The change and continuity of accounting professionals in Japan

Matsubara, Saori; Endo, Takahiro

doi:10.4324/9781315560892-14

Cited by 2 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…The Korean accounting field shared key attributes with the Japanese accounting field, as reported by Sakagami et al (1999), Matsubara and Endo (2017) and Spence at al. (2017), reflecting the history of Japanese colonial rule from 1910-1945.…”

Section: Cartography Of Korean Social Space and Accounting Fieldmentioning

confidence: 77%

“…The Korean accounting field shared key attributes with the Japanese one, as reported by Sakagami et al (1999), Matsubara and Endo (2017) and Spence et al (2017), reflecting the history of Japanese colonial rule from 1910-1945. First, as in Japan (Sakagami et al, 1999), there was only one professional association for qualified accountants: KICPA.…”

Section: Cartography Of Korean Social Space and Accounting Fieldmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Second, also as in Japan (Matsubara and Endo, 2017), passing the KICPA examinations was compulsory for recruitment to accounting firms, unlike the option of articling offered in many western countries. Therefore, only those who had passed the examinations were eligible for one-year professional training (two years for audit) in accounting firms.…”

Section: Cartography Of Korean Social Space and Accounting Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Accountants’ incessant insecurity

Ahn

Jacobs

2019

AAAJ

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand how and why accountants who moved from accounting firms to public service adapted their identities to reduce insecurity. The literature on accountant identity highlights insecurity caused by promotion criterion to partnership, which requires accountants to win new work for their employers and leads to overtime, as a serious problem which has permeated the accounting profession. However, there have been few studies that explore whether accountants who moved to the public service, where they have stronger job security and can enjoy work-life balance, have resolved the insecurity problem, although a neoliberalism turn accompanied by New Public Management-style reforms has increased the number of accountants in public service. Therefore, the authors of the current study aim to fill this gap in the literature by exploring the identity transitions of South Korean (hereafter Korean) accountants who joined the public service. Design/methodology/approach The authors theorise the nature of the process of identity adaptation with conceptual tools from Pierre Bourdieu, such as habitus and capital, and examine whether the accountants took a “vision-of-division” or a “di-vision” strategy in the public service to secure their identity. For this purpose, the authors interviewed accountants and their non-accountant colleagues, and investigated other written sources, such as newspaper articles and business cards. Findings The authors found that Korean accountants in Big-4 firms dealt with the same insecurity issues as accountants in western countries and perceived public service as an attractive alternative to remove this insecurity. However, accountants who joined the public service found themselves confronted with different types of problems, such as accounting/costing work being regarded as demeaning, which made their identity insecure. Therefore, some accountants took a di-vision strategy that makes the difference between themselves and typical public servants less visible by avoiding accounting/costing work, using bureaucratic designations and de-emphasising their accounting credentials. Accountants took this strategy because the symbolic value of their accountancy qualifications grew weaker over time, due to the increase in the number of qualified accountants, and because the public service field valued bureaucratic habitus and capital more highly than those of the accountants. Originality/value From a methodological aspect, the authors collected participants’ business cards and analysed which designations/credentials they chose in order to create a certain perception. This analysis helped the authors understand how accountants work on their identity by de-emphasising accounting credentials to secure their identity in an organisational field. In a theoretical dimension, the current study argues that the symbolic capital of accounting credentials is dependent on the organisational and social context in line with Bourdieu, and, contrary to Bourdieu, on the supply and demand in the professional labour market.

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Section: Cartography Of Korean Social Space and Accounting Fieldmentioning

confidence: 77%

Section: Cartography Of Korean Social Space and Accounting Fieldmentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Cartography Of Korean Social Space and Accounting Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Accountants’ incessant insecurity

Ahn

Jacobs

2019

AAAJ

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“…Japan is no exception to the dangers of weak gatekeeping due to client capture in professional services. In auditing, for example, audit firms tended to follow the lead of main banks, whose corporate clients might choose an audit firm that they think their main bank would prefer (Matsubara & Endo, 2018;Pong & Kita, 2006). By the 2000s, shifts in government policy led to the Financial Services Agency to insist on stricter audit services (as seen by its unprecedented action to suspend ChuoAoyama and to criminally indict its partners for their role in the Kanebo accounting fraud in 2006 (Skinner & Srinivasan, 2012).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Professionals on Corporate Boards: How Do They Affect the Bottom Line?

Sako

Kubo

2019

SSRN Journal

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Licensed professionals, such as accountants and lawyers, play a variety of roles when they sit on corporate boards. This paper sheds light on what role professional-directors play under what circumstances, and its consequences for corporate performance. We develop a two-dimensional framework, enabling us to identify the 'wise counsel' role in relation to the professional-capital dimension, and the 'cop' and 'entrepreneur' roles in relation to the risk-taking dimension. Using a dataset of all publicly quoted companies in Japan during 2004-2015, we demonstrate that the presence of professional-directors increases profitability and corporate value in all sectors, indicative of their 'wise counsel' role. We also show that the presence of professional-directors leads to higher stock return volatility in regulated industries, evidence of their role as 'entrepreneurs'. By contrast, professional-directors lower stock return volatility in less regulated industries, indicative of their role as 'cops'. Our theory and findings on the contingent effects of professional roles on firm performance have implications for corporate governance. They also shed light on a key question in strategic management, that is, the role of professionals as a specific type of resource in explaining performance heterogeneity.

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The change and continuity of accounting professionals in Japan

Cited by 2 publications

References 1 publication

Accountants’ incessant insecurity

Accountants’ incessant insecurity

Professionals on Corporate Boards: How Do They Affect the Bottom Line?

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