Professional and Transversal Accounting Competences (I)

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is to study the perception of undergraduate and graduate students compared to the perception of employers regarding the professional and transversal competences required for gaining access to the labor market in the accounting field. For this purpose, we have conducted a descriptive, transversal market research which focused on a target group of 140 undergraduate/graduate students studying Accounting and 220 employers. The conclusion of the research was that, in order to achieve a successful career in accounting, undergraduate/ graduate students should posses a set of strong transversal competences to complement the professional competences acquired and tested throughout the undergraduate and graduate university programs. So that professional accountants can act as creators, mediators, keepers and reporters of sustainable value for the purpose of supporting the organization, the competences they partially acquired during the qualification and training activities will need to be constantly developed and improved throughout their entire career. Therefore, most of the individuals involved in our research believe that acquiring the membership of CECCAR by the Accountancy graduates can lead to a constant improvement of the competences required on the labor market and also to a successful career.

Keywords

• professional competences
• transversal competences
• undergraduate/graduate students
• employers
• ceccar
• the rank-ordering method
• the chi-squared test