Understanding, predicting and influencing business students' accounting career choice.

This thesis proposes and evaluates a new integrated model of accounting career choice (ACC), drawing upon current theories of planned behaviour and work values and past accounting research. Furthermore, the thesis investigates changes to the model's constructs after business students have been exposed to a traditional versus an innovative first accounting course (FAC).Combining a longitudinal approach with a quasi-experimental design, the findings of the study show the following: First, subjective norm, attitude and perceived control are all significant predictors of first semester business students' intention to pursue a career in the accounting profession. However, regression analysis revealed that of the dimensions of attitude, only the intrinsic dimension is a significant predictor of intention. Extrinsic, prestige and social dimensions do not contribute to the prediction. Normative beliefs concerning the pursuit of an accounting career, beliefs concerning the intrinsic attributes and outcomes associated with the accounting profession and self-efficacy beliefs concerning the pursuit of an accounting career have been identified as the important sub-constructs of an ACC. Second, at the end of the traditional FAC, subjective norm has statistically significantly improved; however, all other constructs of an ACC have been negatively affected, and students' perceived control has statistically significantly deteriorated. On the other hand, at the end of an innovative FAC, intention, subjective norm and attitude have statistically significantly improved while perceived control has remained stable. Significant differences in all the constructs of an ACC have been identified among students in both the traditional and the innovative FACs. The identified differences can be attributed to the additional information about the accounting profession that students in innovative courses received through accounting practitioners' presentations. The thesis supports prior research that professional accountants making presentations is a very effective strategy of integrating information about the accounting profession into classroom practice and of influencing students' intention to pursue an accounting career.