The everyday accountant and researching his reality

Environmental Awareness and The Role of Public Accounting Professional Bodies in Indonesia: A Brief Reflection

“…Finally, this will contribute to the professional sustainability. The qualitiative approach is chosen because in this approach, the subjects of the study is requested to speak for themselves, to provide their perspective in words and other actions (Tomkins & Groves, 1983;Zulkifli et al, 2007). Therefore, qualitative by nature is an interactive process in which the subjects of study teach the researcher about their lives (Hughes, 2012) The public accountant profession was chosen as the subject of study because the public accountants as the information providers of the companies often are identified as the biggest pollution producers for the stakeholders (MenLH, 2012).…”

“…Naturalistic approach (Tomkins & Groves, 1983) was used in this study to find out "what is going here" and to focus the research more closely on the environmental awareness of the accountants and to give greater insights on the role of accounting professional body. In the end, the results of the study was expected to contribute to the assurance of professional sustainability (the sustainability of accountant professions, which can be adapted to various demands of services by the stakeholders) (AICPA, 2011;IFAC, 2006;Winn, 2011).…”

The consideration of environmental matters in the audit of financial reports

“…How practitioners perceive their worlds, what issues concern them, why these issues concern them and how they perceive them affecting accounting [or auditing and] Tomkins and Groves (1983a;1983b) further explained that the emphasis of naturalistic approaches is that a state of reality is not independent of the observer, and that there are multiple views of reality. Therefore "if behaviour in relation to accounting [or auditing] information and its interpretation is the product of specific situation and group interactions, the …naturalistic methodology is recommended" (Grimwood & Tomkins, 1986, p. 259).…”

“…Therefore, auditors should be genuinely interested in the research topic. Based on the discussions in Grimwood and Tomkins (1986), Morgan (1983), Schwandt (2001) and Tomkins and Groves (1983a) in support of naturalistic inquiries in accounting and auditing research, the researcher decided that a qualitative interpretive study with naturalistic orientation was most appropriate for this research study. Such an approach allows the probing of different views on current audit practices rather then suggesting them outright to the auditors (as in surveys).…”

“…From observing the phenomenon, and by reviewing the extant literature, the researcher induces a theory for the observed phenomenon (Tomkins & Groves, 1983a). Tomkins and Groves (1983a) argued for accounting and auditing research to consider engaging with the naturalistic forms of inquiry because of the benefits that might accrue from it (for an extended debate on the use of naturalistic/qualitative methods in accounting research, see Abdel-Khalik & Ajinkya (1983), Morgan (1983), Tomkins & Groves (1983a) and Willmott (1983a). Tomkins and Grove (1983b) explained that accounting or auditing research which considers naturalistic forms of inquiry focused on:…”