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Abstract
The contemporary business environment is faced with constant disruptions and uncertainties, that are consequences of economic pressures, climate changes, geopolitical conflicts, emerging technologies adoption, changing risk landscapes and quests for survival, regulatory changes, and new disclosure requirements, like sustainability reporting, etc., as well as ‘new normal’ conditions and crisis imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. All of this is significantly influencing the accounting profession, amongst other economic professions. Therefore, the main aim of this paper was to discuss the current and future transformations that the accounting profession is and will experience in response to constant disruptions in the contemporary business landscape. This discussion resulted in an agenda that contains innovative directions for the profession’s existence and success in the uncertain future environment. This paper adopted a critical literature review approach and analyzed selected academic and professional papers that satisfied predefined criteria. As a leading data analysis technique, the authors used interpretive text analysis to identify the most relevant COVID-19 implications on the accounting profession. In order to survive, maintain and upgrade their roles, responsibilities, and positions, accounting professionals need to be familiar with, understand, prepare for, and appropriately adopt new transformational trends and developmental perspectives. The conducted literature review resulted in an overview of different trends affecting the profession in the 21st century, including the adoption of digital technologies and related processes of digitalization. When these trends first appeared and began to change the accounting profession, no one anticipated the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, which fundamentally changed the ways of doing business and working in a very short period. It is clear that existing transformational trends, as well as developmental perspectives, in the accounting profession, are significantly affected by these COVID-19 ‘new normal’ imposed conditions. The findings of this paper provide a better understanding of the new transformational trends and developmental perspectives in the accounting profession, as well as the COVID-19 implications on them. This paper identifies and systematizes the most important contemporary transformational trends and developmental perspectives that are, or will shortly, disrupt the traditional accounting profession as we know it. It also provides an agenda with necessary adaptation processes for the profession to succeed in the future.