THE NEW ROLE OF MANAGEMENT PUBLIC ACCOUNTANTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR BUSINESS SCHOOL EDUCATION PARTICIPANTS

摘要

The 1999 Practice Analysis of Management Accounting described the changes in the role that management accountants play in their organizations. They are no longer the scorekeepers and bean counters. In many organizations, they are internal consultants, business managers, and business partners.The dramatic changes that have occurred in management accounting over the past decade have been mirrored in public accounting firms. Indeed, many public accounting firms began dropping their identification as "accounting firms" several years ago.This special session will a) describe the dimensions of this new role that accountants play in corporations and in public accounting firms, b) present an array of tools that modern accountants use to do their work, and c) discuss the challenges that this poses to business school educators in their efforts to prepare their students for entry-level positions in corporate and public accounting and the implications for accounting and business school education.This panel will focus on what practicing management accountants and public accountants do as business partners and business consultants. We will show how in many ways the occupation of "accountant" in 2001 bears little resemblance to the occupation in 1990, and how the role of accountants is likely to evolve over the next few years.There will be five panel members:1. Three accounting educators2. A senior corporate financial executive who will talk about changes in the work of corporate accountants and the implications of this for the preparedness of accounting students and the skills sought by employers of entry-level accountants.3. A senior accountant who works in a CPA firm who will talk about changes in the work of public accountants and the skills sought by employers of entry-level accountants.Given the recent publication of the Albrecht and Sack study "Accounting Education: Charting the Course through a Perilous Future,"2 this panel session should be highly relevant to business school educators at the DSI meeting.Because accountants have to understand the various functions of an organization and work on cross-functional teams with people from different areas in an organization, their education has to prepare them for this business reality. As an interdisciplinary organization, DSI is an appropriate venue for this panel presentation.