حسابداران بنگلادش و پیشرفت حرفه ای مداوم
Abstract
1- Introduction
2- Literature background
3- Methodology
4- Results
5- Discussion and conclusion
References
Abstract
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine professional accountant’s views on their satisfaction with Continuing Professional Development (CPD) offered by members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB). While there is a great deal of research on CPD and accountants in developed countries, less developing countries are absent from this literature, and there have been calls for this type of research.
Design/methodology/approach: The present study employed a survey of members of the ICAB.
Findings: Results show that accountants in Bangladesh are satisfied with the CPD provided by their profession, and when satisfaction is compared with more developed countries, Bangladesh is greater on a number of measures. ICAB members would like to also be provided with opportunities to undertake CPD in more ways than just face to face.
Introduction
This paper examines the views of chartered accountants in Bangladesh who attended various Continuing Professional Development (hereafter referred to as CPD) sessions and their satisfaction with this CPD. The paper also compares these levels of satisfaction with similar research from developed and developing countries. The paper responds to comments made by de Lange et al. (2015, p. 54) who noted that there are “opportunities for further research in regard to how new CPD requirements are operationalised by member bodies around the globe”. Motivation for this study is further derived from a number of other factors. First, there has been a continual growth in research which examines CPD in the last five years (see Ross and Anderson, 2013; Wines et al., 2013; de Lange et al., 2013, 2015; Halabi, 2015). While there has been an increase, there is no empirical evidence that focuses on accountant’s views on CPD through the lens of a less developed country (LDC). Even though some previous research on CPD described countries as less developed (see de Lange et al., 2015), none of these were part of the United Nations LDC list. The paper therefore compliments and extends existing research by examining how CPD is presently being completed in an LDC, and also how future CPD offerings may best be provided to those professional accountants. The country chosen for this research is Bangladesh - one of the world’s most densely populated, with more than 166m people (in 2018) based on United Nations estimates (Bangladesh Population, 2018). Of the 47 LDC’s on the United Nations (2018) list, Bangladesh is one of only two that have a professional accounting association recognised by the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) (the other being Zambia with the Zambia Institute of Chartered Accountants). The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB) is the largest professional accounting body in Bangladesh and their members are the subjects in this study[1]. The ICAB was formed in 1973 - the structure was modelled on the UK system (Zaman and Rahaman, 2005) so while the country may be under developed economically, from an accounting perspective, the ICAB is well established.