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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.

Family–school partnerships are an essential component of the special education process for children with disabilities. Notably, recent legislative reauthorizations of IDEA (2004) have focused on increasing parent involvement. For many parents, participation occurs primarily through the individualized education program (IEP) meetings. Parent involvement often includes parent advocating for their children. However, many parents face barriers when advocating to obtain appropriate special education services for their children with disabilities. Culturally and linguistically diverse families face greater systemic barriers (e.g., language and cultural differences) to access services for their own children with disabilities. School professionals can foster opportunities to help families be active members of the IEP process. For example, school professionals should connect families with resources to learn about their special education rights. Specifically, school personnel can encourage families to reach out to their local Parent Training and Information (PTI) Center to be educated and empowered to advocate for services. In addition, parents can be encouraged to attend parent advocacy programs to help increase knowledge, advocacy, and empowerment to access and advocate for services for their own children. Advancing the values of working with parents of students with special education needs is discussed.

Research has established that 38%, 56% and 66% of training is not transferred to work immediately, six months and 12 months after training, respectively. This has led scholars to advocate the continuous examination of factors that enhance training transfer to have a comprehensive understanding of the factors that enhance it. As a result, this study aims to examine transfer opportunity as a pretraining factor and its influence on assimilated training content (in-training factor); the influence of assimilated training content on motivation to transfer (post-training factor) and training transfer; the influence of motivation to transfer on training transfer; and the mediating role of motivation to transfer in the relationship between assimilated training content and training transfer.

A structural equation model is developed to test the five hypotheses formulated in this study using survey data obtained from 195 respondents who attended various training programs across different organizations. Following the assessment of the measurement model, the determination of the significance of the hypothesized paths is assessed based on the bias-corrected and accelerated confidence intervals obtained from the bootstrapping of 10,000 subsamples.

The findings of this study are that: transfer opportunity positively influences assimilated training content; assimilated training content positively influences motivation to transfer and training transfer; motivation to transfer positively influences training transfer; and motivation to transfer plays a complementary mediation role between assimilated training content and training transfer.

The nature of the work environment regarding the opportunity to transfer training influences trainees’ assimilation of the training content when they undergo training. Hence, organizations need to ensure that employees are always afforded the opportunity to transfer training content assimilated from previously attended training programs to assimilate the content of subsequent training programs. Furthermore, for training to culminate in training transfer, organizations and, more specifically, learning and development practitioners ought to pay attention to trainees’ assimilation of the content of training programs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to empirically consider transfer opportunity as a direct antecedent of assimilated training content. More so, it is one of few studies to empirically examine the influence of assimilated training content on training transfer.

The study, grounded on the social cognitive career theory, seeks to analyze the upshot of psychological empowerment on career satisfaction via affective commitment. The study also aims to examine the impact of the interplay among affective commitment and resilience on the career satisfaction of Indian service industry professionals.

In this study, the data has been collected from 277 employees using standardized measures from the North Indian service industry. To test the proposed model, Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) (Hayes, 2013) was utilized.

The outcomes of the study offered substantial support for the theorized link between psychological empowerment, affective commitment, resilience and career satisfaction. The outcomes confirmed an affirmative association concerning psychological empowerment and career satisfaction through affective commitment as a mediator and resilience as a moderator. The study concludes that the workforce with extraordinary resilience will perceive a stronger influence of psychological empowerment on career satisfaction.

The study offers a few pertinent inputs for the organizations operating in high-power distance culture to comprehend the role of psychological empowerment and “resilient attributes” of personality in developing a sense of career satisfaction amongst Indian service sector employees.

The present research examines the association between psychological empowerment, affective commitment, resilience and career satisfaction for the first time as mediated moderation model and the same has neither been examined theoretically or empirically.

Quality failures in grid infrastructure construction would cause large-scale collapses in power supply and additional expenditures by reworks and repairs. Learning from quality failures (LFQF) extracts experience from previous quality events and converts them into preventive measures to reduce or eliminate future construction quality issues. This study aims to investigate the influence factors of LFQF in the construction of grid infrastructure.

The related factors of LFQF, including quality management (QM) practices, quality rectification, and individual learning, were identified by reviewing literature about organizational learning and extracting experience from previous failures. A questionnaire survey was distributed to the grid companies in North, Northeast, Northwest, East, Central, and Southwest China. 381 valid responses collected and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the influence of these factors on LFQF.

The SEM results support that QM practices positively affect individual learning and LFQF. Quality rectification indirectly impacts LFQF via individual learning, while the results did not support the direct link between quality rectification and LFQF.

The findings strengthen practical insights into extracting experience from poor-quality issues and continuous improvement. The contributory factors of LFQF found in this study benefit the practitioners by taking effective measures to enhance organizational learning capability and improve the long-term construction quality performance in the grid infrastructure industry.

Existing research about the application of LFQF still stays at the explorative and conceptual stage. This study investigates the related factors of LFQF, including QM practices, quality rectification, and individual learning, extending the model development of learning from failures (LFF) in construction QM.

Traditionally, life cycle assessment (LCA) has focused on environmental aspects, but integrating social aspects in LCA has gained traction among scholars and practitioners. This study aims to review key social life cycle assessment (SLCA) themes, namely, drivers and barriers of SLCA implementation, methodology and measurement metrics, classification of initiatives to improve SLCA and customer perspectives in SLCA.

A total of 148 scientific papers extracted from the Web of Science database were used and analyzed using bibliometric and content analysis.

The findings suggest that the existing research ignores several aspects of SCLA, which impedes positive growth in topical scholarship, and the study proposes a classification of SLCA research paths to enrich future research. This study contributes positively to SLCA by further developing this area, and as such, this research is a primer to gain deeper knowledge about the state-of-the-art in SLCA as well as to foresee its future scope and challenges.

The study provides an up-to-date review of extant research pertaining to SLCA.

Based on the transformative learning theory, this paper analyses a French women-only training programme (WOTP) that aims to develop women’s soft skills in their professional contexts. This paper aims to focus on the process of personal transformation, the collective dimensions and the unexpected effects of the transformation.

This paper used a mixed qualitative design that mainly combines a qualitative two-step study of 47 women to assess their personal changes in terms of self-confidence, self-efficacy and assertiveness. This paper used 13 semi-structured interviews to explore the perceived changes in-depth.

The analysis shows that beyond “fixing their lack of skills” – including self-limiting behaviours, low feelings of self-efficacy and difficulty claiming one’s place – a WOTP can trigger a transformational learning experience at the individual level and can modify the surveyed women’s attitudes and behaviours at work. The results also highlight the collective dimension of transformation and, to some extent, an avenue for a societal transformation.

One can state that these WOTPs may positively contribute to human resources development in organisations, and that they may be considered a relevant practice in the move to promote women and gender diversity in organisations.

The findings reveal that, at their individual levels, these women may become agents of change by influencing and acting in their professional lives. The results stress that training women may contribute to organisational changes in terms of gender diversity. These findings contribute to the enrichment of the transformative learning theory by developing the collective and societal dimensions.

In Germany, various approaches have been taken to tackle the current teacher shortage in technical and vocational education and training (TVET). One attempt to remedy the shortage in Bavaria has been the introduction of an engineering education study programme at universities of applied sciences. Ideal candidates for this programme should have an interest in both engineering and social interaction. For effective recruitment, therefore, it is necessary to know applicants’ characteristics such as their vocational interests. In this study, the vocational interest profiles of students in TVET teacher training programmes were identified and their interest profiles and further characteristics were compared with those of other VET students at universities and universities of applied sciences.

An online questionnaire based on Holland’s interest theory and adapted from the Allgemeiner-Interessen-Struktur-Test-3 (interest structure test) was administered to 85 students in TVET teacher training programmes at universities and universities of applied sciences in Bavaria. Items regarding reasons for choosing a particular study programme, university location and other personal details were added.

The vocational interest profiles of students at universities and universities of applied sciences can be described as similar but weakly differentiated. Insights are provided by the characteristics of students such as the majority being first-time academics in the family. The reasons for choosing the degree programme and university location highlight the fact that a large proportion of students in engineering education would not have chosen a teaching-related degree programme if it had not been offered at the respective university of applied sciences.

Although the sample in this study was small and, therefore, limiting, it represented a high proportion of TVET teacher training students in Bavaria and a substantial proportion of first-year students in TVET teacher training programmes at universities and universities of applied sciences in Bavaria (section 2.2 and 3.1). Thus, the findings provide valuable insights into commonalities in interest profiles between engineering education students at universities of applied sciences and other TVET students at universities. With respect to the domain of the chosen vocational specialisation, differentiated profiles emerged that, for example, showed a stronger artistic orientation among students in construction technology/wood. For further analysis, the previous variable-centred orientation of the analysis can be supplemented by person-centred analyses (e.g. cluster analysis and latent variable mixture modelling, LVMM) (cf. Leon et al., 2021).

The findings in this study reveal the potential for attracting candidates to universities of applied sciences if they prefer to study in rather rural areas close to their hometowns. With the aim to educate prospective teachers for future work not only in metropolitan regions but in rural areas too, offering bachelor degree programmes in rural areas would seem promising. A regional option can boost the recruitment of new students and attract candidates that otherwise would be unable to pursue studies or a career as a teacher in vocational education. The results of this study and those of previous studies suggest that universities of applied sciences can cooperate with universities to help solve the teacher shortage problem.

Overall, it is apparent that the students' interests reached comparatively high values in all interest orientations and thus are only weakly differentiated. If undifferentiated profiles indicate low levels of career readiness, this significantly affects the recruitment of young people for the teaching profession. Assessing career orientation and promoting vocational interests should be prioritised during secondary school education. Vocational orientation measures are essential and should provide insight into typical activities of daily work life in different professions and thus pique and foster interests.

This study provides insight into how to respond to the teacher shortage in VET by identifying important characteristics of engineering education students using vocational interest profiling.

The Agents of Change program is a two-year, project-based learning program to develop Extension Professionals’ capacity to engage in Adaptive and Transformative Leadership. Its primary goal is to develop the capacity of Extension Professionals to engage in leadership to create more diverse, equitable, inclusive and just Extension programs and community change initiatives. This manuscript describes the program and an initial evaluation and results.

Results of an evaluation of the first year of the program indicate that regular training sessions and support are appropriate for leadership development and that Extension Professionals are using the learning, awareness and tools from this program to address challenges with Adaptive and Transformative Leadership elements. Also, Extension professionals demonstrated commitment to personal growth, community engagement and understanding of their multifaceted roles as change agents.

Participants are sharing resources from the program with colleagues, leading meetings differently, questioning the status quo and pushing others to try new ways forward.

This paper aims to determine the impact of mentorship on the development of self-directedness among beginner teachers in their initial years of teaching.

The researcher adopted a positivist paradigm to explore the situation of concern. Quantitative research was conducted, involving the collection and analysis of numerical data. Two closed-ended structured questionnaires were utilised, derived from the 40-item self-directed learning readiness scale (SDLRS) developed by Fisher and King, and a pre-determined questionnaire by Glazerman focused on the first-year teaching experience, induction and mentoring of beginner teachers.

Beginner teachers merely relying on the knowledge obtained from their studies is insufficient to achieve a satisfactory level of self-directedness when starting a teaching career. Most beginner teachers faced significant challenges in their early years of teaching due to the absence of mentoring support. In addition, most indicated that they resume their teaching duties and rely on their district for general support, guidance and orientation. Finally, the results have shown that mentoring positively impacts beginner teachers’ self-directedness.

The first limitation was that this study was narrowed to one South Africa University part-time B.Ed honours students working as beginner teachers in different provinces at primary and secondary schools. As a result, the findings of this research might be interpreted by some critics as one-sided and not representative of the views of most beginner teachers in South Africa who are working. The second limitation of this study is the sample size. In this study, 222 responses were received. As a result, the findings of this research might be considered not representative of the target sample size.

The presence and effective implementation of mentoring programmes in schools can positively impact beginner teachers' professional development and retention during their first years of teaching.

We contend that our research holds significance for international readership as it aims to garner attention towards potential research endeavours in diverse settings concerning mentorship programs for beginner teachers, specifically promoting self-directed learning. Our research offers opportunities to compare our findings with studies conducted in more comprehensive, comparative contexts and foster research possibilities in broader, contrasting contexts.

Based on the findings of this research, the availability and effective use of mentoring programmes would significantly affect beginner teachers' self-directedness, improve their retention rate and alleviate their teaching challenges. This study was the first research on the perceptions of the influence of mentoring on the self-directedness of beginner teachers.