An exploratory study of the personality tendencies of accountants and their compatibility with change and related concepts: the case of professionally qualified accountants in Ireland

Abstract

This research focuses on accountants. The business environment accountants operate in provides the context for the study, a setting characterised by rapid change. Accountants, as a group, are not normally associated with being in the vanguard of change, rapid or otherwise. Indeed, there has been much written in the popular domain (and scholarly domain too) about the ‘boring accountant’ stereotype, the apparent antithesis of change.

The context for the study thus poses significant challenges for accountants: we live in a world where change now appears as the only constant, yet the persistent perception of the accountant is that of being resistant to change. Fairly or unfairly, this stereotype has taken hold. This is a matter of concern for accountancy as a profession. Professions today compete to attract the brightest and best graduates, with the objective of ensuring their sustainable development. Accountancy as a profession could thus be adversely impacted in two ways: firstly, it runs the risk of not responding nimbly enough to the challenges the changing business environment presents if members are indeed as resistant to change as the stereotype suggests; and, if this is the case, accountancy runs the risk of losing the pivotal position it presently occupies in the organisational world as a consequence.

Consequently, this work examines the nature of accounting, and those who practice it, accountants. This involves: an overview of how the profession and role of the accountant have developed over time; a review of the business environment in recent years, highlighting how important it is for accountants, as a professional grouping, to be adaptive in the face of significant change; and an examination of creativity, one of the key operationalising concepts used to assess accountants’ personality tendencies towards change. However, before an examination of creativity took place, it was necessary to first consider the broader concept it is associated with, namely change.

The study was operationalised through the measurement of accountants’ personality tendencies towards change and related concepts, in particular creativity. As part of this process: major research that has been completed to date on the personality tendencies of accountants was reviewed; the relationship between personality and the measurement of personality tendencies was investigated; and the personalities of individuals and their tendencies towards change, innovation and creativity were then measured empirically. The case study group that formed the focus of this study was professionally qualified accountants in Ireland, across all professional accounting bodies.

An exploratory case study was therefore employed around the investigation of the following propositions, developed from significant prior research, but with a view to extending knowledge in this specialised area of accounting research. These propositions were investigating whether: an accounting personality stereotype existed – this was confirmed; whether female and male accountants’ personality tendencies towards change differed - this was not confirmed; if younger accountants’ personality tendencies towards change differed from those of older accountants - this was confirmed, though in a surprising and confounding way; and finally, that accountants working in different sectors of the economy would have different personality tendencies towards change - this was not confirmed. Implications of these results for the profession, and accounting educators, are discussed in the concluding chapter of the work.

Date of Award	Jan 2014
Original language	English
Supervisor	Marie Mc Hugh (Supervisor) & Emily Boyle (Supervisor)