This paper reports on an exploratory study to elicit the impact of internships on accounting students: what interns had learnt; the process by which they learnt; the effect of what had been learnt on their expectations of the accounting profession; and their choice of a future career. The methodology involved qualitative data, with quantitative analysis and testing of hypothesis. The sample was 250 accounting students in Singapore who have completed eight weeks of internship. Interns reported a number of significant learning outcomes of which the most significant were personal and interpersonal skills. Of lesser importance were technical skills. Learning by reflection was the key to supporting these outcomes. The student believed that what they had learnt would support their future professional development, that the internship had prepared them for their first job and that it helped them to choose their career. The framework of Goleman's (1995) theory of Emotional Intelligence (New York: Bantam Books) was used to explain the results.Internships, career determination, internships, experiential learning, reflective learning, emotional intelligence, Singapore,

Attributions shape people's realities, the explanations imposing cause-effect structures on our chaotic world. Not confined to the individual, publicized attributions further influence others' attribution formulation and subsequent decisions. Attributions in corporate discretionary narrative disclosures, persuasive tools to steer investor buy-sell decisions are significant economically. Focusing on such performance attributions, investigating cross-cultural attribution patterns and Singapore's cultural inclination, we study performance-attribution statements from company accounting narratives of three nations (United States of America, Japan and Singapore). Selfenhancing/protecting tendencies, though found to exist in all the countries studied, seem more predominant in Asian than Western society, contrary to previous research. Singapore is also found to be more culturally similar to Japan.