Accounting Faculty’s Motivation to Engage in Academic Citizenship: Evidence from Australia and New Zealand

Abstract

ABSTRACT Academic citizenship, encompassing service and broader community engagement, is declining despite its pivotal role in the academic ecosystem, largely due to being underrecognized and underappreciated in university reward systems. This study identified factors that support and inhibit faculty engagement in academic citizenship so that initiatives to reverse this trend can be designed. We interviewed 24 accounting faculty from 11 universities across Australia and New Zealand. Drawing on social cognitive theory, this study identified personal factors such as faculty self-efficacy, goal commitment, and self-evaluation of progress as drivers of engagement. Our findings underscore the urgent need for university management to support academic citizenship, particularly among junior faculty, and to formally recognize it in institutional workload models, performance evaluations, and reward systems, to ensure the sustainability of the academe ecosystem. JEL Classifications: M49.