Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to determine the requirements of accounting graduates in relation to generic attributes. Employers have consistently maintained that graduates are deficient in this area. This Australia-wide, all-sector study addresses the issue by examining what employers mean when they make demands for universities and academics to deliver work-ready graduates. Design/methodology/approach -Interviews (recorded, transcribed and analysed with NVivo) with employers, and accounting professional bodies were conducted to ascertain their views of their needs of accounting graduates into the future. Findings -Employers held the generic attributes of communication, team work and self-management to be the most critical for graduates in the three areas of recruitment, training and ongoing employment. Demands on universities to deliver work-ready graduates are not homogeneous. Employers in different sectors construe the meaning of generic attributes in line with their specific needs. Originality/value -The study was an original piece of work that gauged the opinions of professional accounting bodies and employers of accounting graduates across Australia and in all sectors of the accounting profession. The value of the study is to inform academics as to the ranked importance of generic attributes but also alert them to the different meanings that are assigned to these skills by employers in different sectors.

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This paper explores the role of institutional and systemic leadership in changing higher education in accounting in Australia. In particular, it discusses the roles of the Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching, the Australian Business Deans" Council Teaching and Learning Network (ABDC T&L) and the professional accounting bodies in meeting the challenges confronting accounting education in the tertiary sector today and in the coming years. Details are provided of a Carrick funded accounting discipline research project arising out of a recent ABDC T&L Network Business Scoping Study. The critical non-technical skills required by stakeholders are explored with their role and responsibility in their development discussed.

Purpose -The purpose of this study is to examine variables explaining students' positive and negative experiences of groupwork and connect country of residence with the perception of generic skills development and self-reported satisfaction with groupwork. It also aims to examine the effect of prior training in groups from the perspective of Australian and Non-Australian permanent residency Business students. Design/methodology/approach -Respondents were 389 undergraduate and postgraduate Business students at an Australian metropolitan university. A path model was developed and analysed using partial least squares modeling. Findings -Students' country of residence had a significant influence on reporting of generic skill development and experience of groupwork. Self-reported improvement in generic skills after groupwork assessment was associated with reporting of fewer negative and more positive aspects of working in groups.Research limitations/implications -The findings were limited by using data collected from students enrolled in one undergraduate and one postgraduate subject at the conclusion of a group assignment from one university. Future research should test the model by extending it to other universities and non-Business units. Future research should rely on a longitudinal design, where the survey is carried out at the beginning and the end of the group assessment. Practical implications -It is important to ensure both domestic and international students acquire generic skills through groupwork and that prior training in groupwork takes place before group assessments. Originality/value -The study provides empirical evidence supporting the incorporation of generic skill teaching into academic practice prior to assigning groupwork to students.

In recent years, the academic field of literary studies has changed radically. Literary scholars are now working on objects other than poems, dramas or fiction. This essay presents an ongoing strategic project, Cultural Literacy in Contemporary Europe, which was founded in 2007 and run in 2009-11 as an European Science Foundation & Cooperation in Science and Technology (ESF-COST) synergy. Its aim is to investigate and celebrate the range of research currently being conducted in the field we have renamed “literary-and-cultural studies”, or LCS. This research aims to enhance cultural literacy. Cultural literacy is an attitude to the social and cultural phenomena that shape our existence—bodies of knowledge, fields of social action, individuals or groups, and of course cultural artefacts, including texts—which views them as being essentially readable: it is a way of looking at social and cultural issues, especially issues of change and mobility, through the lens of literary thinking. The project focuses on four academic fields—cultural memory, migration and translation, electronic textuality, and biopolitics and the body—and four concepts: textuality, fictionality, rhetoricity and historicity. It stresses multilingualism and is part of the movement of interdisciplinarity within the humanities and between the humanities and other disciplines, but remains a distinctive activity within that larger movement.