Accountants in the Profession for Sustainability - myassignmenthelp

Questions: 1.How does accounting profession engage with the community to add value to stakeholders and oneself? 2.What are the strategies and development tools that are appropriate for an accounting profession to sustain a competitive advantage in terms of employment and level of competence? Answers: 1. The accounting profession should start by appreciating the global interest in sustainability that has continuously evolved at a skyrocketing pace on very vast scope including but not limited to shifts to integrated reporting as well as assurance on sustainability reports. Accountants must become actively engaged crossways what is referred to as the sustainability cycle that moves from internal sustainability initiatives connected to strategic objectives to the engagement of stakeholders on the basis of formal reporting with assurance. Accounting professionals must be motivated to become actively engaged in business sustainability alongside role of accounting in its evolution. By engaging the practice of business sustainability these professionals will be able to create greater long-run value. The professionals should emphasize on business sustainability encompassing a vast array of issues of stakeholders including but limited to green agendas thereby enabling organization to take into account multiple groups of stakeholders when making decision to accomplish their strategies to allow the organization, accountant himself and the community at large to benefit on the long-run basis (Lee, Song, Lee, Lee, and Bernhard 2013). As part of a vast accounting for sustainability cycle, the accounting professionals should best understand sustainability by connecting it directly to business strategy and EMR to position sustainability as a means to positively impact the profession and organizations ability to create long-run value to stakeholders. The professionals will create long-run value by effectively managing key stakeholders via its consistent strategy application as well as timely internal and external communications. The professionals should engage stakeholders and link sustainability activities to strategy of organization to position management in a better position to balance stakeholders as well as shareholders interest simultaneously via more efficient processes. The community engagement must be viewed by the accounting profession as a golden opportunity to contribute to community being served while making sure that core business, research and teaching remains relevant. They should seek to leverage the business knowledge, skills, and expertise in accounting as well as management to speak to societal challenges and promote development economically and hence enrich the tuition and research. The profession should adopt a two-way approach whereby accounting professionals engage communities with a perception to help them that provides opportunities to undertake more relevant/problem-directed research as well as information gathering which can be incorporated into as well as improve the profession. The profession should also seek partnership with communities, business, professional bodies, development sector and government in order to enhance the prevailing socio-economic development via staff expertise harnessing to speak to the needs of the society where necessary (Lawson, Blocher, Brewer, Morris, Stocks, Sorensen, Stout, and Wouters 2015). The profession should determine the choice of community engagement projects by the communitys needs (however defined/identified), whether the accounting profession has pre-requisite expertise to appropriately respond. 2. Accounting profession winners and losers will hugely be determined by the ability to attract, retain as well as develop future expertise and leaders. Workers with best talent and, hence, best ideas and skills to have the job done, shall accomplish their strategic goals. The strategic compensation should be used as a competitive edge. This is because competition to keep such valuable, high-performing workers remains at a record time high. The profession should use a strategic performance alongside reward systems as among the most effective means to retain top performers (Bryant and Allen 2013). The profession should use a balanced compensation alongside ownership plan to incetivitize performance to improve recruitment and retention efforts, positioning the profession to achieve its professional goals. Again, the profession must assess their individual operations for the development of kind of non-negative and productive work environment which attract and retain high level performers. The profession should leverage compensation strategies to motivate workers as they align their behaviors and job performance with strategic goals of the profession. Such mid-term strategies or tools will include bonus incentive plans, deferred compensation plans, stock appreciation rights plans, stock option plans, phantom stock plans, net profits interest plans, and minority ownership plans (Demerouti, Bakker and Leiter 2014). The profession should also focus on ensuring their workers have core competencies to deliver distinct value to customers though continuous upskilling. The profession ensure proper collective learning of how to coordinate diverse accounting skills and integrate multifaceted technologies. This will help the profession invest in strengths which distinguish it and set strategies to unify entire workforce. The profession should also apply adaptability as a competitive edge. Accounting profession will achieve such competitive edge by motivating their workers to have the ability to read and act on signal, ability to experiment, ability to manage complex multi-company system, and ability to mobilize. This adaptabilities will be achieved by examining the mavericks, examination of multiple alternatives, increasing clock speed, putting an initiative on each risk, identifying and addressing uncertainties. References Bryant, P.C. and Allen, D.G., 2013. Compensation, benefits and employee turnover: HR strategies for retaining top talent. Compensation Benefits Review, 45(3), pp.171-175. Demerouti, E., Bakker, A.B. and Leiter, M., 2014. Burnout and job performance: The moderating role of selection, optimization, and compensation strategies. Journal of occupational health psychology, 19(1), p.96. Lawson, R.A., Blocher, E.J., Brewer, P.C., Morris, J.T., Stocks, K.D., Sorensen, J.E., Stout, D.E. and Wouters, M.J., 2015. Thoughts on competency integration in accounting education. Issues in Accounting Education, 30(3), pp.149-171. Lee, C.K., Song, H.J., Lee, H.M., Lee, S. and Bernhard, B.J., 2013. The impact of CSR on casino employees organizational trust, job satisfaction, and customer orientation: An empirical examination of responsible gambling strategies. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 33, pp.406-415.