Impact of student-level factors and university support on completion of a master’s thesis in accounting

ABSTRACT

Using a model of inputs–environment–process–outcomes, our focus is the students’ point of view on writing the master’s thesis in accounting. We analyze the factors that influence the complexity of a thesis and the satisfaction of students with it. We used the answers received on two matched questionnaires distributed during the second semester of the academic year 2021–2022. The results of the path analysis show that planning and involvement in research and university support can increase the effectiveness of students’ time management and improve satisfaction with the research outcome. Resource use increases the thesis complexity, too. The paper comprises a couple of implications: first, the quality of the thesis depends to a great extent on the initial planning phase, indicating that university support is crucial during preliminary work; second, university management must ensure the existence of necessary resources, which are a complex mix of supervision, collaboration, guidelines, and scientific sources.

KEYWORDS:

• Master’s thesis
• accounting students
• higher education
• university support
• time management
• thesis complexity

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Joint Editor of the journal, Professor Barbara Flood, and the anonymous reviewers for their effort. It was a very rewarding experience for us, to receive such detailed feedback. We treasure it and we will implement what we learnt in our future work. The authors thank the vice-dean with research of the Faculty of Accounting and Management Information Systems, Professor Nadia Albu, for her support to obtain the approval for this study. The authors are also grateful for the comments received from the reviewers of the 45th European Accounting Association Annual Congress. Not least, we thank all our students, especially for challenging us and determining us to improve.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The participation at the congress was financed by the Bucharest University of Economic Studies.