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Major events and changes in the economic world during last decades have generated a growing public interest towards accounting in general and accountants in particular, which goes in line with the increasing role of professions in the society. The aim of the research is to reveal students' opinion on the functions and role of accountants in modern enterprise and to figure out what personal characteristics, knowledge and skills should be an inevitable attribute of the modern accounting profession. Findings confirmed that in Estonia accountant is regarded as a person preparing various tasks for the management in order to assist them in the decision-making process and sometimes giving valuable advice before the decision is made. It can be stated that results clearly outline the demand of high education programmes with accounting specialization in Estonia with the curriculum corresponding to the rapid changes in the modern world. This paper also highlights the importance of various knowledge, skills and personal characteristics as an essential combination for successful everyday work in the field of accounting. The findings also have practical implications for HEI developments targeting renewal, changes and amendments in the business and economics curriculum.

How important is business ethics: evidence from Estonia During recent decades, more and more attention has been paid to business ethics. There seems to be an increasing interest in the non-financial aspects of business. Stakeholders all over the world express their concern about embedding the principles of professional and business ethics into companies’ everyday activities. The main subject of this research is business ethics and the purpose is to find out the im-portance of professional and business ethics and determine its place in the modern business world as seen by Estonian business students and practitioners. To achieve the goals, the authors conducted a survey among Estonian graduate and undergraduate accounting and business students at Tallinn University of Technology and Estonian business practitioners. 587 responses were collected in the process. This infor-mation was compiled and analyzed based on status, gender, age, and specialization. The survey revealed that in Estonia people are familiar with business ethics; however, it is not of great interest to them. The results also indicate that professional and business ethics merit more attention and should be included as a required course in the curriculum of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). In general, business ethics in Estonia was not ranked as “high”, which was also the case for both professional ethics at the work-place/university and also the importance and necessity of ethics in the modern business world.

Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) implementation inHowever, the research of Freimann & Schwaderlapp (1996) showed that the audit system was quite complicated and had yet to reach its potential as companies concentrated their activities on documentation and self-control (Freimann & Schwaderlapp, 1996). Research findings obtained shortly after the EMAS implementation revealed that the industry did require some form of environmental reporting (Erskine and Collins, 1996), but the implementation of EMAS was associated with certain difficulties and benefits (Hillary, 1998). Organisations mentioned lack of technical skills for environmental reporting and auditing, as well as difficulties faced by companies in preparation of the environmental report, but they also recognized various opportunities related to marketing, sales and publics relations arising as a result of the EMAS