THE EFFECT OF WORKING ENVIRONMENT ON ACCOUNTING PROFESSIONALS’ PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCE: A STUDY IN MARMARA REGION

Accounting is a profession which requires those want to perform it in accordance with the principles and standards required by it to acquire knowledge and skills in many areas of specialty in academic terms and to renew their professional knowledge and skills in parallel with the changes and developments occurring after they start working as a member of this profession, thereby improving their professional competencies continuously. This quick and continuous change in accounting makes it obligatory to be a member of this profession who is capable of thinking on a global scale and fulfilling its requirements. The members of accounting profession in Turkey perform their jobs as an independent or dependent Public Accountant (PA) and Public Accountant and Financial Consultant (PAFC) with their registration at a chamber of certified public accountants. Given the fact that the members of this profession performing their professional activities as “independent” ones engage in a lot of (as many as the number of books they keep) practices related to many areas of subspecialty of the profession, it is essential for them to improve their knowledge and skills more compared to “dependent” members of this profession engaged in a single limited area of specialty of this profession. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of working conditions of “independent” members of accounting profession who perform their job in their own accounting offices and of those of “dependent” ones who perform their job in a workplace possessed by an employer on the improvement of their professional competencies. To this end, an empirical study was conducted on the members of this profession, and an insight was provided into the effects of working conditions on factors such as professional knowledge, professional skills, and professional ethics, which all influence the improvement of the professional competencies of the members of this profession