Taking stock and moving forward: a systematic literature review on accounting professionalisation in China, 1980–2021

Abstract

PurposeThis paper aims to review the research on accounting professionalisation in China to develop insights into how the research is developing, offer a critique of the research to date and outline future research directions and opportunities.Design/methodology/approachThis paper adopts a methodological approach of systematic literature review, as suggested by Tranfield et al. (2003) and Denyer and Tranfield (2009), to identify, select and analyse the extant literature on the Chinese public accounting profession. In total, 68 academic works were included in the review process.FindingsThis paper finds that the extant literature has produced fruitful insights into the processes and underlying motivation of accounting professionalisation in China, demonstrating that the Chinese experience has differed, to a large extent, from the hitherto mainly Anglo-American-dominated understandings of accounting professionalisation. However, due to the lack of common theoretical vernacular and an agreed upon focus, the extant literature illustrates a fragmented and contradictory picture, making attempts to accumulate prior knowledge in the field increasingly difficult.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper focusses only on research published in English. Consequently, the scope of review has been limited as some works published in languages other than English may be excluded.Originality/valueThis paper provides one of the pioneering exercises to systematically review the research on accounting professionalisation in China. It explores significant issues arising from the analysis and provides several suggestions for furthering the research effort in this field.

The impact of audit committee effectiveness on firms’ outcomes in China: a systematic review

“…Secondly, the institutional environment in China significantly affects the effectiveness of audit committees in China. In Anglo-American countries, the agency problem exists between managers and shareholders, whereas in China it exists between the minority and majority shareholders because of the concentrated ownership (Wen, 2021). Regulators are aware of this agency problem and introduced independent directors to mitigate agency costs.…”

Indigenous peoples and accounting: A systematic literature review

“…A systematic literature review was chosen due to its focus on identifying key contributions to a field, rather than offering ‘a statistical procedure for synthesising findings’ (Tranfield et al, 2003: 209) as meta-analysis does. Further, systematic literature reviews can extract ‘insights from a variety of studies in a replicable, transparent and inclusive process’ (Wen, 2021: 240) strengthening the knowledge base.…”

“…Ascani et al, 2021;Cuozzo et al, 2017;Massaro et al, 2016), systematic literature review (e.g. Goyal and Kumar, 2020;Wen, 2021;Wolf et al, 2020), and the literature reviews by Apostolou et al (2019) and Paisey and Paisey (2004). A systematic literature review was chosen due to its focus on identifying key contributions to a field, rather than offering 'a statistical procedure for synthesising findings' (Tranfield et al, 2003: 209) as meta-analysis does.…”

“…The final sample of 71 articles was imported into the reference management software Endnote (Wen, 2021), and article characteristics were extracted into a spreadsheet for further analysis.…”