Acceptance of digital instruments in the accounting profession

Abstract

The digital transition has affected and continues to affect all sectors of the economy. The COVID-19 pandemic forced many industries, including the accounting sector, to adopt digitization measures to maintain their activity during this restricted period. Innovative systems and advanced technologies thus became indispensable in the accounting profession, and despite its inability to replicate human intelligence, Artificial Intelligence (AI) was swiftly adopted for many accounting processes. The purpose of this study was to explore how the Romanian accounting profession accepted the digital instrument transformation. A deductive approach from the general to the particular was used to highlight the key aspects and their implications in the accounting profession. In addition, the technological acceptance model (TAM) was correlated with the external variables of the technology-organization-environment framework (TOE) to develop 13 hypotheses. A questionnaire was then applied, which validated 9 of these hypotheses. The research results indicated that the digital transition by the accounting profession in Romania is a complex process that is in a preliminary stage compared to that in European Union member states. This study has an inherent series of limitations, which can provide opportunities for future research in the field.