How does digitization change Accounting Education?

Posted by ANNA VYSOTSKAYA - Oct 06, 2017
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For more than fifty years accounting has been strongly influenced directly by the technology and digital development. Digitization is normally viewed as a structural change for all industries (Bygren, 2016). Economies across the world are suffering this influence. The pressure of the digitization on our lives is so tense that one can hardly find a life aspect that is not affected by it. It’s the competition issue and market fit question if the industry can survive such technical shift. However in the accounting educational process only few fundamental changes can be viewed across the world.

In order to understand the impact of digital development it is naturally to turn the views towards philosophical attitudes to our lives. Thus according to Heraclitus philosophy of the science theory, ‘Everything changes and nothing stands still’ we can see a lot of changes occurring in accounting nowadays. Indeed, accounting is that sphere where all the recent technological achievements are applied. In contrary, as it goes from Parmenides philosophy ‘Everything is Unchanging’ and that is also true for accounting, and accounting education, especially. The mathematical nature and patterns of usage of accounting and accounting education keeps this industry in its own flow. The earliest reference to the fact that the basis of accounting is just a mathematical component contained the work of an Italian monk L.Pacioli in "Treatise on the accounts and records" and till this day all the manual and computerized accounting systems in their logical construction are based on the principles and processes, that Pacioli described (Sangster and Scataglinibelghitar, 2010).

However, if we try to trace the development of accounting from that time, we will see that the majority of the authors treated the mathematical component of accounting as granted. At the same time mathematical approach was often offset against the backdrop of the development of different accounting forms and techniques dictated by procedural accountants thinking. As far as any accounting operation can be represented by matrix equations this adds to the understanding of alternative processes of recording transactions and the mathematical generation of essential accounting reports (Vysotskaya, et al., 2016).

While the whole world is blinded by the ongoing processes of globalization and integration, it is necessary to be extremely careful in the regard that the neglecting of the obvious laws would not led to another errors and would not replace the essence of accounting by the variety of procedures. Since the objective of any economic study lies in careful study and analysis of the current conditions and in order to make the best management decision, the new economic realities and the associated risks and challenges for the economy of today need an integrated approach.

For more than fifty years accounting has been strongly influenced directly by the technology and digital development. Digitization is normally viewed as a structural change for all industries (Bygren, 2016). Economies across the world are suffering this influence. The pressure of the digitization on our lives is so tense that one can hardly find a life aspect that is not affected by it. It’s the competition issue and market fit question if the industry can survive such technical shift. However in the accounting educational process only few fundamental changes can be viewed across the world.

In order to understand the impact of digital development it is naturally to turn the views towards philosophical attitudes to our lives. Thus according to Heraclitus philosophy of the science theory, ‘Everything changes and nothing stands still’ we can see a lot of changes occurring in accounting nowadays. Indeed, accounting is that sphere where all the recent technological achievements are applied. In contrary, as it goes from Parmenides philosophy ‘Everything is Unchanging’ and that is also true for accounting, and accounting education, especially. The mathematical nature and patterns of usage of accounting and accounting education keeps this industry in its own flow. The earliest reference to the fact that the basis of accounting is just a mathematical component contained the work of an Italian monk L.Pacioli in "Treatise on the accounts and records" and till this day all the manual and computerized accounting systems in their logical construction are based on the principles and processes, that Pacioli described (Sangster and Scataglinibelghitar, 2010).

However, if we try to trace the development of accounting from that time, we will see that the majority of the authors treated the mathematical component of accounting as granted. At the same time mathematical approach was often offset against the backdrop of the development of different accounting forms and techniques dictated by procedural accountants thinking. As far as any accounting operation can be represented by matrix equations this adds to the understanding of alternative processes of recording transactions and the mathematical generation of essential accounting reports (Vysotskaya, et al., 2016).

While the whole world is blinded by the ongoing processes of globalization and integration, it is necessary to be extremely careful in the regard that the neglecting of the obvious laws would not led to another errors and would not replace the essence of accounting by the variety of procedures. Since the objective of any economic study lies in careful study and analysis of the current conditions and in order to make the best management decision, the new economic realities and the associated risks and challenges for the economy of today need an integrated approach.

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