Digital Skills of Management Accountants: A Comparative Analysis across EU Countries

Abstract

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is bringing significant changes to the digital skill set required of management accountants. Thus, to continue ensuring the profession's relevance, academia and professional bodies constantly seek to update their curricula to meet the business environment's necessities. Thus, the present research aims to identify the digital skills management accounting practitioners need by examining the companies' requirements and determining whether there are significant differences between European Union (EU) member states regarding the countries' digital performance. This study adopts a mixed-methods approach by combining qualitative and quantitative research methods to achieve this objective. The results obtained from the undertaken analyses reveal that most companies consider necessary basic digital skills, such as the effective use of spreadsheet software and competencies related to integrated systems, Business Intelligence, database management systems, and data warehouse management systems. In addition, the comparative review reveals that in countries with a high level of digital performance there is a significant impact on the professional requirements, with no differences being identified between countries with a medium and low level of digital performance, emphasising the changing role of practitioners as a result of the extensive management accounting processes' digitalisation. The research findings consequently have a series of implications for academia, professional bodies, and companies.

Keywords

• digital skills
• management accounting
• accounting profession
• job advertisements