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This study investigates perceptions regarding generic skills future entry-level accountants and auditors will require. Such soft or pervasive skills are necessary to operate effectively in the future world of work. Prior research mainly explores generic skills from an attribute-based perspective, while this paper combines it with an activity-based perspective in generic skill profiles of accountants and auditors.

Following a mixed methods research approach through focus group discussions and a survey involving more than 3,000 professional accountants and/or auditors, the study uses data from the Southern African region (South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia) to determine views on the competency needs of future accountants and auditors. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted to determine whether categories of generic skills for future entry-level accountants and auditors differ.

Four generic skills factors emerged as essential for future entry-level chartered accountants (CAs): digital, decision-making, organisational and business acumens. Three generic skill factors emerged for future registered auditors (RAs): digital, practice and commercial acumens. The results show that generic skill profiles of CAs and RAs, who are members of an accounting body differ and that both the context, related to an activity-based perspective, and individual or internal abilities, related to an attribute-based perspective, matter.

The study extends generic skill theory by identifying broad categories of generic skills (referred to as acumens) for future accountants and auditors.

Insights from this paper facilitate a comprehensive understanding of the generic skill profile approach, combining attribute-based and activity-based perspectives, and this could assist accounting educators, practitioners and professional bodies to better prepare entry-level accounting and audit professionals for the workplace.

The study identifies broad categories (digital, decision-making, organisational, business, practice and commercial acumens) within generic skill profiles of CAs and RAs and shows that generic skills do not operate independently and should be viewed as an interdependent set or constellation of competencies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of organisational business acumen and social network structure on the earnings and labour precarity experienced by creative industry workers.

Results from a survey that collected data from a random sample of 289 creative workers are analysed using structural equation modelling. Mediating effects of social network structure are explored.

Results support the qualitative findings of Crombie and Hagoort (2010) who claim that organisational business acumen is a significant enabler for creative workers. Further, social network structure has a partial mediating effect in mitigating labour precarity.

This exploratory study is novel in its use of a quantitative approach to understand the relationship between labour and social network dynamics of the creative industries. For this reason, developed scales, while robust in exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, warrant further application and maturity.

The organisational business acumen of creative workers is found to mitigate labour precarity and increase perceived earnings.

The results from this study call for policy and management shifts, to focus attention on developing business proficiency of creative workers, in an effort to curb labour precarity in the creative industries, and enhance positive spillovers into other sectors.

The paper fills a gap in knowledge regarding the impact of organisational business acumen and social network structure on the pay and working conditions of people working in a sector that is dominated by self-employed and freelance arrangements.

While there is no definitive profile of the successful entrepreneur or prescribed pathway for success, research suggests that individuals who proactively accommodate factors that push and pull them into entrepreneurship, align their personal and entrepreneurial visions, and to some extent, build emotional intelligence (EQ), are more likely to succeed. This paper aims to describe an entrepreneur counseling process developed and used by the Acadia Centre for Social and Business Entrepreneurship (ACSBE), located in Nova Scotia, Canada.

The authors propose an entrepreneur's success, negotiation of push and pull factors, and EQ are all linked, and the ACSBE counseling model draws on these. The case study method was used. ACSBE staffs were interviewed regarding the entrepreneur counseling process, counselor‐training sessions were observed and documents were reviewed. Two ACSBE clients, who together started a successful fair‐trade business, were interviewed for their insights regarding the ACSBE counseling model and their own experiences starting their business.

The responses of the ACSBE clients illustrate a successful application of the ACSBE Entrepreneurial Decision Making Cycle©. Their personal values, business strategies and performance were linked to promote success personally and for society. Both entrepreneurs were authentic, self‐aware and empathetic individuals who were able to hone their EQ and develop sound business acumen with assistance of the ACSBE counseling model.

The analysis of the ACSBE counseling model and its success in this case leads to the question of whether the application of the ACSBE Entrepreneurial Decision Making Cycle can predict those more likely to succeed in an entrepreneurial venture. In order to address this, further research of the ACSBE decision tool is recommended.

The ACSBE Entrepreneurial Decision Making Cycle is unique. It should be of interest to entrepreneur counselors and researchers of entrepreneurship.

This paper aims to examine the traditional business communities and family businesses of India, their emergence and sustained growth.

The authors analyze the role of business communities in family businesses of India and identify business communities that have still sustained and marked a global presence.

Business communities such as Marwaris have the knack for business activities and are leaders of family businesses in India today, who have sustained their past success and continue to create new histories. Other traditional business communities such as Parsis, Sindhis, Chettiars and Gujarati banias have not been able to sustain much. Possible reasons were switching to white-collar jobs, taking up diplomacy and other professions, inter caste marriages, international migration in search of business and Indian government policies.

This study provides a useful source of information for academics, policy-makers and economists.

Traditional business communities populate the list of family businesses that have marked their global presence. This paper identifies various factors that are responsible for the growth and sustainability of these business communities.

The study clarifies the role of business communities in domestic economic development.

The paper explored traditional business communities of India and assessed their role in family businesses of India that currently mark a global presence.

Presents 21 tools to coach future leaders.

Highlights the effects of Baby Boomers leaving senior positions and prepares organizations to spot the characteristics of future leaders.

Emphasizes the importance of setting a broad vision and developing a global mindset.

Stresses the key role of learning continuously and of blending soft skills and business acumen, to achieve leadership excellence.

Describes how to develop the leadership skills of tomorrow.

This article defines the cultural nature and scale of change in learning consciousness that has to take place when the organisationally‐based adult learner makes the transition from formal prescriptive learning practice to self‐owned, self‐directed learning. It articulates some of the learning‐to‐learn process models that introduce, accelerate, enhance and facilitate the adult person's understanding of this evolutionary journey. It also provides practical guidelines in progressively shaping their endeavours to take effective ownership of their own managerial learning at work. It draws on experience in delivering learning‐to‐learn programmes to suggest that the management learner in particular has to be increasingly aware and more discriminating in how they spend their time and learning energy if they are to arrive where they want to be and at the same time satisfy all the stakeholders investments in these process events. It illustrates, using a portfolio of learning‐to‐learn process‐management‐practice ideas, how the individual and groups of learners can effectively and progressively begin to manage the quality of their experience in learning to learn. The author advises that, in the long term, taking responsibility for learning to learn is not something that can be absolved by the learner manager; it has to become a self‐determined series of personally‐managed events. Adult learners have to have a heightened state of alertness to the dynamics of gradualism in managing the new learning process itself – to become “savvy” about the dynamics of the learning process and the key decision areas that will make a difference between learning satisfaction and success or failure in achieving their personal objectives.