Accounting Academic Workloads in the Higher Education Sector: Balancing Workload Creep to Avoid Depreciation

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2018-12-01
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Used by permission: the author(s).

Abstract

Accounting Academics according to the literature are subject to external influences such as preparing graduates for future workplaces, bridging the gap between industry and academia and development of pathways to becoming professional accountants for their student cohort. Add to this the internal influences of delivery methods for student engagement, work integrated learning and casualization of the workforce, the accounting academic is at capacity in terms of how these influences impact on workload. Using the “lived experience”, this research delves further into the academic themselves to find that they categorise their workload into four themes of Teaching, Research, Accounting academic administration and development of Curricula, deemed the TRAC Framework for this study. Using this workload TRAC framework, accounting academics identified five factors they believe will influence their future roles. These include growth in international students, that student success will be a shared responsibility, that student engagement will be critical, that curricula design will involve stakeholder input and that expectations around research will change. These additional impact factors when added to the already at capacity workload model for accounting academics, will create a type of workload creep. The workload impact factor (WIF) model is created for this research to demonstrate just how these additional factors will be absorbed by accounting academics, ballooning their workload. This workload creep can be described as an increase in academic wear and tear, almost like depreciation on capital assets, a recognition of a diminution in economic benefit or value. Accounting academics must be careful to balance their future workload so as to not become commercially obsolete.

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Workload Creep, TRAC Model Framework, WIF Model, Depreciation, Accounting Academic, Academic Workload
Citation

Barnes, L., Long, W., Northcote, M., & Williams, T. (2018, November). Accounting academic workloads in the higher education sector: Balancing workload creep to avoid depreciation. Paper presented at the International Association for Accounting Education and Research (IAAER) 13th World Congress of Accounting Educators and Researchers, Sydney, Australia. Abstract retrieved from https://congress.iaaer.org/program

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