Resumo:
Propsito do Trabalho:
The aim of this research was to understand which factors influence generation Y to choose accountancy as their career. Significant decline in the number of candidates willing to follow a career as accountants has been observed abroad - United States, Australia and Japan. However, in some other countries - Brazil, Singapore and Hong Kong - the opposite has been observed. Another problem is the decline in education quality of those pursuing an accounting career, contributing for many talented students to change their choice of career. This can be explained because people generally tend to believe accountancy is an exact science, full of calculations, boring and not creative enough, bringing an unbalance between the traits a person should have according to the job market and the ones perceived by the society. In order to give a contribution to literature concerning the factors that influence generation Y in their career choice, one of the aims of this research was to carry out an exploratory study, in which some hypothesis were formulated to support the discussion. For this, we used Mannheims generational theory and the literature concerning career choice. Research was carried out with a Questionnaire based on a focus group interview and literature review.
Base da plataforma terica:
Capitalism and the Spirits of Capitalism - Boltanski and Chiapello (2009) characterize and define the capitalism as the accumulation of capital by extraction of profit, which is reinvested to generate more profit and this way it makes possible the constant increase and accumulation of capital. This constant transformation of capital into currency, and this into new investments, allows enrichment, which is given by balance difference in two periods.
Spirits of Capitalism - Capitalism works through two principal actors, the great capitalist, who holds the means of production, and the little capitalist, that has to subordinate himself/herself to the first. In this logic, there has to be aspects that motivate those actors to engage in this process of capital accumulation and to keep it going. This motivation, which moves them to keep this machine functioning, is denominated spirit of capitalism.
Generations - The concept of generations has been problematic despite the efforts to come to a consensus in the 60s and 70s. This concept has been used since antiquity to explain process of social changes (Laufer and Bengston, 1974).
Mannheim (1952) presents two approaches: positivist and historical-romantic. The first one attempts to understand it and define a law that explain the developing historical rhythm, based on mans period of life, in which overlapping of older generations starts to disappear, being substituted by the upcoming generations. This vision is linked to the rate of biological growth. Improvement and social changes would be determined by the lifetime of individuals. The second goes against the idea that generation succession is a linear process in the development of a society history, but that it is related to an interior time, which cant be measured quantitatively, can only be experienced qualitatively. So, considering generations as a temporal unit from intellectual history makes it possible to discard units of measure such as hours, minutes, years, days, etc. Substitution of the temporal unit would allow us to assess intellectual movements.
Career Choice - Career choice is a process and not a time specific event that occurs in a certain point of life of an adolescent. Gati and Saka (2001), Barreto and Aiello-Vaisberg (2007) and Nepomuceno and Witter (2010) point that career choice is one of the most important decisions of a individual and it occurs typically during adolescence and may bring consequences to his whole life, because it will determine his/her destiny, lifestyle, education and people who he/she will be in familiar terms in society and in his/her work environment. Career choice is one of the most outstanding transitions in adolescence, considered decisive in life because of family influence and social pressure. Choice of a profession takes part of the process of defining to oneself and occupational identity (Dubar, 2005), adolescents way of seeing the world that will guide their future choices, characterized as a phase of conflicts and internal crises that reflects, mainly, in family environment (Santos, 2005).
Mtodo de investigao:
From the literature review and three focus groups performed with high school students, juniors in business careers and undergraduates from health sciences, exact sciences and business.
The sample for this study was comprised primarily of high school students who visited the 6th Feira de Profissoes da USP (6th USP Professions Fair) held on August 2nd, 3rd and 4th of 2012. The fair is organized by the Pro-Reitoria de Cultura e Extensao Universitaria (Pro-Rectorate of Culture and Outreach - PRCEU), a body that promotes actions in culture and outreach and serves as a means of communication and relationship between the university and society. The fairs objective is to provide information and activities for students, with the participation of their families and teachers, in order to help them decide on a career. The event offers vocational counseling, informal group meetings with professors from different areas of expertise, a tour around the campus and a Physics Show, presenting experiments.
To elaborate the questionnaire, three focus groups were conducted to assess what factors of influence in career choice would appear in the participants speeches. Review of literature on factor influencing career choice was used to support our questionnaire items and adapted questions from the SCTI from Germeijs and Verschueren (2006) were also used.
Data was gathered from December 6th through December 27th, 2012. A total of 954 responses were obtained, but only 665 questionnaires was analysed because some of them were incomplete and thus discarded.
Preliminary analysis showed that from the sample (S1), we had 480 female respondents and 185 male respondents. To control bias due to gender, a sub-sample (S2) was created by choosing 185 females from the 480 from the original sample. Selection was done with Excels function Randbetween. Also, respondents were segregated in five groups applied social sciences (ASS), exact sciences (ES), health sciences (HeS), humanities sciences (HS) and others (O) accordingly to their first career option and a comparative analysis among groups was performed.
Multivariate analysis was performed with SPSS20. Tests of internal consistency of the questionnaire, normality and homoscedasticity were performed in order to assess which test was the better fit for data.
Resultados, concluses e suas implicaes:
Results indicated that factors father and family (other members such as uncles, cousins and grandfather/grandmother) did not presented as source of information and discussion on the issue of career choice for the five categories. The factor mother indicated influence for categories ASS, HeS and O, not being influent for HS and ES. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002) argue that in the individualization process, family institution has been taking different forms of organization among individuals relationships, changing values and social roles inside family, enabling emergence of a new family culture, less paternalistic, as was characteristic of the second spirit of capitalism.
Comparison among the five categories was done by K-W test, due to non-normality of data. Only for factor prestige in S2 was observed normality. Thus, comparison was done using ANOVA test. No statistical differences were found for factors experience and indecision in both groups S1 and S2. To all other factors statistical difference was observed.
ANOVA results for prestige for the five categories showed statistical difference regarding influence of this factor on career choice. In order to identify where this difference occurred, Tukey post-hoc test was performed.
Tukey test showed that for factor prestige, difference observed in ANOVA occurred between categories HS and ES. Therefore, statistically, difference in perception for this factor as influent in career decision happened between these two categories. Analysis of the average response from these two categories indicates that HS had lower average on their answers, thus individuals from this category tend to perceive career prestige as less influent to make a career decision in comparison to other categories.
Normality test for gender difference indicated that for S1 and S2 normality was not violated for power and prestige factors. Analysis for these two factors was done with t-Student test and all other factors with Mann-Whitney test.
This study aimed to explore what factors and how socializing institutions influence Gen Y on career choice in Accounting. Theoretical framework for this paper based on Generational Theory by Mannheim, on literature of Career Choice and discussions on the actual environment from Boltanski and Chiapello (2009) concerning the new spirit of capitalism.
Discussion on media and academic environment on young from this generation have been focused to issues related to work and how their peculiar characteristics affect work environment in its organization form, recruiting and retention of them. It is a generation that grew up in a period of economic and technology growth, experiencing new forms of relation with the world, making businesses to adopt new forms of organization that lives up to their expectations and claim.
This new configuration affects us all from all generations. Relative to Gen y and career in Accounting, it was observed that intrinsic factors to the profession creativity, autonomy, challenging and dynamic environment appeared as influent in the moment of career choice decision, not corroborating previous studies in which only extrinsic factors presented themselves as influent for a choice in Accounting. Questionnaire elaborated was proposed to assess career choice in general, not being specific in its content to the career in Accounting.
The present study proposed to verify if the factors, seeing in literature and from the analysis of the focus group, would be influents for a career choice in Accounting before entering higher education. For future research, it is suggested a comparison of candidates expectations right starting the Accounting course and after, right before finishing it. Doing it, it could be possible to perceive if there would be a change of their expectation and perception between this two moments. It could open doors to new discussions. Would this stereotyped perception of the Accounting profession as an Exact Science and methodical practice attract individuals with traits the profession is not looking for?
Referncias bibliogrficas:
Boltanski, L., Chiapello, . (2009). O novo espirito do capitalismo (Ivone C. Benedetti, Trad.). (1. ed). Sao Paulo, Brasil: WMF Martins Fontes.
Chen, C., Jones, K. T., McIntyre, D. D. (2008). Analyzing the factors relevant to students estimations of the benefits and costs of pursuing an accounting career. Accounting Education: an international journal, 17 (3), 313-326.
Germeijs, V., Verschueren, K. (2006). High school students career decision-making process: development and validation of the Study Choice Task Inventory. Journal of Career Assessment, 14 (4), 449-471.
Laufer, R. S., Bengston, V. L. (1974). Generations, aging, and social stratification: on the development of generational units. Journal of Social Issues, 30 (3), 181-205.
Mannheim, K. (1952). The problem of generations. In Essays On The Sociology Of Knowledge (pp. 297-312). (1 ed.). New York, United States: Oxford University Press Inc., 1952.
Milliron, V. C. (2008). Exploring millennial student values and societal trends: accounting course selection preferences. Issues in Accounting Education, 23 (3), 405-419.
Oliveira, M. D. A., Melo-Silva, L. L. (2010). Estudantes universitarios: a influencia das variaveis socioeconomicas e culturais na carreira. Revista Semestral da Associacao Brasileira de Psicologia Escolar e Educacional, 14 (1), 23-34.
Sugahara, S., Boland, G., Cilloni, A. (2008). Factors influencing students choice of an accounting major in Australia. Accounting Education: an international journal, 17 37-54.
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