Abstract
Research Question: The research proposition is to identify the information technology (IT) skills required from accounting professionals by the labour market from European emerging and developed economies and analyse whether there are differences between the requirements, depending on the type of economy. Motivation: The wide adoption of several emerging technologies across various domains of activity is a widely debated topic. However, regardless of its popularity, little research focused on comparing the expectation of the professional bodies and the current labour market expectations in terms of the IT skills accountants should demonstrate. Idea: This study aims to analyse if there is any gap between the expectations formulated by accounting professional bodies and the labour market’s requirements in European countries regarding the IT skills accountants should demonstrate. Data: The dataset selected for this study consisted of 1000 accounting job advertisements, collected between two periods: September 2017 - July 2018 and January - February 2021. Tools: A cross-sectional study, including a content analysis and statistical analyses, was conducted to analyse the dataset collected. Findings: The results illustrate the European labour market’s current expectations regarding the IT skills accountants should demonstrate. The statistical analyses conducted highlight an association between the skills asked by emerging and developed European based companies. Contributions: This paper provides a glimpse regarding the European labour market’s expectations in terms of IT skills requested from accounting professionals, thus being a reference for the European professional bodies and academia.
Highlights
The accounting profession has been subject to tremendous changes in the last decades due to the considerable growth and development of information technologies (IT) solutions, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, cloud computing, mobile technologies, and artificial intelligence (AI)
We discovered that the ITrelated abilities referred to office software suite - OSS, Accounting Information Systems (AIS), ERP, databases, database management systems (DBMS), optical character recognition (OCR), Robot Process Automation (RPA), decentralised ledgers, and business intelligence (BI)
This research revealed clear evidence that the accounting profession is changing due to the current extensive adoption of IT solutions. These new technologies aiming to facilitate the overall processes in this field and international professional bodies are trying to increase the level of awareness regarding the need to efficiently use new IT technologies and dedicated software tools, as well as protecting the sensitive information from possible vulnerabilities brought by the digital revolution in accounting
Summary
The accounting profession has been subject to tremendous changes in the last decades due to the considerable growth and development of information technologies (IT) solutions, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, cloud computing, mobile technologies, and artificial intelligence (AI). This increasing interest in emerging technologies that might disrupt the accounting profession has heightened the need to research the companies' current demands regarding accountants' IT skills. Hybrid jobs at the intersection of these two areas (accounting and information technology) have already been created (Guthrie et al, 2012). Expectations are that these new jobs will become representative for the profession's future
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