State-of-the-Art Training Methods for Accounting Professionals

Nowadays, graduates entering the workplace are required for not only the academic knowledge of their fields but also a diverse range of non-technical competencies; in particular, they must be effective communicators. In the accounting field, communication skills have been well-documented to play a critical role to job performance and success. Nonetheless, surprisingly, given the importance of communication skills, they have not been given high consideration by accounting majors. Moreover, employers remain dissatisfied with new graduates’ communication competence. Therefore, how to help accounting students overcome their communication apprehension in order to function better in their jobs has become an emerging research topic for academicians, practitioners, accounting educators, and school managers. On response, previous studies have emphasized that it is imperative to redesign accounting courses or incorporate courses and methods which enhance students’ communication skills into accounting curriculum. Based on the above premises, this study through incorporating the creative problem solving (CPS) process with case teaching to establish a new method entitled ‘Creativity Problem-Solving Case Teaching’ as well as integrate the Web-based GDSS TeamSpirit with case teaching aims to investigate the impact of such teaching method on accounting students’ communication apprehension. As such, the achieved results hope to provide beneficial guidance for helping accounting students adapt to the accounting profession’s constant changing demands, overcome communication apprehension, and enhance creativity, problem-solving skills as well as communication skills in order to better satisfy career requirements.