Chapter 2

REVIEW AND RELATED LITERATURE

Accounting is the systematic and comprehensive recording of financial transactions pertaining
to a business. Accounting also refers to the process of summarizing, analyzing and reporting these
transactions. The financial statements that summarize a large company's operations, financial position
and cash flows over a particular period are a concise summary of hundreds of thousands of financial
transactions it may have entered into over this period. Accounting is one of the key functions for almost
any business; it may be handled by a bookkeeper and accountant at small firms or by sizable finance
departments with dozens of employees at larger companies. The reports generated by various streams
of accounting, such as cost accounting and management accounting, are invaluable in helping
management make informed decisions.
Accountancy is a career which offers a graduate environment, variety, people contact, a
professional qualification, high salaries and opportunities to work internationally. Many accountants use
their qualification to move into general management or to set up their own business. Accountants work
in all areas of business, plus the public and voluntary sector.
Work in private practice is centered on audit: visiting clients as part of an audit team and
reviewing their business operations and financial records to establish the validity of the company's
accounts. Auditing gives you a chance to visit 10 or 20 companies a year, examine their finances and
strategies and and ask questions about the way they work. You see what makes some profitable, some
fail, some good places to work and others bad: after 3 years training you have a unique insight into what
makes a business successful.
Other work includes tax consultancy, business advice and insolvency work. This gives a broad
insight into many different businesses and areas of business, which is why many accountants choose to
qualify in private practice before moving into industry and other areas. If you train in private practice
you will qualify with one of the chartered accountancy institutes or with the Association of Chartered
Certified Accountants (ACCA)
Accountants in industry and commerce use their financial expertise to inform management
decision-making, to advise other departments within their organization and to maximize its profitability
and effectiveness. In the public sector they perform a similar role but with the emphasis on ensuring
value for money.
RELATED LITERATURE
Foreign Literature
Employability is about having the capability to gain initial employment, maintain employment
and obtain new employment if required. For the individual, employability depends upon:
1. Assets in terms of knowledge, skills and attitudes,
2. The way these assets are used and deployed,
3. Presentation of assets to potential employers,
4. The context within which the individual works, e.g. labor market, personal circumstances.
Government policy is aimed more at the development and accreditation of knowledge and
vocational skills than the softer skills and attitudes, more on the demonstration of assets than their
deployment, more at individuals looking to enter the labor market, from education or unemployment,
than those already within the labor market and more on the individual and supply side than the
employers and demand side.
Two main concepts of employability are:
1) The educational conception relating to the ability of graduates to tackle graduate jobs.
This is related to the notion of capability whose development was sponsored by the RSA in
the late 1980s - 'Higher Education for Capability'. This means that employability of
graduates relates to their being equipped for a job and capable of being employed, rather
than job acquisition.
2) The ability of the graduate to get a job any job. Good student learning and the
curriculum,teaching and assessment that goes with it, describes education for
employability well (Knight &Yorke, 2000). This implies that curricula designed to enhance
students employability are also desirable on purely educational grounds. It is possible to
see both the traditional academic education and key skills as being subsets of
employability. It is difficult to maintain that academic progress is not enhanced by high
standard of literacy and numeracy, by a range of communication skills and the ability to
work in groups or teams, and by learning how to learn effectively (Atkins, 1999).
From the employers point of view, employability is the propensity of the graduate to exhibit
attributes that employers anticipate will be necessary for the future effective functioning of their
organisation(Harvey, 1997). Increasingly, graduates need to be more flexible in response to the growing
number of career changes experienced through life for many people, because of the increase in short
term contracts, part-time work, outsourcing and home-working (Harvey, 2000a).
Employment and employability are not the same thing. Being employed means having a job,
being employable means having the qualities needed to maintain employment and progress in the
workplace. Employability from the greater perspective is therefore about producing graduates who are
capable and able, and this impact upon all areas of university life, in terms of the delivery of academic
programs and extra curricula activities.
The Accounting Profession in 20th Century
The accounting profession in this century is facing a rapid growth of demands for more reliable
and comparable financial reporting. Increased competition by different accounting firms is also growing
so fast. In this way, future accountants and other potential decision makers for management demanding
skills. They must be aware of these tools to develop even better tools needed to meet the rapid growth
demands. Beyond basic numerical and language skills, ethics and integrity, paper work attitude,
experiential knowledge, creative use of the new tools for recordkeeping and analysis must be vision by
the future accountants in order to be fully functional in technological changes. In other words, future
accountants must go beyond being world-class technicians in recordkeeping and preparation of accurate
and honest financial statements, but be highly analytic and synthetic thinkers.
The accounting profession is abuzz with the prospect of developing robust commission driven
financial planning practices. The barriers are coming down, and broker dealers are developing all sorts
of affiliations and relationship to tap into the accumulated wealth of CPA clients.
It has been said that the numbers of accountants entering the financial planning field during the
early 90's could be described as a trickle that has become a flow and which soon be almost 6000
accounting firms will enter financial planning ventures of one form or another.
Wallace E. Olson, The Accounting Profession in the 20th Century. - The CPA Journal Millennium Series.
LOCAL LITERATURE
Accountancy is a profession. A graduate of BS in Accountancy who passed the board exam is
called a CPA (Certified Public Accountant), or in short an Accountant. An accountant's job includes the
performance of financial functions related to the collection, accuracy, recording, analysis and
presentation of a business, organization or company's financial operations. The accountant usually has a
variety of administrative roles within a company's operation. The employment opportunities for the
accountancy graduates may vary depending on whether or not they pass the certified public accountant
board examination. However most countries require their own licensure examination to work as a
licensed accountant, so opportunities abroad are mostly for jobs which do not require licensure.
Another option would be to take and pass the licensure exam at the country which you intend to work
in. Thus in the Philippines, entry level jobs for both board passers and non board passers are more or
less the same. Compensation is above the minimum wage, it can range from 12,000php to 18,000php
per month. For those who have more experience and who passed the CPA board, salary can reach as
high as 60,000php.
http://www.finduniversity.ph/majors/bs-in-accountancy-philippines/
http://www.dlsu.edu.ph/research/centers/cberd/conferences/accounting.pdf
Foreign Studies
The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) is the official agency for the collection, analysis
and dissemination of quantitative information about higher education in the United Kingdom. By March
2014, over the last 3 years destinations of Accounting & Finance graduates have broken down as
follows: Employed (61.9%), Further study (8.5%), Working and studying (14.2%), Unemployed (10.9%),
Other (4.4%) - (Figures from HESA www.prospects.ac.uk/links/wdgd ). These statistics only cover the
first six months after graduation. A significant number of graduates are, at this stage, engaged in work
which they would regard as temporary - using a short-term job to gain work experience that could act as
a stepping-stone to a better position, or earning money to finance postgraduate study or time out
travelling, for example.
Local Studies
Ylagan considered in his dissertation the other factors of employability, which generate socio-
economic efforts like the family, the church, and the neighborhood. It is most probably for him, that the
school is the most effective agent of socio-economic changes especially in the Philippines where there is
a strong desire for education. Some of the so-called outputs of education are as follows;
1. Ability to find and hold an employment on the face of stiff competitions.
2. The opportunity to occupy higher positions partly as a result of higher level of education
required in the hierarchy of jobs.
3. The ability to create self-employment as opposed to becoming a servant in an employer-
employee relation.
He also suggested that schools should follow-up program on their alumni. He stressed that
graduation should not terminate the relationship between former graduates and they're Alma Mater.
School should continue maintaining relationship with former students. It should Endeavour where the
alumni are, what they are doing, how well they fate in life, and how they perceive the contributions of
economic well being. Some school do this, there should be more doing it.