Abstract
The extreme transformation of the business environment has required that the accounting profession redefines its role in order to remain relevant. This creates the need to adequately prepare accountants for a career in a significantly changed business landscape by developing and prioritising pervasive skills, which go beyond technical knowledge. There is consensus in the literature that Experiential Learning Activities (ELAs) should be promoted as one of the most prominent methods of developing these soft skills, particularly according to accounting education research. Despite the recognition that these pervasive skills are relevant and critical to the industry, the research on the effect of ELAs on transferrable skills is limited, and even more so in a South African context.
In response, the purpose of this study was, firstly, to investigate the competencies that students in a tertiary financial management programme consider critical for career success and how these students perceive these competencies are being developed through the use of a group case study assignment (a recognised ELA); and, secondly, to investigate whether any mediating effects exist between these perceptions and a student’s self-efficacy.
The study obtained the perceptions of the 2022 cohort of University of Johannesburg Post Graduate Diploma in Financial Management students, through a cross-sectional descriptive survey, and these perceptions were analysed using regression analysis.
The results confirm that students perceive, to a considerable extent, that core competencies are developed through a group case study assignment. The study supports previous findings that a relationship exists between self-efficacy and the perception of skills developed, but contradicts the literature that a relationship exists between academic performance and self-efficacy and between the perception of skills developed and subsequent academic performance. It was also found that a gap existed between the perception of the importance of core competencies and the extent to which they are developed through a group case study assignment. The results also emphasise the importance of teamwork in ELAs.
Based on the gap that exists between students’ perceptions of how important pervasive skills are, and the extent to which they are developed through a group case study assignment, it is suggested that the ELAs are enhanced to improve the actual development of these skills. The measurement of the effect of the ELAs on pervasive skills should also be improved.
Key words
Core competencies, pervasive skills, CIMA, experiential learning activities, active learning, self-efficacy, accounting education, management accounting.