ACCOUNTANTS, THE CHALLENGES AND PREPARATION FOR GLOBALISATION ERA: A STORY FROM INDONESIA

Abstract

As one of the profession in the world, Accountant in Indonesia facing ASEAN Economic
Community that will affect globalisation and workforce mobilization. The impact of
globalisation for Accountant Profession is the need to be recognized globally by International
Standard. IFAC (International Federation of Accountant) has already set up the professional
standard and it should be implemented among the members. In Indonesia, there are two
associations for Accounting Profession: Indonesia Institute for Chartered Accountant (IAI) and
Indonesia Institute for Public Accountant (IAPI). Both have members and actively encourage
and preparing the members to face global era. Prior to standarisation, preparing the professsion
to be ready for globalisation is the basic step for facing it. Other than that, Higher Education or
Universities is the incubator in educating the future accountants which are also taking part for
profession development. Universities need to develop their curriculum to be equal to
International Education Standard (IES) which already been establisehd by IFAC, in The
International Accounting Education Standards Board (IAESB) which is an independent
standard-setting body that serves the public interest by establishing standards in the area of
professional accounting education that prescribe technical competence and professional skills,
values, ethics, and attitudes. In Indonesia, there is still no national standard on curriculum of
accounting education in universities and it will consider as problem in educating the future
accountants. Yet in the IAI and IAPI themselves there is still gap between the curriculum of
bith association with international standard. The purpose of this study is to obtain empirical
evidence and find clarity on role of IAPI, IAI and Universities in enhancing and support the accounting profession development in Indonesia especially to be ready in facing globalissation.
The role of those associations and universities in developing accounting profession are
significantly important since accountants have public service that will impact to industry as
well as private sector. This paper is using Quantitative Method and spreading questionairres to
respondents to (IAI, IAPI and Universities) as data collection and Regression Method as
analysis procedures. Our findings showed that varible IAPI (Audit Quality, Ethics and
Independecies) and IAI (IAI Regulation and socialisation: workshops, national events) has
significant influence in preparing Accountants in facing global in digital era but it is not happen
for variable University (National Accounting Education Standard)