other relevant skills that are important skill categories for applying IFRS.

This study extends the literature on IFRS implementation through a specific focus on the professional skills required by accountants.

These findings have important policy implications for the standard-setters, regulators, auditors and to professional training providers across the world, such as professional accounting associations, accounting firms and educational institutions, for evaluating the content of the training and education programmes being delivered to accountants to prepare them with the relevant skills for applying IFRS.

This study is one of the first to examine the importance of various types of skills necessary for accountants in applying IFRS and the extent to which these skills have been developed through the professional accounting training provided.

To measure the dynamic features of compassion as an emotional and behavioral construct, the present research used a univariate latent growth modeling (LGM) approach within the structural equation modeling (SEM) framework. The aim was to trace the dynamic development of compassion longitudinally in accounting and business students during a three-credit English course at university.

The suggested method ensures the measurement invariance over time, deals with the first order latent variable, traces its growth and takes into account the measurement errors. This longitudinal analytical method was used to explore the initial state and the growth of compassion in four points of time during a language course. The data were collected from 60 adult accounting and business students in four time phases using Sprecher and Fehr's Compassionate Love Scale and were analyzed in Mplus 8.4 with univariate LGM.

The model fit was accepted and the invariance of the latent factor was confirmed over time. The negative covariance between intercept and slope (second-order latent variables) suggested that lower initial scores in L2 learners' compassion show a faster increase in compassion over time as the mean of slope is larger than that of the intercept. L2 learners who started off at a higher level of compassion showed a slower change in compassion over time. This can be at least partly explained by the teacher's motivating role or learners' compassion but needs to be further explored in complementary qualitative phases for deeper insights.

In the present research, awareness was raised of the developmental nature of compassion as an emotional and behavioral construct essential to the accounting and business profession. The great strength of this research lies in the dynamic approach to the compassion construct and the LGM used to capture the temporal growth of compassion and how it evolved through the L2 course.

This study aims to explore some perceptions related to the suggestion that external auditors will be replaced by audit technologies that use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to make audit judgements when performing the financial statement audits. Digital transformation is revitalising the technologies used by external auditors and their firms; thus, the authors seek to understand what challenges this creates for the auditing profession in Vietnam.

Through the theoretical lens of new institutionalism theory, this study uses a qualitative approach involving 20 semi-structured interviews conducted with external auditors in Vietnam during 2022. This sample includes the global Big Four, global mid-tier and smaller local Vietnamese audit firms.

The findings indicate that there is resistance or disagreement with the suggestion that in the future audit technologies using AI tools can replace humans (external auditors). The role of external auditors in the professional services sector will gradually be changed by audit technologies; however, external auditors are unlikely to be replaced by audit technologies that use AI tools based on the responses of the participants. Strict institutional rules that exist in Vietnam would prevent the replacement of (human) external auditors. In the future, external auditors may take on new roles as consultants, with unique skills in classifying and processing data for decision-making processes; however, they will not be completely replaced by technology in the audit space.

This study has limitations that it is based on the data collection from a single developing country, Vietnam; therefore, the generalisability of the findings is limited to Vietnam. Also, the authors sought insights into the future of external audits in Vietnam.

This study highlights the changing role of auditors and institutions. Thus, policymakers, external auditors and auditees in other developing countries would find the findings helpful.

This study provides new perspectives, particularly from local Vietnamese firms, about audit practices that emerge due to high-level technological advancements and then embed themselves into existing audit practices in an emerging economy. Prior studies tended to focus on the global Big Four firms, thus this study contributes by sharing the perceptions of the smaller practitioners also.

Today, with the increasing involvement of the environment and human beings business units, paying attention to fulfilling social responsibility obligations while making a profit has become increasingly necessary for achieving sustainable development goals. Attention to profit by organizations should not be without regard to their social and environmental performance. Social responsibility accounting (SRA) is an approach that can pay more attention to the social and environmental performance of companies, but it has many barriers. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify barriers to SRA implementation and provide strategies to overcome these barriers.

In this study, the authors identify barriers to social responsibility accounting implementation and provide strategies to overcome these barriers. By literature review, 12 barriers and seven strategies were identified and approved using the opinions of six academic experts. Interpretive structural modeling (ISM) has been used to identify significant barriers and find textual relationships between them. The fuzzy technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method has been used to identify and rank strategies for overcoming these barriers. This study was undertaken in Iran (an emerging market). The data has been gathered from 18 experts selected using purposive sampling and included CEOs of the organization, senior accountants and active researchers well familiar with the field of social responsibility accounting.

Based on the results of this study, the cultural differences barrier was introduced as the primary and underlying barrier of the social responsibility accounting barriers model. At the next level, barriers such as “lack of public awareness of the importance of social responsibility accounting, lack of social responsibility accounting implementation regulations and organization size” are significant barriers to social responsibility accounting implementation. Removing these barriers will help remove other barriers in this direction. In addition, the results of the TOPSIS method showed that “mandatory regulations, the introduction of guidelines and social responsibility accounting standards,” “regulatory developments and government incentive schemes to implement social responsibility accounting,” as well as “increasing public awareness of the benefits of social responsibility accounting” are some of the essential social responsibility accounting implementation strategies.

The findings of the study have implications for both professional accounting bodies for developing the necessary standards and for policymakers for adopting policies that facilitate the implementation of social responsibility accounting to achieve sustainability.

This paper creates a new perspective on the practical implementation of social responsibility accounting, closely related to improving environmental performance and increasing social welfare through improving sustainability.

Experts believe that the strategies mentioned above will be very effective and helpful in removing the barriers of the lower level of the model. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, for the first time, this study develops a model of social responsibility accounting barriers and ranks the most critical implementation strategies.

The purpose of this study is to construct and test a new measure of auditor orientation using two audit quality-related tasks.

The sample consists of 66 Dutch and US graduate auditing students. Participants complete two tasks: one involving a lease classification and another, supplemental experiment involving a contingent liability judgment. The purpose is to construct a new measure for rules-based/ principles-based orientation. Rigorous, psychometric testing confirms that parts of tolerance for ambiguity (TOA) and need for cognition (NFC), together, form a new construct the authors identify as auditor orientation. The authors next conduct a main and supplemental experiment with novice auditor participants from both the USA and the Netherlands.

The authors begin with rigorous, psychometric testing using participants from the USA and the Netherlands. The resulting 10-item scale combines parts of TOA and NFC to reflect auditor orientation. The common themes across scale items are high (low) adaptability to complexity and a substance-over-form (form-over-substance) preference for principles-oriented (PO) (rules-oriented [RO]) auditors. Conducting two experiments, results from two distinct tasks confirm our research question; novice auditors classified as RO (PO) are more (less) likely to recommend a more aggressive/client-favorable disclosure judgment.

Auditor orientation (i.e. rules or principles) has a significant impact on the application of rules-based or principles-based standards. How the standards are applied, therefore, influences auditor decision-making and thus audit quality. However, there is a paucity of auditor orientation research to date, including a validated measure. The study contributes a new measure for future research in the related accounting standards and audit quality literatures, while also identifying a potentially important construct in auditor training.

This study aims to investigate the factors associated with the intention to use information technology in audit (ITIA) in Iraq.

The study uses a quantitative approach based on a questionnaire survey of 186 respondents. The study population includes respondents who are board members, senior executives, internal auditors and information technology (IT) assistants in various Iraqi organizations from different sectors. Structural equation modeling has been used to estimate the results.

The findings exhibit that most auditors in Iraq use basic IT software. However, among several specialized and advanced IT audit software packages, only generalized audit software is used by about 20%. The results also indicate that social factors significantly and positively impact auditors’ and practitioners’ perceptions of ITIA use. Moreover, the results reveal that companies and auditors who use or audit complex accounting systems perceive higher benefits and intent to adopt ITIA. However, the results report that organizational support, professional support, competency and IT education have an insignificant effect on ITIA adoption.

The originality of the present research lies in several aspects. First, the research study focuses specifically on Iraq, which is an emerging and less developed country influenced by social and economic. This research context provides a unique perspective and contributes to the understanding of ITIA adoption in less developed countries. The study investigates how external factors, including social and external pressure and the support of government professional bodies, affect the adoption of ITIA. Further, it assesses the influence of firms’ specific factors such as management support, level of competency and complexity of accounting information systems. Second, the study uses a quantitative approach with a questionnaire survey from various Iraqi organizations and sectors. The specific sample composition adds originality by capturing insights from different levels of organizational hierarchy and diverse professional backgrounds. Third, the findings shed light on the current IT usage in auditing practices in Iraq, highlighting that most auditors use basic IT software and the limited adoption of specialized IT audit software packages. Finally, the study’s originality is also reflected in its contribution to expanding knowledge on the perceived benefits and challenges associated with ITIA adoption in less developed countries. By emphasizing the need for broader awareness of emerging technology-enabled auditing software and considering the unique characteristics of less developed countries, the research provides valuable insights and implications for practitioners, policymakers and researchers.

This study examines how professional service firms' communication effectiveness (affiliative communications style, social dialogue and information provision), social cognitive capital and rapport established between an auditor and SME client are instrumental in influencing the latter's evaluation of the technical quality of an audit.

The study combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies to create a cross-sectional survey covering four geographic regions in an emerging economy – Thailand. The authors examine the hypotheses by employing social interaction theory.

A study of 744 SME executives plus post-survey interviews with three audit partners revealed that an affiliative communications style and information provision are positively associated with the rapport developed between financial auditor and client, and that rapport, in turn, had a strong association with client perceptions of audit quality. In addition, affiliative communication style, information provision and social cognitive capital had a direct (positive) association with perceptions of audit quality. The effects of communication effectiveness and social cognitive capital varied, depending on whether or not the SME client possessed formal accounting qualifications.

The study contributes to the literature on the business-to-business professional services, and accounting in particular, by explicating the important roles of communication effectiveness, rapport, and social cognitive capital in the relationship between an auditor and a client. Moreover, the paper reveals that the differences in educational background of clients result in differential impacts of communication effectiveness and social cognitive capital on rapport and perceptions of audit quality.

An understanding of the role of decision-making has been emphasised since the seminal works on human information processing and professional judgements by accountants. The interest in these topics has been reignited by the increasing digitisation of the financial reporting and auditing processes. Whilst the behavioural research on accounting is well-established, the application of seminal works in cognitive psychology and behavioural finance is lacking, especially from recent research endeavours. The purpose of this paper is to provide a synthesis of theories relating to accounting behavioural research by evaluating them against the theories of cognitive psychology.

Using theory synthesis, this research draws seemingly isolated strands of research into a coherent framework, underpinned by cognitive psychology.

Evidence from accounting and auditing behavioural research is largely consistent with the psychology and finance research on cognitive limitations and errors. There remains a lacuna in accounting behavioural research on debiasing techniques. Such research, if underpinned by a single, cohesive theoretical framework, is likely to have practical relevance.

The current research has theoretical implications for the accounting decision-making and uncertainty research. Areas for future research, based on identified gaps in the current accounting behavioural research, are also proposed.

The purpose of this study is to propose a framework for the convergence of maturity model and education and evaluation in accounting.

The present research was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, to determine the indicators of convergence of the maturity model and education and evaluation in accounting, a Meta-Synthesis method was used. The conceptual model includes two dimensions of “Teaching and learning processes” and “Evaluation methods"; five levels of initial, repeatable, defined, managed and optimized; and a total number of 35 indicators. In the second phase, a questionnaire was developed, and academics as accounting faculty members in Iranian public universities were employed to fill out the questionnaire electronically and present a final framework. Having received the questionnaires, 66 questionnaires were analyzed statistically.

The results showed that the two dimensions of “Teaching and learning processes” and “Evaluation methods” considering initial, repeatable, defined, managed and optimized levels include 35 indicators, which form a framework for the convergence of maturity model and education and evaluation in accounting. The results show that both dimensions have positive and significant regression path coefficients in the convergence model. Moreover, the dimension of teaching and learning processes has the highest regression path coefficient indicating a greater impact on the convergence model. Besides, all five levels have positive and significant regression path coefficients with dimensions. Finally, in this study, all indicators were prioritized according to five levels.

Due to the success of maturity models and the urgent developments that require transformative improvements in accounting education, maturity models can respond to the challenges associated with education and learning in accounting. Thus, conceiving an image of the convergence of maturity model, education and evaluation in accounting seems imperative which has been scarcely investigated previously.

This study aims to examine the effects of vocational training programs for people with disabilities on their income.

It conducted a multinomial regression analysis of 10,469 survey responses from 31 provincial administrative areas in mainland China.

It finds the following antecedents all influence the trainees’ self-reported income, including their perception of the quality of the program, the training subject, the degree of consistency between their current job and this subject, their employment sector, their motivation and access to training resources and the geographical location of the program.

The findings are not representative of people with disabilities across mainland China because the respondents were not randomly sampled.

The findings suggest that to increase the income of people with disabilities, the training can be designed according to the needs of employers by teaching subjects relevant to the needs of the labor market, reaching out to motivated trainees and enhancing the quality of training. Training institutions, employers and governments are recommended to work together to integrate class-based learning with workplace-based learning and practices. More training resources can be devoted to the self-employed people with disabilities or those who operate in the informal sector and are in less-developed areas.

The improvement of employment opportunities and income of people with disabilities supports the safeguarding of their social economic rights and the building of an inclusive society.

Few studies have empirically explored and explained the effects of vocational training programs on people with disabilities’ income. This article fills this gap by assessing the performance of China's vocational training programs funded by the Federation of Disabled Persons at all levels.