E-business in Accounting Education: A Review of Undergraduate Accounting Degrees in the UK and Ireland

Abstract

Despite the rapidly growing importance of e-business and its impact on every aspect of the business world, including accounting practice and the accounting profession, little attention has been given to the e-business education provided to accounting students. This paper reports the results of a study into e-business education in undergraduate university accounting degree programmes in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. An analysis of 119 syllabi, representing e-business, information systems and auditing modules, was undertaken to investigate the scope of and content of e-business teaching within accounting degrees. It was found that e-business is, at best, only briefly covered in the typical accounting degree. Results of the study suggest that the UK and Ireland are lagging considerably behind the USA with regard to e-business education. They may also provide accounting educators, professional bodies, and researchers with insights into the teaching of e-business in order to better prepare accounting graduates for the Internet-based marketplace.

Keywords:

• E-business
• information technology
• accounting curricula
• e-business education

Acknowledgements

The authors should like to thank Alan Sangster and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and all respondents to the request for course syllabi.

Notes

While the terms e-commerce and e-business are often used interchangeably, this paper takes e-commerce to refer to buying and selling goods and services using the Internet, while e-business is taken to encompass the implementation of all business activities, both commercial and non-commercial, over the Internet. In the present study, the term e-commerce is used only when explicitly excluding non-commercial activities or when reporting upon the terminology used elsewhere.

This study also includes the Republic of Ireland (ROI) because its education system is very similar to that of England and the professional body, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland (ICAI), and the academic body, the British Accounting and Finance Association (BAFA), cover both Northern Ireland (which is part of the UK) and ROI.

The most common texts in the UK on financial and management accounting were reviewed (Deegan and Unerman, 2006; Alexander, Britton and Jorissen, 2007; Bhimani, Horngren, Datar and Foster, 2008; Drury, 2008; Seal, Garrison and Noreen, 2008; Elliott and Elliott, 2009; Wickramasinghe and Alawattage, 2009). Given that most of these did not discuss e-business at all, and none devoted more than two pages, these subjects were excluded from the survey.

All these figures refer to companies with at least 10 employees.

Universities in the UK are often referred to as either ‘pre-1992’ or ‘post-1992’ depending upon whether they were granted university status via Royal Charter before 1992 or were originally polytechnics or colleges of higher education awarded university status by statute in 1992 (or, in some cases, later).

Some English universities (e.g. Loughborough) offer a four year degree, which includes one year on a work placement. However, the academic courses are still spread over three years.

Ordinary degrees take three years although these have generally become relatively unpopular.

This is a biennial publication that lists all academic staff in all UK and ROI accounting departments or subject groups. It includes their research and teaching interests and publications. The request for information was sent in late 2007 and most responses, therefore, are for 2007/08 academic year.

Credit for prior learning or examination exemption depends upon the module content, length and examination structure as well.

Changes in accreditation requirements coupled with the generally better IT and computing skills of students has meant that information systems have reduced in popularity in British and Irish universities.