Golf, networking, and accounting education: A gendered approach

Abstract

Networking through golf is recognized in the business world as one possible component of professional development. After documenting an underrepresentation of females during the annual departmental golf outing at a regional public university, we developed this study using theaction research methodology to measure the success of various iterations of a student-golf program created in response to this gender diversity gap.The motivation behind implementation of the program is to train more female students in this non-traditional skillset because it may otherwise prove as a limitation to important networking opportunities that may hinder those individuals’ success in public accounting.Using various structures of the Golf Links program, we find a tradeoff between more thoroughly developing the skillset of a small number of students as compared to providing limited instruction to a larger number of students. Given the feedback from accounting professionals suggesting that non-golfers do not see the networking value in learning golf, we find that providing a brief introduction to the sport to a wider number of students may be more effective in overcoming that hurdle and incentivizing students to pursue golf on their own as a means of professional networking.