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The paper reports on a study that investigated the (potential) impact of client use of blockchain technology on financial statement audits of Australian accounting firms.

Data were primarily collected from semi-structured interviews with a range of stakeholders including audit partners from first- and second-tier accounting firms in Australia. The interviews focused on the perceived (potential) impact of blockchain on the stages of obtain (retain) engagement, engagement planning, risk assessment, audit evidence and reporting of financial statement audits of clients that use blockchain technology. Perceptions of changes to financial statement audits were interpreted using the logics of professionalism and commercialism.

Australian accounting firms have either obtained or considered engagements with clients with a cryptocurrency business or that use a blockchain platform although they are a small group. There is a view that blockchain technology is distinctive and therefore poses risks not encountered before in audit engagements. These risks would most likely shift how firms plan, design audit methodologies and execute financial statement audits. The study showed that the logics of professionalism and commercialism are not conflicting but instead complementary. They present both opportunities and challenges for firms to apply and develop audit expertise in an emerging area in audit.

Being an exploratory study, the findings are tentative. A case study of an audit engagement with a cryptocurrency business will add to a nuanced understanding of the challenges posed to financial statement audits by blockchain technology.

This study is novel because of its focus on the impact of an evolving technology on the stages of financial statement audits.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the inadequacies of current business education in the context of “process”. It presents an analysis of the background to business processes in historical perspective and posits the significance of business management for today's business education. It argues the importance of business processes and business process management (BPM) in the context of the current and emerging information technologies (IT) and business education and highlights its ability to offer a missing link between business, IT and strategy.

The approach involves analysis and review of the literature and analysis of secondary data.

Even though business processes have been the subject of formal study from multiple perspectives for a long time, since the start of industrial age, processes still are not well understood, left unmanaged and poorly executed. With business schools teaching primarily function specific and narrow and IT schools focused on narrow technical skills, learning and understanding “process view” and “integration” is left to the individual student or academic, this study observes. It posits the significance of BPM and highlights its ability to provide the missing link to business education. It reports on the strategies employed by business schools and discusses the challenges in BPM education.

Recognising the importance of BPM by business schools and embedding the BPM concepts and tools in a unified integrated curriculum across the business school with an inter‐disciplinary focus is challenging for business schools. Further studies, investigating how practitioners perceive this gap and on the effectiveness of different strategies of teaching BPM, are important.

These findings will help practitioners in understanding the gap between university education and practice and to develop appropriate training and development strategies.

The paper provides an analysis of the concept of “process” from an historical perspective and posits BPM as a missing link in business education that delivers “integration” and “process orientation” to business students.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the importance and role of process knowledge in the business process (BP) improvement methodology with the help of a case study.

The approach takes the form of a literature review that highlights the challenges and issues in the existing BP improvement methodologies. An in‐depth case study that has embarked on a major BP improvement initiative that emphasizes individual and collective process knowledge in a real‐life complex organization is presented.

The paper confirms that BP improvement is, in fact, a complex, knowledge‐intensive, collaborative process that consists of a set of coordinated, contextualized knowledge management processes. The design of the “to‐be” process in this study is a knowledge co‐creation process that uses collaborative exploration of different scenarios and contexts. Compared with the traditional BP improvement methodologies where the main emphasis is on the design of a new process model, the focus of the methodology employed in this case study is on the process of knowledge co‐creation and transfer.

The paper leads to increased recognition of the knowledge and experience people develop, use and share while modeling, executing, and improving their BPs. It offers anecdotal evidence and general case study research limitations apply.

Practitioners should focus more on key knowledge processes rather than BP models that often obscure the role of individual and collective process knowledge. Rather than investing limited resources in the mapping and modeling of existing processes, practitioners will be able to better serve their organizations if they concentrate on the improvement of the process by tapping the contextualized process knowledge possessed by the individual actors.

In the expanding field of BP management, the study explores the increasing importance of individual and collective process knowledge in process improvement methodologies and provides guidance to user organizations on ways to exploit the value of process knowledge in designing new processes as well as collaborative knowledge sharing and creation process.