Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to identify and gain recent insights into the extent to which skills expectation gap exists from the perspective of employers in a Pacific Island country, including the competencies perceived essential within the work context of accountants and the support provided by employers to accounting graduates to address the skills expectation gap.

Design/methodology/approach

Using the expectation–performance gap framework developed by Bui and Porter (2010), this study collects and analyses data via semi-structured interviews with employers at chartered accounting firms, large- and medium-sized commercial and industrial firms in Fiji.

Findings

Majority of the employers indicated that graduates from the Fijian universities are adequately prepared and have acquired the necessary attributes to perform at the workplace. However, employers expect universities to do a little more in terms of developing confidence and improving ability to apply theoretical knowledge to practice. The findings also outline that the institutional-, social- and student-related constraints directly affect the quality of graduates, which are not in control of academics.

Research limitations/implications

It is noted that graduate capabilities are developed over two different learning environments. This study focused on how universities prepared graduates to perform at the workplace from the perspective of employers. This serves as a basis for future research to investigate effectiveness of trainings provided by employers to graduates to enable them into becoming successful accounting professionals.

Originality/value

This study adds clarifications to the debate on academic–practice gap by providing recent insights into the extent to which graduates demonstrate capabilities to perform in the accounting profession, the prevailing issues with graduate capabilities and the employers’ contribution towards strengthening graduate capabilities.

中文翻译：

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毕业生为从事会计职业做好准备——对斐济雇主观点的调查

目的

本文的目的是从太平洋岛国雇主的角度确定并获得对技能预期差距存在程度的最新见解，包括在会计师的工作环境中被认为必不可少的能力以及雇主提供的支持会计毕业生解决技能期望差距。

设计/方法/途径

使用 Bui 和 Porter（2010 年）开发的预期绩效差距框架，本研究通过对斐济特许会计师事务所、大中型商业和工业公司的雇主进行半结构化访谈来收集和分析数据。

发现

大多数雇主表示，斐济大学的毕业生已做好充分准备，并已具备在工作场所发挥作用的必要素质。然而，雇主希望大学在培养信心和提高将理论知识应用于实践的能力方面做得更多。调查结果还概述了与制度、社会和学生相关的限制直接影响毕业生的质量，而这不受学术界的控制。

研究局限性/影响

值得注意的是，毕业生的能力是在两种不同的学习环境中发展起来的。这项研究的重点是大学如何从雇主的角度培养毕业生在工作场所的表现。这将作为未来研究的基础，以调查雇主为毕业生提供的培训的有效性，使他们能够成为成功的会计专业人士。

原创性/价值

本研究通过对毕业生在会计专业表现能力的程度、毕业生能力的普遍问题以及雇主对加强毕业生能力的贡献提供最新见解，为关于学术-实践差距的辩论增添了澄清。