Developing accountants for the future: new technology, skills, and the role of stakeholders

New technologies in accounting are widely regarded as crucial to building organisational success. They have, and continue, to impact on the requisite skills for graduate and early career accounting professionals. This research focuses on how well universities, employing organisations, and professional associations are preparing early career accountants for new technology, and the future pathways to build technology-related skills. Drawing on a mixed-method study of 315 early career accountants and 175 managers/recruiters in Australia, we find different perceptions exist between these two groups. Early career accountants were generally more positive in their assessment of how well organisations’ training systems prepared them for new technology while managers/recruiters expressed greater confidence in universities’ ability to develop accountants to meet emergent skill demands. We argue there is an important, complementary, and yet slightly different role played by stakeholders (universities/employing organisations/professional associations) in building technology-related skills to help collectively nurture early career accountant talent.