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Accounting
Factors influencing accounting students’
students’ career paths career paths
Yen-Hong Ng, Sue-Pei Lai, Zhi-Peng Su, Jing-Yi Yap, Hui-Qi Teoh and
Han Lee 319
Department of Commerce and Accountancy, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman,
Kampar, Malaysia Received 28 November 2015
Revised 6 May 2016
22 July 2016
Abstract Accepted 31 July 2016
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors that influence accounting students’ preference
toward career paths. Career path refers to the choices of jobs and occupational positions an individual may
choose to hold. Accounting students may choose to advance their career into one of the following areas:
financial accounting, management accounting, taxation, auditing, finance, etc. According to past
literature, choices of career path are influenced by intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, third parties,
and career exposure.
Design/methodology/approach – A self-administered survey was used to collect data from students in a
reputable private university in Malaysia. This university recruits a huge number of accounting students
annually for its accounting program. A total of 306 questionnaires were collected for data analysis using
statistical analysis system.
Findings – The findings of the study suggest that undergraduate accounting students are more influenced
by intrinsic motivation and career exposure in selecting their career paths, whereas third parties and extrinsic
motivation are less likely to influence undergraduate accounting students’ career choices.
Research limitations/implications – The results, however, could not be generalized to all accounting
students in Malaysia since the study was collected from only one private university in Malaysia and
non-probability sampling technique was applied. The theoretical contribution of this study is the inclusion of
new variables in the model.
Practical implications – Professional accounting bodies may benefit from the findings of this study as it
may provide a basis in designing member recruitment strategies.
Originality/value – This paper fulfills an identified need to study how shortage of certain career path for
accounting students could be resolved.
Keywords Career development, Career planning, Career management, Career interest, Career path
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
According to the Malaysian Institute of Certified Public Accountants, accounting is a system
of recording past transactions, organizing source documents, and analyzing companies’
financial performance and position. In Malaysia, the accountant profession is regulated by a
statutory body called the Malaysian Institute of Accountants (MIA), which was established
under the Accountants Act of 1967. Apart from regulating accounting practices, the MIA also
plays a significant role in enhancing the competency level of accountancy professionals in
meeting market demand. As reported by Nor et al. (2013), Malaysia plans to have 80,000
professional accountants by year 2020. However, the total number of registered MIA members
in the country is only 29,624 in the year 2013/2014. The number is still far behind the target
amount. Apart from that, as reported by Southern University College in 2014, Malaysia also
has a shortage of qualified tax accountants as well as qualified cost accountants. One of the
reasons is an outflow of trained and qualified accounting professionals to neighboring
countries such as Singapore. The number of members recruited by the Association of
Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and the Chartered Institute of Management
Journal of Management
Accountants (CIMA) indicates a slanted preference by accounting students. In year 2013, Development
ACCA recruited 10,361 new members, while CIMA only recruited 5,527 new members. The Vol. 36 No. 3, 2017
pp. 319-329
low number of member recruitment in CIMA may be an indicator of accounting students’ © Emerald Publishing Limited
0262-1711
preference toward their career paths. Hutaibat (2005), as cited in Hutaibat (2012), explained DOI 10.1108/JMD-11-2015-0169
JMD that the lack of preference for management accounting could be due to the lack of formal
36,3 education in management accounting. Past literature revealed that other influencing factors
using the social cognitive career theory (SCCT) include intrinsic motivation, extrinsic
motivation, third parties influence, and career exposure.
The objective of this study is to identify factors which influence accounting students in
choosing their career paths upon graduation. Basically, accounting students have many
320 choices in terms of career advancement upon their graduation. For instance, they may
advance into areas of financial accounting, taxation, management accounting, auditing,
finance, etc. This study includes new variables in the model to ascertain which factors
are significant in influencing accounting students’ preference toward their career paths.
Besides that, educational institutions may benefit from this study as subject teachers or
academic counselors may use the findings of this study to assist students in their career
choices. Moreover, professional accounting bodies may also benefit as the findings could
provide a basis for them to design their member recruitment strategies.

Literature review
Social cognitive career theory (SCCT)
The SCCT, which was developed by Lent et al. (1994), is used to explain variables that
influence a person’s career choices. According to Lent et al. (1994), the SCCT refers to the
process of an individual developing his or her career choices, vocational interests, and
persistence of his or her career. As explained by Wang et al. (2007), SCCT posits that an
individual’s career choices and goals are influenced by the person’s self-efficacy beliefs and
career expectations. The concept of SCCT is regularly used in past literature in the
examination of career choices and career development. There are three major variables
involved in the career choice process, which are personal, contextual, and behavioral
variables ( Flores et al., 2010). A past study conducted by James and Hill (2009) had
used SCCT as a framework in analyzing the phenomenon, whereby a majority of
African-American students are uninterested to advance in accounting as their career option.
As explained by Chantara et al. (2011), SCCT comprises three primary tenets, namely,
self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and goals. Self-efficacy refers to an individual’s faith
about his or her capabilities to achieve a course of action which is related to career
achievement (Mandzik, 2011). Humans with strong sense of self-efficacy will usually
place great effort in accomplishing tasks despite of the obstacles they encounter.
Outcome expectations, on the other hand, refer to the beliefs on the future consequence after
a certain behavior is performed (Mandzik, 2011; Chantara et al., 2011). Lastly, goals are
defined as a person’s determination to decide on specific outcomes of learning or
performance. The composition of goals represents a critical mechanism which involves the
method with which a person exercises his or her self-empowerment.

Career path
Career path is defined by Yusoff et al. (2011) as a lifelong journey which should be planned
at the beginning of a person’s career. On the other hand, Joseph et al. (2012) defined career
path as an occupational position held by an individual for his or her entire lifetime. A person
could advance into a career of business, law, academics, entertainment, etc. Career path and
career choice could be used interchangeably. In this study, career path refers to the career
choice which an accounting student makes upon his or her graduation. An accounting
student’s career choice includes advancing into areas of audit, tax, management accounting,
financial accounting, finance, etc. According to Dalton et al. (2014), accounting students
frequently enter into the audit and tax career paths.
As commented by Byrne et al. (2012), identifying the factors that influence graduates’
career choices would be helpful to the accountancy profession for its promotional and
recruitment campaign. As discussed earlier, it is observed that Malaysian accounting Accounting
graduates have a slanted preference toward ACCA instead of CIMA. Thus, the identification students’
of factors influencing career choices (i.e. career path) for the accounting graduates would aid career paths
CIMA in its recruitment campaign. According to Joseph et al. (2012), a person’s career path
could also be influenced by the personal attributes of the individuals. Career path may also
refer to work experience instead of progress in terms of career, personal growth, job status,
and job satisfaction ( Jennifer, 2010 as cited in Yusoff et al., 2011). Similar to past literatures, 321
this study adopts the concept of SCCT in the examination of accounting students’ career
paths in a reputable higher learning institution which recruits a huge number of accounting
students annually for its accounting program.

Intrinsic motivation
Generally, motivation is divided into intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation.
Intrinsic motivation refers to something or an activity which brings personal satisfaction
(Ryan and Deci, 2000). Ryan and Deci (2000) further explained that intrinsic motivation is a
positive experience a person has when he acts out of his own interest or challenge. It is not
influenced by external factors such as pressures, rewards, or enforcement. On the other
hand, Jackling and Keneley (2009) defined intrinsic motivation as a personal contentment
achieved from chasing and searching for some activity. Intrinsic motivation includes two
components, namely, personal interest and personal choice.
A past study conducted by Odia and Ogiedu (2013) inspected factors affect accounting
students’ career choice decisions in Nigerian universities. All 300 questionnaires were
collected from undergraduates in three different universities. The t-test analysis
showed that intrinsic motivation was an important factor for accounting students.
Findings found that intrinsic motivation can positively affect students’ career paths.
Students prefer accounting simply because accounting is interesting. The students are also
confident in getting good results and are addicted to numbers and figures. These factors
had intrinsically motivated students to study accounting.
Another past study conducted by Mbawuni and Nimako (2015) examined job-related and
personality factors that influence career decisions for accounting students from the
University of Education, Winneba. Altogether, 516 questionnaires were collected from
undergraduate accounting students. Findings from this study showed feelings and
perception toward the accounting profession have positive and significant influence
on career decision among accounting students. On the other hand, according to
Adeleke et al. (2013), personality factors which included aptitude and attitude are shown as
significant factors of personality in the progress of career interest. Respondents of that
study comprised secondary school leavers from both urban and rural areas. Therefore, this
leads to the following hypothesis:
H1. There is a positive relationship between intrinsic motivation and career path.

Extrinsic motivation
As explained by Ryan and Deci (2000), extrinsic motivation is different from intrinsic
motivation. A person may be extrinsically motivated to perform some tasks even though
they do not enjoy the task, as he may be working for expected rewards (Bainbridge, 2015).
As such, Bainbridge (2015) defined extrinsic motivation as a motivation factor that comes
from the outside of an individual.
A study carried out by Hejazi and Bazrafshan (2013) consisting of 75 questionnaires was
used to survey the perception of graduate accounting students in universities of Iran
regarding their interest in management accounting. The result showed that management
accounting is less preferred to than financial accounting and auditing among the accounting
JMD students because financial accounting could provide them with better extrinsic motivation
36,3 in terms of higher pay and better benefits. The findings of the study concluded that extrinsic
motivation could influence career paths. Apart from that, there are also other past studies
which have found that extrinsic motivation is positively associated with career path
( Jackling and Keneley, 2009; James and Hill, 2009; Demagalhaes et al., 2011). Based on these
past studies, the common extrinsic motivation factors found to influence career paths are
322 salary and availability of job opportunities.
However, Porter and Woolley (2014) found that the effect of extrinsic motivation is
smaller in comparison to intrinsic motivation in terms of career choice. The study was
conducted in a single university with a total of 278 questionnaires being collected and
analyzed. Even though Porter and Woolley (2014) agreed that the accounting career does
provide extrinsic benefits such as better pay and career stability, intrinsic motivation is a
greater factor in influencing career path. Despite the mixed results found, the hypothesis of
this study on extrinsic motivation is as follows:
H2. There is a positive relationship between extrinsic motivation and career path.

Influence of third parties

Career choice can also be affected by an individual or a group of people which includes
family members, friends, career guidance teachers, and career consultants. Numerous past
studies have found that third parties’ influence is one of the important factors that influence
the career paths of accounting students. According to these past studies, students are
influenced by parents (Byrne et al., 2012; Myburgh, 2005; Porter and Woolley, 2014; Tan and
Laswad, 2006; Umar, 2014), subject teachers ( Byrne et al., 2012; Myburgh, 2005), relatives
(Myburgh, 2005), and friends (Porter and Woolley, 2014).
However, one of the past studies conducted by Wally (2013) examined factors which
influence accounting students and concluded that influence by third parties is less
significant. Wally (2013) conducted the study in the University of Botswana with a
collection of 51 questionnaires from final-year accounting students. The findings of the
study suggested influence from parents, peers, and secondary teachers is unimportant.
Conversely, the availability of career advancement, personal interest toward the subject, job
opportunities available, and higher earnings are more important factors in influencing
the accounting students’ career paths. Despite the mixed results found, the hypothesis of
this study on the influence of third parties is as follows:
H3. There is a positive relationship between influence of third parties and career path.

Career exposure
In this study, career exposure refers to students’ exposure to career-related information.
According to Ghani et al. (2008), most accounting students gain career exposure through
professional accounting bodies. Ghani and Said (2009) commented that it is important for
students to be exposed to the nature of an accountant’s job and what type of career it offers.
With greater exposure on career-related information, one can make better decision in their
career choice.
Past studies have indicated that career exposure given by professional practitioners
has influenced students’ career choice (Ghani et al., 2008; Sugahara and Boland, 2006;
Hutaibat, 2012). A study conducted by Ghani et al. (2008) in one of the universities in
Malaysia had collected a total of 802 questionnaires from first- and final-year students.
The result showed that slightly more than half of the students had obtained some form of
exposure during their university life. The exposure was obtained from lecturers as well as
through career talks provided by professional accounting bodies and counseling sessions.
On the other hand, a study which investigated factors influencing students to be interested Accounting
in pursuing management accounting careers conducted by Hutaibat (2012) found that students’
accounting students prefer public accounting as their career choice compared to career paths
management accounting area due to lack of seminars, workshops, and tutorials organized
by their universities. As a result, students lack detailed information and sufficient
knowledge with regards to career options in the management accounting area. Through this
study, it suggests the importance of career exposure toward students’ preference in their 323
career paths. Therefore, this leads to the following hypothesis (Figure 1):
H4. There is a positive relationship between career exposure and career path.

Research methodology
This study is conducted in one of the private universities in Malaysia. The institution is
selected as it represents a reputable higher learning institution which recruits a huge
number of accounting students annually for its accounting program. The authors attempted
to obtain the list of students for accounting program from the university management.
However, it was turned down. Hence, without a sampling frame, convenience sampling,
which is one of the non-probability sampling techniques, is applied. Convenience sampling
refers to a sampling method where responses to questionnaires are obtained from
respondents who are conveniently available in providing it (Sekaran, 2003). According to
Choy et al. (2011), as long as the proportion of target population has insignificant influence
toward the validity of result, convenience sampling is suitable to be used. Nevertheless, the
researchers applied extra care during the data collection process to ensure the result is
fairly distributed among the first-, second-, and third-year accounting students.
The questionnaires were distributed in three different lecture sessions as an effort to
cover all accounting students from first, second, and third year of their studies.
Self-administered questionnaires were distributed and collected immediately. Items in
the questionnaires were adapted from past studies. Both intrinsic motivation and extrinsic
motivation are measured using five constructs adapted from Odia and Ogiedu (2013).
Influence by third parties is measured by five constructs adapted from Hutaibat (2012) and
Ghani et al. (2008). Career exposure is measured using five constructs adapted
from Hutaibat (2012), and career path is measured using five constructs adapted from
Yusoff et al. (2011). These question items are depicted in Table I. Before the questionnaires
were distributed, a pilot test of 30 samples was conducted to ensure that the questions are
reliable and understood clearly by the respondents. A five-point Likert scale, stating
1 ¼ strongly disagree, 2 ¼ disagree, 3 ¼ neutral, 4 ¼ agree, and 5 ¼ strongly agree, was used
to measure each item. For the measurement of sex, program of study, and family

Intrinsic Motivation
H1

Extrinsic Motivation H2

Career Path
H3
Influences of Third Parties

Career Exposure H4
Figure 1.
Sources: Adapted from Mustapha and Abu Hassan (2012), Hutaibat Conceptual framework
(2012), Odia and Ogiedu (2013) and Ghani et al. (2008)
JMD No. of
36,3 Code Dimensions and items of evaluation items Sources

Intrinsic motivation 5 Odia and Ogiedu (2013)

IM1 I like accounting
IM2 Accounting is interesting
IM3 I would enjoy being an accountant
324 IM4 I am willing to spend a lot of time studying accounting
IM5 I can do better in calculation
Extrinsic motivation 5 Odia and Ogiedu (2013)
EM1 I choose accounting course because there will be jobs available for
me when I graduated
EM2 I choose accounting course because there will always be a great job
market demand for people like me
EM3 I can get high-paying job if I graduate with accounting degree
EM4 Being an accountant has a lot of prestige
EM5 The accounting profession is well respected
Influence by third parties 5 Hutaibat (2012) and
Ghani et al. (2008)
ITP1 My family and friends have high influence on my career path
decisions
ITP2 I am strongly influenced by the educators on my choice of career path
ITP3 I am strongly influenced by the media on my choice of career path
ITP4 I am strongly influenced by the public/society on my choice of
career path
ITP5 I am strongly influenced by the career counselor on my choice of
career path
Career exposure 5 Hutaibat (2012)
CE1 I am aware of the existence of professional bodies and
qualifications for accounting students
CE2 I am given real case studies in university
CE3 Seminars and workshops in accounting are provided at universities
CE4 There are plenty of job opportunities for accounting students
CE5 There is support from the professional bodies to accounting students
Career path 5 Yusoff et al. (2011)
CP1 I plan to further my postgraduate studies in accounting after I
graduate
CP2 I have the intention to continue pursuing professional
qualifications
Table I. CP3 I clearly know my choice of professional body
Research constructs CP4 I understand the career options available to me (e.g. tax assistant,
and measurement audit assistant, costing assistant, and accounts assistant)
items CP5 I clearly know my choice of career upon my graduation

background of the respondents, a nominal scale was used. An ordinal scale was used to
measure age, education level, and rank of choices of accounting students. Out of the 350
questionnaires distributed, only 306 responses were complete and usable. The questionnaires
collected were then keyed into the statistical analysis system for further analysis.

Data analysis
Table II summarizes the demographic profile of respondents of this study. The respondents
consist of 173 (56.54 percent) females and 133 (43.46 percent) males. Most of the respondents are
21 years old, 22 years or older, and 20 years old at 30.07, 29.08, and 27.45 percent, respectively.
The remaining respondents are 19 years old (13.40 percent). There are 106 respondents
(34.64 percent) in their second year of the degree program. Respondents in the first
Profile Category Frequency %
Accounting
students’
Sex Female 173 56.54 career paths
Male 133 43.46
Age 19 41 13.40
20 84 27.45
21 92 30.07
22 or greater 89 29.08 325
Year of program First year 88 28.76
Second year 106 34.64
Third year 86 28.10
Fourth year 26 8.50
Accounting professionals among family members or Yes 148 48.37
friends of respondents No 158 51.63
Rank of choice on accounting program First choice 147 48.04
Second choice 105 34.31 Table II.
Third choice 54 17.65 Demographic profile
Note: n ¼ 306 of respondents

and third year number at 88 (28.76 percent) and 86 (28.10 percent), respectively. Only a small
number of students (8.50 percent) are in the fourth year as these are students who extended their
three-year degree program. More than half of the respondents (51.63 percent) do not
have family or friends who are accountants. Close to half of the respondents (147 respondents,
48.04 percent) have indicated that the accounting program was their first choice.
Table III shows the mean, standard deviation, and result for reliability and normality.
Career path has the highest mean of 3.6098. This deduces that a majority of the respondents
agree with our statement that they are clear on their career choices upon graduation.
The second highest mean is for extrinsic motivation (3.5314). This shows that a majority of
the respondents agree that higher pay and better job opportunities are important to them.
Cronbach’s α is frequently used in testing the reliability of data. According to Tavakol and
Dennick (2011), an acceptable value of Cronbach’s α is 0.70 and above. As seen from
Table III, all of the constructs have Cronbach’s α values of 0.7 and above, which indicate
that the multiple items used in measuring each construct are reliable. Lastly, skewness and
kurtosis are used to assess normality. Kurtosis is related to the distribution’s flatness, while
skewness measures the symmetry. Overall, the data appear to be normally distributed.
According to DeCarlo (1997), kurtosis values in the range of ±3 are considered acceptable.
As for skewness, a range of ±2 is considered acceptable (West et al., 1995). The results
presented in Table III show that constructs are normally distributed as the skewness values
are within the range of ±2 and the kurtosis values are within the range of ±3.
Table IV shows the result of Pearson correlation analysis. Since the value of correlation
between each variable is below 0.9, there is no multicollinearity problem (Saunders et al., 2009).
As seen from Table IV, the highest correlation between the independent variables is
0.59499, and since it is below 0.9, the multicollinearity problem does not exist.

Variables Mean SD Cronbach’s α Skewness Kurtosis

Intrinsic motivation 3.4374 1.1630 0.8551 −0.3163 −0.3432

Extrinsic motivation 3.5314 0.9220 0.8031 −0.2449 −0.3008 Table III.
Influence of third parties 3.2379 1.0463 0.7592 −0.1609 −0.4455 Mean, standard
Career exposure 3.4889 0.8823 0.7502 −0.2756 −0.1816 deviation, reliability,
Career path 3.6098 0.9454 0.8013 −0.2519 −0.5493 and normality results
JMD Intrinsic Extrinsic Influence of Career Career
36,3 motivation motivation third parties exposure path

Intrinsic motivation 1
Extrinsic motivation 0.49885 1
o0.0001
Influence of third parties 0.22283 0.39503 1
326 o0.0001 o0.0001
Career exposure 0.39976 0.59499 0.39684 1
Table IV. o0.0001 o0.0001 o0.0001
Pearson correlation Career path 0.59933 0.46208 0.18249 0.48257 1
analysis results o0.0001 o0.0001 o0.0001 o0.0001

A multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between several
independent variables and one dependent variable. Table V shows the result from the multiple
regression analysis. The proposed model was adequate as the F-value (58.42) was significant at
0.05 level ( PrWF ¼ o0.0001). Thus, this indicates that the overall model was reasonably fit.
As seen from Table V, the adjusted R2 of the model is 0.4296. This indicates that 42.96 percent
of the variance in the career path can be explained by the four independent variables, namely,
intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, influence of third parties, and career exposure.
The result of hypothesis testing for the independent variables’ relationship with the
dependent variable is shown in Table V. Two out of the four independent variables, which
are intrinsic motivation and career exposure, have p-values of less than 0.05.
Therefore, the variables’ null hypotheses are rejected. This study has concluded that
both intrinsic motivation and career exposure have positive relationships with career
path. For extrinsic motivation and influence of third parties, the p-value is above 0.05,
hence, the null hypotheses are not rejected. Therefore, both extrinsic motivation and
influence of third parties do not have significant relationships with career path. Lastly,
from the multiple regression analysis results, the following prediction model is formed:

Career path ¼ 1:0075þ 0:4030ðIMÞ þ0:1045ðEMÞ – 0:0611ðITPÞþ0:2997ðCEÞ

where IM stands for intrinsic motivation, EM stands for extrinsic motivation, ITP stands
for influence of third parties, and CE stands for career exposure.
According to the equation above, the most powerful antecedent to career path is intrinsic
motivation. It means that with every 1 unit increase in intrinsic motivation, career path
will increase by 0.4030 units. The second powerful antecedent to career path is career exposure.
Every 1 unit increase in career exposure will result in an increase in career path by 0.2997 units.

Unstandardized coefficients Standardized coefficients

Model β SE β t-value Sig.

(Constant) 1.0075 0.2005 5.02 o 0.0001

Intrinsic motivation 0.4030 0.0445 0.4569 9.06 o 0.0001
Extrinsic motivation 0.1045 0.0601 0.1021 1.74 0.0831
Influence of third parties −0.0611 0.0455 −0.0647 −1.34 0.1804
Career exposure 0.2997 0.0630 0.2648 4.75 o 0.0001
R2 0.4370
Table V. Adjusted R2 0.4296
Multiple regression F-value 58.42
analysis results Sig. F o0.0001
Conclusion and discussion Accounting
The findings of this study have concluded that intrinsic motivation and career exposure students’
have positive relationships with career path. However, extrinsic motivation and influence career paths
of third parties do not have significant relationships with career path.
The result of this study is supported by past studies. According to past studies, intrinsic
motivation is an important variable in influencing career path ( Jackling and Keneley, 2009;
Ryan and Deci, 2000; Adeleke et al., 2013; Odia and Ogiedu, 2013; Mbawuni and Nimako, 2015). 327
Most of the respondents reflect that they chose accounting as their career choice because they
like calculations and found accounting interesting. Past studies conducted by Ghani et al. (2008),
Sugahara and Boland (2006), and Hutaibat (2012) have also concluded that career exposure has
a positive relationship with career path. This is in-line with the findings of this study.
The respondents need sufficient information on the accounting career and exposure in order to
choose their career paths. The findings of this study have also indicated that extrinsic
motivation has no significant relationship with career path. This is supported by Porter and
Woolley (2014) which found that extrinsic motivation is not as influential as intrinsic motivation.
Influence by third parties also has an insignificant relationship with career path, which is in-line
with past studies conducted by Wally (2013) and Hejazi and Bazrafshan (2013). According to
Hejazi and Bazrafshan (2013), interest of family members and friends does not affect the
students’ own interest.
This study is beneficial to the professional accounting bodies in designing their
strategies for members’ recruitment. However, the results of this study may be limited in
two ways. First, this study was conducted in a single private institution in Malaysia.
Second, the data were collected using convenience sampling method. The results, therefore,
cannot be generalized to all accounting students in Malaysia. Nonetheless, the findings of
this study may still be beneficial to the professional accounting bodies as the private
university chosen recruits a huge number of accounting students in Malaysia annually for
its accounting program. From the findings of this study, a shortage of qualified
cost accountants as mentioned earlier could be solved by creating interest in secondary
school students before they enter into tertiary education. Professional bodies such as
CIMA and ACCA may consider providing more talks, seminars, and events to improve
secondary school students’ interest toward management accounting. Besides, talks,
seminars, and events on the management accounting career could also be provided to
tertiary students to expose them to career paths in the management accounting area.
With more career exposure toward the management accounting career, accounting students’
interest in management accounting career could be further improved. The results of this
study could be further improved in two ways. First, control variables such as year of
program or/and age could be included to further enhance the model. Second, the two
insignificant independent variables may be replaced by other variables, for instances,
employer requirement, sources of information from media, etc., in future research. It may
also be of interest for future research to extend its scope to examine other business students
who decided not to major in accounting.

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Further reading
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Chartered Certified Accountants, London.
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Management Accountants, London.
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Kuala Lumpur.
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Kuala Lumpur, available at: www.mia.org.my/new/members_statistics_growth.asp (accessed
March 1, 2015).
Malaysian Institute of Certified Public Accountants (2015), “What is accounting? – MICPA”, Kuala Lumpur,
available at: www.micpa.com.my/students/what-is-accounting/ (accessed March 1, 2015).
Southern College Malaysia (2014), “Malaysia faces talent shortage in accounting”, Johor, available at:
southern.edu.my/news/news.php?id=199 (accessed March 1, 2015).

Corresponding author
Yen-Hong Ng can be contacted at: ngyh@utar.edu.my

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