The Role of Entrepreneurial Intent and Need for Achievement in Accounting Students’ Career Aspirations: Some Preliminary Data

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Abstract

The objective of this study is to gain insights into the intended career choices of accounting majors in order to better understand why some graduates choose a career working for public accounting firms, while others prefer to work in corporate or governmental accounting jobs or eventually start their own firm.

This research has the potential to inform both undergraduate and graduate accounting curriculum and recruiters. The accounting curriculum may be enhanced to help students develop critical skills and the self-efficacy necessary to be successful in their aspired careers.

While prior research has addressed issues such as why undergraduate students seek accounting as a profession (e.g., Felton, Buhr, & Northey; 1994) and accounting students’ public accounting career aspirations (Belkaoui, 1986), little research has been conducted that examines why some accounting graduates prefer to spend their career working for one of the public accounting firms or open a firm where they are one of the founding partners. Prior research in accounting reports that students’ need for achievement is one of the drivers of their career aspirations (e.g., Belkaoui, 1986). The entrepreneurship literature suggests that students that score high on the need for achievement are more likely to pursue more entrepreneurial jobs like sales managers or small business owners (e.g., Sagie and Elizur, 1999). We contribute to this research by investigating what drives accounting students’ career aspirations.

To test our hypotheses, we developed and distributed a survey instrument that measured participants’ need for achievement, entrepreneurial intent, and career aspirations. Our results indicate the students with higher entrepreneurial intent are more likely to aspire to careers in public accounting while those students that scored lower were more likely to aspire to careers in corporate accounting.

Authors

• Marco Lam, Western Carolina University

• Susan L Swanger, Western Carolina University

• Jay Azriel, York College of Pennsylvania