Introduction
As technologies evolve, corporate world has embraced technology at a fast rate. As a
result, almost entire businesses have been automated. The result of this automation
has been profound on job designs of the employees of these businesses. For example,
terms like ‘knowledge worker’ have been consistently used to describe contemporary
business workers, since information technologies (IT) have become an integral part of
their routine work. The role of accountants in modern business organisations is no
exception, which has been transformed from manual to computerised accounting [1].
In fact, IT has changed the way data is collected, processed, stored, and aggregated
for preparation of accounting and finance related information required by the
management to control and manage business activities [2].
IT competencies are imperative for accountants to perform their tasks [3] and
constitute IT skills, IT experience, management skills (in particular project
management) and conceptual skills. These skills on one hand aid the routine business
activities related to accountants’ work, and on the other hand help them create an
82 K.M. Ku Bahador and A. Haider
environment where these technologies operate at their optimum level for the strategic
internal and external advantage of the business. However, many parties, including
accounting practitioners have expressed their concern about the level of IT-related
skills and competencies acquired by accountants [4, 5]. Although the demand for
accounting professional arose through the need to achieve skills in IT, the skills
acquired by professional accountants are still below the minimum level drawn by the
accounting professional bodies such as the International Federation of Accountants
(IFAC) and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) [4, 5, 6
and 7]. In addition, accountants are unclear about the exact IT-related skills and
competencies that need to be possessed by them. This issue inspired the researcher to
explore the set of skills required by professional accountants, specifically in
Malaysian small to medium accounting practices to perform the tasks efficiently.
Professional accountants in these type organisations have important roles in providing
business support to their clients such as corporations, small and medium
organisations, individuals and other organisations. It will, however, be interesting to
study the competencies developed in the use of IT in different cultural settings.
This study is structured as follows: the next section describes the concept of IT
competencies and new requirement of IT competencies for professional accountants,
derived from the relevant literature. The second section is the proposed framework for
IT competencies and the last section outlines a conclusion.