IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/dug/actaec/y2020i5p66-86.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Developing Economy Perspective of the ‘Traditional Roles’ of the Professional Accountant within South African SMEs

Author

Listed:
  • Yaeesh Yasseen

    (University of the Witwatersrand)

  • Nerine Stegmann

    (University of Johannesburg)

  • Freddie Crous

    (University of Johannesburg)

Abstract

This paper explores the perceptions of professional accountants and SME owners with regards to the traditional compliance roles of professional accountants within South African SMEs. Semi-structured interviews with 20 experienced professional accountants and 20 SME owners highlight practical issues within the role of the accountant in statutory financial reporting and taxation advisory functions. The traditional roles are not consistently seen as an organic part of an SMEs business process, despite multiple arguments that professional accountants can add value within SMEs. Interviewees are also unconvinced that a professional accountant’s traditional role is taken seriously within the current SME context, further limiting the interconnection between value adding services and compliance services. This adds to the limited body of interpretive research on the role of professional accountants within SMEs and offers practical insights for professional accountancy organizations, policy makers, professional accountants, SME and academics.

Suggested Citation

  • Yaeesh Yasseen & Nerine Stegmann & Freddie Crous, 2020. "A Developing Economy Perspective of the ‘Traditional Roles’ of the Professional Accountant within South African SMEs," Acta Universitatis Danubius. OEconomica, Danubius University of Galati, issue 16(6), pages 66-86, DECEMBER.
    • Handle: RePEc:dug:actaec:y:2020:i:5:p:66-86
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dj.univ-danubius.ro/index.php/AUDOE/article/view/545/934
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:dug:actaec:y:2020:i:5:p:66-86. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Daniela Robu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fedanro.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.