Accounting Professionalization

PhD Defense

16 August 2016 10:17

(updated: 16 August 2016 10:38)

Accounting Professionalization

On Tuesday 30 August 2016 Alena Golyagina will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend her thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.

Prescribed topic for the trial lecture:

Local construction of the management accounting profession and implications for its global convergence

Trial lecture:

10:15, Aud. Karl Borch, NHH

Title of the thesis:

Management Accounting Professionalization: The Case of Russia

Summary:

Present thesis investigates management accounting professionalization in the post-soviet context. The thesis adds additional insights into the globalization of the management accounting occupation by tracing its history in Russia and exploring management accounting education in contemporary Russia. The thesis consists of three papers focusing on the different angles of management accounting professionalization.

The first paper, referring to the early stage of a professional association development in a new market, investigates how an international professional certification in management accounting contributed to the professionalization of management accountants in Russia.

The analysis, informed by the sociology of professions literature, reveals that occupational and contextual factors influence management accountants’ decisions to pursue a CMA certification in Russia. The paper also reveals several models of interaction between the management accounting occupation and a professional certification, including ethics codes, linguistic codes, professional community and career awareness.

The second paper investigates the fundamental transformation of Russian higher education after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The paper addresses the changes happening in accounting education through the lens of the institutional logics framework. While the logic of the state dominated higher education in accounting in the Soviet Union period, the field of higher education after the collapse of the Soviet Union becomes more complex. In addition to the logic of the state, the logic of the profession and the logic of the market inform the discipline of accounting education.

The third paper investigates how and to what extent international accounting textbooks popular in Russia represent accumulated knowledge on management accounting techniques. By analyzing four management accounting techniques in five bestselling UK and US textbooks, the study provides a comprehensive perspective on textbook content for textbook authors and users.

Defense:

12:15, Aud. Karl Boch, NHH

Members of the evaluation committee:

Assistant Professor Sabina Du Rietz (chair), Department of Accounting, Auditing and Law, NHH
Professor Danture Wickramasinghe, University of Glasgow
Associate Professor Elena Dybtsyna, Nord University

Supervisors:

Professor Trond Bjørnenak (principal supervisor), Department of Accounting, Auditing and Law, NHH
Assistant Professor Rafael Heinzelmann, Department of Accounting, Auditing and Law, NHH
Professor Anatoli Bourmistrov, Nord University

The trial lecture and thesis defence will be open to the public.