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Orientation: The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) marks a period of tremendous technological progress, altering professions across industries, including chartered accountancy.Research purpose: The purpose of the study was to explore the opportunities and challenges, for chartered accountants (CA) in the 4IR, emphasising the changing roles, competencies and problems they confront in this transitional era.Motivation for the study: Scholars have recently issued numerous calls towards the understanding of subjective perceptions and in situ responses to 4IR in professionals and organisational realities.Research approach/design and method: The research followed a qualitative approach to data collection and obtained the data through 14 semi-structured interviews. This research provides an in-depth insight into the 4IR’s implications for CAs and their profession.Main findings: The findings reveal that the 4IR offers opportunities for enhanced work–life balance, risk reduction and increased productivity. Challenges raised by CAs included privacy issues, the need for updated training and competencies and the stress of job redundancy.Practical/managerial implications: Recommendations are made to meet the 4IR’s opportunities and challenges. Chartered accountancies are expected to embrace continuous learning, work closely with professional organisations, match technological goals with client demands, cultivate a culture of curiosity and keep informed through collective awareness. Training needs to address these aspects.Contributions/value-add: Policymakers and regulatory organisations should encourage professional bodies to become aware of opportunities and challenges of the 4IR and use this for future development.

BackgroundGlobally professional accounting bodies expect of higher education institutions to develop integrated thinking skills in prospective chartered accountants. There are, however, many barriers in the way of both lecturers and students to achieve the development of integrated thinking skills.AimThis article sought to identify the most significant barriers lecturers and students face when developing integrated thinking skills in prospective chartered accountants during higher education.SettingInterviews were conducted and an online questionnaire ministered.MethodThe mixed-method approach and a pragmatist paradigm are utilised. Both questionnaires and interviews were used to collect primary data. A triangulation between the quantitative data, qualitative data, and literature had been performed.ResultsThe three most significant barriers that lecturers face in developing integrated thinking skills are the volume of technical content, lack of expertise, and large classroom sizes. The three most significant barriers that students face in developing integrated thinking skills are students being overburdened with the technical content of the syllabus, not having been exposed to integrated thinking prior to higher education, and having to study in a second language.ConclusionThe most significant barriers for both lecturers and students in the development of integrated thinking skills during the higher education of prospective chartered accountants are identified in this study.ContributionWhile much has been published on the barriers to developing integrated thinking skills, a limited amount of literature addresses the specific barriers that exist in the accounting education field.

This paper examines how three decades of civil conflict in Sri Lanka has impacted the perceptions of the accounting practitioners with regard to human rights (both during and post-conflict). Using the legitimacy lens in social accounting and the role of the state-supported accountancy body - Institute of Chartered Accountants Sr Lanka (CASL) human rights case is investigated. Specifically, the study’s scope is on rights and the degree of legitimacy formation for which accounting associations are accountable for human rights disclosure in a post-conflict environment in an emerging economy. The study interprets documentary evidence and a survey data that was administered among the members of the CASL. The findings reveal that the civil conflict had not hindered the accountants being in parallel with the legitimacy of social accounting notions adopted by the Western world in the disclosure of human rights. At the individual response level, they perceive that the accounting discipline as agents to promote human rights disclosure in business entities. Despite the fact, that this study has a low response rate, what is generalisable is an understanding of the processes and mechanisms which relate to the way the accountants perceived human rights by themselves. The practical implication indicates that urgent measures need to be undertaken to mainstream the legitimate human rights obligations of business entities since there is no one-size-fits-all strategy in a post-conflict environment. The social implication is that awareness of human rights issues, especially among the next generation of accountants is vital since this transformation would enable them not only to be technically competent but also to be ethical in a post-conflict environment. The study contributes to the literature on perceptions of human rights in a post-conflict environment from a social accounting perspective in an emerging economy.

The intangible qualities of honesty and integrity are essential elements of the ethos of the accounting profession. This article reflects on the changing and continuous nature of questions of professional ethics within the Society of Accountants in Edinburgh. Using the Society's archives, it presents a review of the questions which vexed early leaders of that body. A historical analysis of these issues helps place current concerns about professional conduct into an appropriate temporal perspective and demonstrates the deeprooted nature of challenges in forming a notion of professional ethics. The article focusses on issues such as members committing criminal acts, problems with delineating the professional space, advertising and the quality of training of apprentice accountants. The article adds to our understanding of the creation of an ethical framework governing the behaviour of professional accountants in one jurisdiction during the first century of the existence of an organised profession. The presentation of individual cases provides a personal touch and adds depth to the analysis.

This research examined the role of accounting education in the provision of soft skills to accounting graduates, and how this may be affected by the recent changes in academic requirements initiated by NZICA. A qualitative research method utilising in-depth interviews was conducted with accounting graduates, partners of the Big4 accounting firms, and two NZICA representatives. A literature review was conducted in order to review research regarding the purpose of tertiary accounting education, the issues in accounting education, and the provision of soft skills in accounting education. Included in this paper is a brief history of NZICA which focuses on its establishment and the changing academic requirements to become a qualified CA. The research found that overall, the majority of participants in this study were of the opinion that tertiary accounting education plays an important role in soft skills development for accounting graduates. The majority of participants also perceived that a three-year degree should not diminish the quality of soft skills development at tertiary level since the fourth year did not provide additional soft skills development for them. The implications of the 2010 academic changes may not be witnessed for a few years; therefore, it would be ideal for NZICA to conduct a review of the academic changes commencing from 2013 to see whether the changes have improved the students' education experience, practitioners' pool of graduates and the profession's pool of members. Such a review will be important to gather feedback and determine whether further academic changes will need to be made to ensure a quality tertiary level accounting education. [Author abstract]

The distinctive Indian caste system divides Hindu society into a hierarchy of four varnas, each of which also has a traditional association with particular categories of occupations. This exploratory study examines the interplay between varna and the emergent organised accounting profession in India. Using the earliest available membership list of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) – being 1953, just four years after the organisation’s formation – a comprehensive classification of the caste status of the Hindu membership was undertaken. Among other findings, this revealed a significant over-representation of the Brahman upper caste relative to this caste’s presence in the general population. This Brahman presence is posited as having endowed a status to the accounting occupation that aided the replication in India of the British model of professional organisation. However, it also meant that the formation of the ICAI would predominantly benefit an already privileged social stratum and contribute to perpetuating traditional caste hierarchies within the modern occupation of professional accounting.

This article analyses the opportunities and incentives of 32 accountants, resident in four very different parts of the British Empire (Scotland, Ireland, India and Australia), to import an English accountancy qualification in the late 1870s and become in 1880 the first “English” chartered accountants outside England and Wales (EW). This “export” and “import” of qualifications is one way in which professional accountancy has spread around the world since the late nineteenth century. The opportunities arose as the Society of Accountants in England (SAIE), set up in London in 1872, challenged the prevailing localism and exclusivism, and as attitudes in EW towards the concept of “Englishness” within the UK and the Empire changed. From 1875 the SAIE opened its membership to accountants within the Empire outside EW. The incentives of these accountants to join the SAIE depended on whether or not a body already existed in their own locality, how exclusive the body was, and its status in comparison with an English qualification. The paper concludes with a study of the varied impact of the 32 on accountancy globally.

PurposeAccounting academics in the South African system understand their primary responsibility to be the teaching of prospective Chartered Accountants (CAs) rather than the advancement of knowledge through research. The purpose of this study is to determine what factors motivate accounting academics who are CAs to obtain doctorates in an environment dominated by the profession, where promotion is possible to Full Professor without a Doctorate but not without the professional qualification of CA. And did these doctoral CAs face challenges on their journey, such as resistance from colleagues?Design/methodology/approachA total of 22 academic CAs with doctorates and 18 academic CAs studying towards doctorates were surveyed to gain a deeper understanding of who they are, what their motivations were for undertaking the doctorate journey and what they experienced.FindingsThe main finding of this study is that the culture of accounting departments in South Africa is beginning to shift from being teaching orientated towards being more research orientated. The CAs are pursuing doctorates for the purpose of career progression and for intrinsic personal reasons. The main challenges that they faced on their journey were finding the time for family and a social life and a lack of support from colleagues and their institution. However, support seems to be improving.Research limitations/implicationsThe change to a research-orientated culture in South African departments of accounting, as envisioned by Van der Schyf (2008), is only now starting to take place. These CAs with doctorates provide evidence of that change.Originality/valueThe value of this study is to provide accounting academics and the profession with a better understanding of, and a greater sensitivity to, accounting academics operating under the influence of the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA). The study also adds to the limited amount of literature on the motives and experiences of doctoral students, especially accounting doctoral students.

PurposeThis study conducts a systematic review using 452 academic and industry articles from an initial set of 60,899 records obtained by 3 databases from 2012 to 2020. The authors compare and contrast blockchains with existing legacy systems. The authors identify existing regulation, accounting standards, guidelines and potential amendments in under-explored areas such as taxation, accounting treatment of crypto-assets/liabilities and detailed auditing procedures. The study aims to highlight the trends, differences and gaps between academic and industry literature. The authors provide a behavioral, social, cultural, organizational, regulatory, ethical, accountability and managerial perspectives of blockchain adoption in accounting. Finally, the study develops two adoption frameworks.Design/methodology/approachThe authors' study follows (Moher et al., 2009) and (Briner and Denyer, 2012) methodology to conduct the systematic review and the steps are mentioned below. The authors construct a final sample of 452 from a preliminary search of three multi-disciplinary databases from 2012 to 2020. First, the authors motivate the review and formulate the research questions. Second, the authors aggregate relevant literature from both industry and academia and implement quality assessments. Third, the authors analyze the literature and construct the final sample of articles. Fourth, the authors conducted textual analysis, keyword frequencies and identify gaps, trends and similarities between academic and industry literature and develop the authors' frameworksFindingsThe authors identify 3 (ABDC, B and A* ranked) journals as publishing top article numbers with the highest article count for 2017 with 96 articles in academia and 2019 for the industry with 21 articles. Second-highest publications for academia occur in 2018 with 77 followed by, whereas in the industry, publications occur in the year 2016 with 16 articles. Two co-authors appear most popular with 103 articles. Word clouds, a mind map and article theme counts are used to identify nine key research clusters: data management, financial applications, sustainability, accounting and auditing, business and industrial, education, governance, privacy/security and disruptive technology.Research limitations/implicationsSystematic reviews can have selection biases mainly due to search and selection criteria distortions when constructing the final sample of articles. The authors address selection bias by refining our search keyword combinations by using different permutations and using keywords from articles already collected. The authors employ three databases and review the reference list of articles collected to add more articles that may have been missed into our sample. In addition, to avoid inconsistent coding of domains/themes and interpretations, the authors carefully review our domain identifications and all our analysis twice independently using two research assistants to obtain the same conclusions.Practical implicationsThe authors' unique contributions include reviewing additional papers, differentiating between industry, academic articles, common trends and gaps in much scattered prior literature. The authors identify existing accounting standards, guidelines, limitations and possible amendments required in future for blockchain adoption in accounting in taxation, accounting treatment of crypto-assets/liabilities and detailed audit procedures. Blockchains are compared with legacy accounting technologies and two frameworks for adoption developed. The authors' results could impact the understanding of existing regulation, accounting standards, future amendments, areas requiring clarity and future collaborative research between academia and industry across multi-disciplines. Practical implications to academics, professional bodies, regulators and industry practitioners exist.Social implicationsThe authors' study identifies significant implications on organizations, environment, culture and society in general. The authors identify that social engagement projects may be easily initiated and implemented with decentralized accounting information systems. Transparency and efficiency would change organization culture, ways accountants and even employees interact with each other and community. Anonymity in blockchains can be used for criminal activities. Coding of negative social dynamics to smart contracts may persist. Transparency of personally identifiable information may place individuals at risk. Regulation and standards would need to identify equity, ethics in blockchains which notwithstanding energy consumption, and could enable environmental protection increasing societal sustainability.Originality/valueTo the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that compares academic and industry literature of 452 articles to identify gaps and similarities from 2012 to 2020 using three multi-disciplinary databases. The authors' study is the first study to in detail existing accounting standards, unclear areas, future amendments for International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) standards on taxation, financial reporting and all aspects of auditing procedures. The authors further categorize prior literature into these key areas and develop two frameworks (DAERPS and DAIS) that are linked to our review results and prior literature. The authors identify the impact of blockchain adoption on key stakeholders, regulation, society, culture, organization, accountability and ethics.