Alimentos y sus valores nutricionales

The responses of all the accountants surveyed were pooled for analysis, as were the responses of all the accounting students. This allowed a range of trends to be found, both regarding similarities and differences between the two groups to appear.

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The clearest similarity between the two groups appeared regarding which generic skills were considered to be important. The generic skills that were considered to be the most important overall by both groups were communication skills and problem solving skills. The generic skills that were considered to be the least important were presentation skills. The reasons as to why presentation skills may have been given this rating are explored above. As has been examined by other researchers, communication skills and problem solving skills are often found in the day-to-day experiences of accountants in the modern business world, and are thus important.

The responses of both groups tended to match quite closely in a number of areas. For example, the responses of accountants and accounting students were very similar regarding the generic skills that they had used while they were at university (communication skills) and the skills that they were least likely to have used at university (presentation skills). Both groups also gave suggestions regarding additional generic skills that the survey could have mentioned, with both groups listing English-speaking skills, the ability to absorb information and decision making skills.

However, differences could also be found between the two groups. The first difference between the two groups related to the skills covered by the degree course. Although many of the responses in this regard were similar, accountants were more likely to consider that their degree course had covered problem-solving skills adequately. Accounting students, on the other hand, were more likely to be unsure about how well this generic skill had been covered. This may reflect a shift in teaching methods over the years, although this survey did not record when the accountants in the workplace had completed their accounting degrees. Recording this information would allow changing trends in the skills taught to accounting students at tertiary level to be tracked, and this would make an interesting area for further research. This potential shift in emphasis may also be illustrated by the different responses of the two groups when they were asked whether generic skills were more important than technical accounting skills: accounting students were more likely to rate generic skills as more important, whereas the accountants were more likely to rate technical accounting skills as being more important.

But by far the most striking difference between the two groups was regarding the skills that were needed to get a job as an accountant and their perceived skill level. This is, in many ways, a result of the experience. Clearly, accountants have more experience of the accounting place and which skills are needed within it. Students, on the other hand, do not. This is illustrated best by the way that students were much more likely to be unsure about the skill level needed. This could be interpreted as a deficiency in the tertiary education provided to accounting students, indicating that degree courses are not giving accounting students an accurate picture of the working

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world. On the other hand, the difference could simply arise from actual experience, with the implication that these accounting students could change their beliefs over time with actual workplace experience. In this regard, a longitudinal study tracking changes on beliefs and perceptions over time of the accounting students as they move from university into the workplace and up the corporate ladder would be interesting.

However, this uncertainty could also arise because the university degree course studied by the students has not given them a clear indication of what is needed in the workplace. This deficiency can and should be addressed by those providing the degree course, and can easily be achieved through the use of case studies.

It is very interesting to note that accountants in the workplace put more importance on technical accounting skills (see Section 4.6.8), whereas the accounting students put more importance on the generic skills. This is contrary to the findings in the literature elsewhere, which has tended to find the reverse trend, namely that accounting students tended to rate technical accounting skills as being more important while accountants considered generic skills to be more important. The reasons for this contrary finding are unclear. One possibility could be that the findings of this present research reflect the Saudi Arabian context, which is quite likely to differ from the context of most other studies, namely a Western context. However, this finding does contrast with the results shown in Section 4.6.6, where technical accounting skills were rated as being less important than certain generic skills by both groups (accounting students and accountants). This inconsistency is highly interesting, but may be affected by the perception of presentation skills, which are part of the generic skill set but were rated as being the least important generic skills by both groups. Further research is possibly needed to verify this finding and to investigate the reasons for this difference between the Saudi Arabian context and the Western context

5.5 Summary

Experience may play a part in how the different skills sets are perceived. For example, differences could be seen between the postgraduate students and the undergraduate students, and between the accountants in the workforce and the accounting students, particularly regarding the technical accounting skills. These findings seemed to suggest that more experienced respondents (accountants and postgraduate students) put more emphasis on this skill set. This appears to contrast with the general findings of the literature, namely that employers are more likely to consider generic skills as being more important than technical accounting skills, unlike accounting students. Culture may play a role here, as this is one of the first studies investigating the Saudi Arabian context.

The cultural context may also be behind gender differences that appeared when male and female accounting students, and male and female accountants were compared.

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However, the responses of female accountants seemed to be skewed by having a small sample size. While this, in itself, reflects a more patriarchal culture, it would be interesting to discover what a similar survey of female accountants with a larger sample size would reveal.

Presentation skills were rated as being of low importance by the great majority of groups surveyed. At the other end of the spectrum, communication skills and problem solving skills were ranked as being very important.

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CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS, AND

FUTURE RESEARCH

6.1 Introduction

This chapter summarises the findings of this research, and presents the related conclusions and the recommendations arising from this research. The chapter also presents some directions for further research.

Numerous researchers have noted the gap between the skills held by recent accounting graduates and the skills necessary to get a job as an accountant, especially the generic and technical accounting skills. This gap has been particularly highlighted in the context of the changing face of accounting in the modern world of computerisation and increasing globalisation. This shift has meant that generic and technical accounting skills have become increasingly more important and frequently form part of the day-to-day work of an accountant. Technical accounting skills and generic skills that are frequently mentioned as being important for accountants include communication skills, capacity for analysis, problem solving skills, teamwork skills, interpersonal skills and presentation skills within technical accounting skills.

Although this trend has been noted frequently in Western countries (e.g. the United States, England and Australia), very few studies have focussed on the Middle East and even fewer, if any, on Saudi Arabia. This study aimed to fill this gap in the knowledge.