What is an Accountant? An Investigation of Images

Abstract

The purpose of our paper is to identify different images of accountants held by different groups of people and to understand how the different images come about. In doing so, we focus on how accountants are perceived by others as well as how they perceive themselves. Through analysis of 1,794 usable questionnaire responses by university students, newly appointed accountants, and practicing accountants, we find an image close to the beancounter stereotype, and that of a modern professional, with the highest score for success but also for honesty. We also uncover a third image including nuances that are neither favorable nor unfavorable (the plain vanilla accountant), which suggests that the extremes found in cultural representations do not always reflect the real world. In addition, we find that the greater the distance from the profession, the less attractive the image of accountants is and that different sources of influence affect perceptions of accountants. In particular, the public perception of an accountant is less favorable when constructed from media sources. Finally, we add to the existing literature by showing that the self-image of accountants may change over time as experienced practitioners, compared to new hires, exhibit a sort of disillusionment about their professionalism.

Keywords:

• Images of accountants
• Beancounter stereotype
• Accounting profession
• Accountants’ self-image

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the helpful comments of the participants at the seminar series at Newcastle University Business School as well as of the Editor and the two anonymous Reviewers.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed https://doi.org/10.1080/09638180.2018.1550000.

ORCID

Ariela Caglio http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5829-9784

Notes

1 Despite some convergence during the past few years, the Anglo-American context has long been contrasted with the continental context, which is seen to rely on a relatively weak accounting profession, and heavy governmental influence on accounting regulation, with greater importance of debt financing over equity capital (Di Pietra et al., 2001).

2 On this point, we draw on Roberts (2005) who explains that professional is usually referred to an individual who is employed in a profession, where a profession is an occupation characterized by the following features: application of technical knowledge, advanced education and training requirements, formal testing of competences, controlled admission, professional associations, and code of conduct together with responsibility for serving the public (Benveniste et al., 1987). The term professional can be applied more broadly to indicate any individual who is responsible for providing a particular service to either internal or external clients. Although we acknowledge the existence of a large body of research particularly emphasizing the social and political issues related to the formation, existence, and endurance of the accounting profession, in this paper, when we use the word ‘profession’ we simply refer to the work activity and occupational roles of accountants. As noted by Carnegie and Napier (2010) while, in the USA, the term ‘accounting profession’ is more likely to be used to refer to the occupation of accounting, in some parts of the English-speaking world, the word ‘accountancy’ is commonly used with this meaning.

3 Normative social distance is the difference we perceive between ourselves as members of a group and others who are not members of the same group. It is not by definition judgmental in nature. Rather, it can indicate that a person recognizes differences in terms of, e.g., race, class, gender, sexuality, or nationality.

4 Ragioniere in Italian means bookkeeper.

5 Every year, Universum analyses the opinions of a large sample of students about their career expectations and their perceptions regarding different companies as potential employers. In so doing, they develop the ‘Universum Top 100 Ideal Employer Ranking’.

6 An alternative would have been to undertake separate analyses for each group and qualitatively compare the images and their underlying characteristics. This approach did not, however, provide metrics for testing our hypotheses. Furthermore, it ran the risk of over-fitting the data to each group of participants in our sample.

7 This approach was not without risks, as we discuss with the limitations to our study. For a more comprehensive explanation, see Table OA.1 in the online appendix.

8 We re-ran the EFA without the artefactual attributes (e.g., being bald, pale, brave, lucky, old, physically attractive, wearing glasses), both for the full sample and for respondents grouped by the image they held of accountants. We are thankful to one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting this. The five non-artefactual factors form the same structure with and without the artefactual variables in all cases. An excerpt of this analysis, for the full (pooled) sample, is included in the online appendix (Tables OA.2A and OA.2B). We obtained very similar results when we limited the analysis to participants who held each of the different images of accountants (data available from the authors).

9 Full results of the multiple correspondence analysis, including eigenvalues for the generated dimensions and separation scores for groups are available from the authors.

10 The path is indicated by the arrows in Figure 1.