Educating and Training Accountants in Syria in a Transition Context: Perceptions of Accounting Academics and Professional Accountants

Abstract

This study focuses on accounting education in the Syrian transition context and in the international context of globalization. It offers insights into accounting education and into the interrelationship in this respect between the accountancy profession and academia in this context. We elaborate an historical and contextual analysis of the Syrian context in relation to accounting education. We report on a series of interviews (conducted in 2002 and 2005) of professional accountants and accounting academics in Syria that elaborates the views of these key parties on a number of interrelated matters: the current limitations of tertiary accounting education in Syria; the role of the accountancy profession in providing education and training; and the developing interrelationship between the profession and academia. In concluding, we summarize some key insights and elaborate on the relevance of the study and the future research it suggests.

Keywords:

• Accounting education
• Syria
• transition perceptions

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland and the help of Mona Kamla.

Notes

The IASB now issues IFRSs rather than IASs but IASs still in issue still apply. In this paper, interviewees typically referred to IASs as the generic term.

Two papers focusing on higher education in the Arab world are noteworthy in respect of the theme, namely Sanyal (1998) and Findlow (2001). There are no papers to our knowledge, however, that focus specifically on Syria. Our study here is thus providing new insights as well as, it is hoped, stimulating further research on Syria.

Accountants and accountancy bodies outside Syria may find that their communications and engagements with Syrian accountants are facilitated if they understand some of the current issues and challenges which their colleagues face.

For examples of how this has happened in other countries, (see Annisette, 2000; 2004; Chua and Poulloas, 2002; Davie, 2000; 2002; Gibson, 2000; Greer and Patel, 2000; Neu, 2000a; 2000b; Gallhofer and Haslam, 2003, chapter 1; McNicholas et al., 2004; Neu and Heincke, 2004; and Kamla et al., 2006).

Arab nationalism became a central doctrine for the disparate communities of Syria and the Arab states of the Middle East. It united the Arab communities of the Mashreq and the Magreb (East and West) through common linguistic and cultural bonds. Arab nationalism found its expression, at the turn of the twentieth century, in Bilad-Elsham (the Levant), which started as a response to the exclusive nationalist policies of the Young Turk movement in the Ottoman Empire. It was originally conceived in secular terms, and was guided by the ‘messianic purpose of restoring the dignity and the glory of Arab civilization’ (Quilliam, 1999, p.34).

The accountancy profession in Egypt was influenced by the British approach, which allowed for a British influenced professional body, the Egyptian Association of Accountants and Auditors, to emerge in Egypt since 1946. The association's main role then was to organize the accountancy profession in Egypt and to ensure adherence to high standards of integrity. The development and organization of the profession in Egypt directly influenced the issuance of Law No. 1109 of 1958 in Syria (Qadi, 1996, p. 42).

The Ministry of Supplies and Trade forms a committee every year in October and November, which assesses the applications on the basis of documents submitted (Qadi, 1996).

Following the Ba'ath party's socialistic nationalization and Arab nationalist policies, education was declared a national priority. From 1967, all aspects of education in Syria were under close governmental control and supervision (Syria on Line, 2001; Photius, 2004). Courses were taught in Arabic, which is unique in the Arab world (Wikipedia, 2001; Damascus University, 2006) and indicative of commitment to Arab nationalism and reaction to colonial policies promoting French culture and language (OBG, 2005). Initially the relevant location for the purposes of the Law was at Damascus University, which had been founded in 1923 (University of Damascus, 2006), although the University of Aleppo was very quickly also included after its establishment in 1958. The Ba'ath party's expansion of the public university sector added universities at Homs (1979) and Latakia by 1980 and the latter provides accounting education (Syria Online, 2001). Since the turn of the century, a number of private sector institutions have been added to the list of relevant institutions (http://www.uok.edu.sy/uok/index.htm).

The Ba'ah party, founded in 1947, represented a ‘more visionary form of Arab nationalism’. Its main appeal to Arab Syrians was its revolutionary nature—especially after the creation of Israel in Palestine (Quilliam, 1999, p.35). The party's ideology was expounded in the constitution, which saw the Arab world as a single eternal nation. Ba'athism sought the renaissance of Arabism, regeneration of the great Arab empires and the eradication of all occupying powers. The term Ba'ath, meaning renaissance or rebirth, referred to the effecting of a fundamental change in the spirit of the Arab people, which would lead to reconstruction of the glorious Arab civilization (Quilliam, 1999, p. 35).

The creation of Israel in Palestine in 1948 with the support of the USA and European countries and the continued conflict with Israel through the 1967and 1973 wars, when the Golan Heights in Syria were occupied by Israel, are important factors in motivating Syria's orientation towards the Soviet Union. Conflicts over land and water with Israel and a West still supporting Israel continue today (Fisher, 2005).

Liberalization was especially enhanced after the death of President Hafiz Al-Assad and the succession of his son, the young President Bashar (Day, 1995). Bashar's actions indicated more radical moves in comparison to his father towards modernising Syria on economic and political fronts. Nonetheless, Western commentators perceived his government's reforms to be very slow and too gradual (Day, 2005).

Law No 23 (2001) allowed establishment of mainstream private banks in Syria for the first time since 1963. In January 2004, two private banks opened, marking the end of state monopoly over the financial industry in Syria. Tax Law No 24 (2004) introduced radical changes to the Syrian tax system to encourage investment by private local as well as foreign capital (Day, 2005). The Law reduced corporate tax from 63% of profits to 35% (OBG, 2005).

A law has now been issued and the stock exchange was planned as fully operational in 2007 (Middle East Online, 2006).

Such an approach to analysis is well established in the humanities and social sciences and has more recently entered the discipline of accounting (see, for example, the special issues of the Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal on ‘Accounting and Indigenous Peoples’ (2000) and Critical Perspectives on Accounting on ‘Accounting and Empire’ (2004). It is also of note that concerns have been raised about aspects of Westerncentrism in some of the literature on international and comparative accounting (see, for example, Kamla et al., 2006).

Our paper focuses on academics and professionals as key groups in Syria in relation to accounting education (and in relation to appreciating aspects of accounting change). Yet given the role of the State in Syria, it may be wondered why we appear to have excluded the State from our analysis. Actually, the State is necessarily incorporated through the actual interviews and their analysis, reflecting that the State intersects with all key categories in the analysis for Syria. Five interviewees either hold or held a governmental position (see Appendix). Further, the state is incorporated into our description and analysis of the context, i.e. in terms, for instance, of Laws being issued, state control over education, certification of accountants and policies in relation to Western countries, which all impact upon how accounting academics and accountants working in practice experience and perceive the education and training of accountants. Access issues, it should be added, make it very difficult to interview state officials involved directly in accounting regulation.

As far as coding is concerned, interviewees were coded by number and year of interview: for example, interviewee number one, interviewed in 2002 was coded as I1(02) (see Appendix).

Postgraduate degrees in accounting are also available in some Faculties of Economics (e.g. Damascus University Website, 2006).

Recent changes consistent with liberalization are the 2006 Law No. 6, which aims to provide a flexible legislative basis for higher education and ostensibly promotes quality (Syria Live, 2006).

Colleges in Syria provide a two year education programme rather than four years. They concentrate more on professional and technical teaching. Colleges are institutions that provide education after high school and are considered to be part of the higher education system in Syria. Staff are called teachers rather than lecturers as many of them do not have a Ph.D. in the subjects which they teach.

Again, this largely financially-driven phenomenon is a development that other transition economies have experienced (cf. Preobragenskaya and McGee, 2004a).

A lack of knowledge of IASs and its impact on the training of accountants has also been identified as a significant issue hindering a smooth move towards sufficiently incorporating IASs in education and training in other transition economies (see, for example, Walsh, 2002, for the cases of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania).

It appears that the last ten years have seen an increase in ASCA membership to 1660 members, although this is still modest in the overall context (source, Email from M. Kamleh, an employee of an accountancy firm having access to the statistics, which are otherwise difficult to obtain). It is difficult to verify increase in the incidence of membership—it is a limiting factor that this information is not publicly available—although this is the implication of Kamleh's view.

The system governs accounting requirements in public sector institutions (Qadi, 1996).

It is difficult to determine the number of academics who are in the ASCA let alone trends in this number (the ASCA has no website or journal and private access is difficult). The interviewees did suggest, however, that many academics were members of ASCA (and indeed practitioners, if a minority thereof). This indicates in itself that a degree of engagement does take place, although its precise character needs to be more closely explored, a task to which the analysis here contributes. The interviews suggest that engagement between academics and ASCA has hitherto not been very organized or systematic even given the State's position to influence both constituencies.

Given that many academics are practitioners and members of the profession; this may compromise aspects of independent academic critique. More generally, the idea that academics stand ‘pure’ outside the context of which they are part would of course be naïve.