Critical analysis of integration of ICT and data analytics into the accounting curriculum: A multidimensional perspective

Undertaking a multistage qualitative approach, this study explores the accounting profession's demands for information communication technology (ICT) skills as well as the opportunities, challenges and influential factors that accounting academics encounter in embedding ICT and data analytics skills in the accounting curriculum. We employ content analysis of the course syllabi of all major Australian and New Zealand universities using term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF), and survey accounting heads of departments (or equivalents) and interview members of the industry. Our findings reveal diverse pedagogical approaches to embedding ICT and data analytics in the accounting curriculum. The findings also portray the gap between university accounting curricula and the professional bodies' ICT competencies requirements at the point of data collection. As such, challenges and future opportunities for the integration of topics related to ICT and data analytics are identified, which should be beneficial to academics and practitioners interested in future-oriented curriculum designs that are fundamental to accounting graduates and the future of the profession.