INTEGRATED INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SUBJECTS IN THE ACCOUNTING CURRICULA – AN ANALYSIS OF EMERGING EU COUNTRIES

Abstract

The accounting profession is reshaping due to the processes’ digitalisation imposed by the business environment and the accounting faculties are committed in providing a solid base of knowledge to future practitioners. The wide adoption of different emerging technologies, that have the potential to reshape the profession, has to be supported by accounting faculties by adapting the study plans so that graduates will develop the needed IT-related skills. The research proposition is to identify the IT subjects integrated into the accounting curricula from emerging EU countries and identify the changes. The dataset used for this research is represented by the curricula of study programs from 25 accounting faculties from eight countries. The sample was collected in 2018 and 2021. The results illustrate that universities started to address the growing need of integrating in the study programs more subjects regarding emerging and current technologies that facilitate and enhance accounting processes. The results illustrate that the accounting faculties are integrating more IT-related courses, but there is still room for improvement. This paper provides a glimpse of the progress made by universities in terms of the curricula’ adaptation, thus being a reference for both researchers and the academic environment.

Keywords

• accounting education
• curricula
• emerging technologies
• it skills