The Accounting Profession, Essay Example

Introduction and Methodology

An organization faces great challenges when it comes to ensuring that its workforce are happy in order to meet organizational goals and culture set by leaders and individuals of an organization. The relationship between gender and job satisfaction is important to understand since it comprises of a workforce that is efficient and motivated. Therefore, an organization is placed in a position where their overall goals are achieved. For an organization, the accounting department is important because they deal with balancing of company records. As such, leaders need to understand the past behavioral patterns, motivation, history performance and requisites of their employees. Hence, leaders of an organization can maximize on employees potential by identifying and reacting to motivational patterns absent among company employees. The best way to obtain answers is to seek their input.

The accounting profession in most organizations has tended to foster self-replication; in that, those individuals in the power structure tend to mentor, hire and advance those individuals perceived to be like themselves. According to research undertaken, most of the persons found tend to be “masculine” men. The other arm of profession that seems to have ascribed to the same stereotypical orientation of the masculine type is the academic and has proven as key to both tenure and advancement. It is from this that I decided to look at the relationship between gender and job satisfaction score in the company’s accounting department. The categorical variable in our case is gendered (male or female) while that quantitative variable is the job satisfaction score. The purpose of this study is to examine if a relationship exists between gender and job satisfaction in an organizations accounting department. Here, statistics will give an instant overall picture of data based on the presentations made graphically or summation of numbers irrespective of data points. Furthermore, statistics will make an inference and predict variable relations. Categorical variables uses bar diagram and pie charts for presenting data.

Accounting has been termed as many as “male-dominated professions” and women in today’s society are trying to gain admission, but have encountered “glass ceiling” (gender inequities and barrier-obstacles). The women seem to be under-represented in the academic profession of accounting. However, institutions all over the world are trying to make significant strides by increasing the number of female faculty staff in the accounting department. Therefore, the promotion of women to senior ranks, their achievement of a semblance of equality in earnings, their movement into administrative positions, and job satisfaction achievement in a climate that is nonresponsive and indifferent, are cited frequently in the realm of academics concerning gender.

Evidence of the analytical and anecdotal suggests that women in the professorate of accounting have traditionally experienced an environment that is stereotypical. In conjunction with the self-replication theory, the stereotypical orientation of the male is often the key to advancement and tenure in academics. As said earlier on, those individuals in power encourage, mentor and advance those people who are like them. The handfuls of women who achieve senior ranks in organizations resemble the men in power. Therefore, these women are forced to emulate and identify with the masculine model in order to achieve progression in the organization. As a result, studies conducted show that very few, if any, behavioral or personality differences exist between female and male managers.

In examining the relationship between gender job satisfaction score, a systematic random sample of 14 male and 16 female accounting departments was selected from two organizations across the United States. In measuring the job satisfaction of the company’s accounting department, the Job Descriptive Index (JDI) instrument was used. The instrument had the following five key areas: supervision, pay, the general nature of work, promotion, and co-workers. The scale scores for job satisfaction constructs were categorized as context satisfaction (supervision, co-worker and supervision) while the personal satisfaction comprised of the general nature of work and promotion. The scores of the JDIs are results of job satisfaction scores index for each female and male respondent in each of the five key dimensions. Therefore, the higher an individual scores, the greater the score of job satisfaction. Moreover, paradoxical observations assert that women tend to be more satisfied than men when it comes to their jobs.

Analysis of Categorical Variables

Measures of central tendency and variability

When we talk about measures of central tendency and variability, we refer to mean, median and mode. The mean in this case is the average value whereas the median is the middle value that is, when all data points are arranged in an ascending order. Mode, on the other hand, is the value that appears most of the time.

In the above, it is evident that the mean is 1.621, and it becomes meaningless to central tendency measures because it is a qualitative variable. It is not possible to take the average of the category variable since we only have gender groups 1 and 2 and not 1.621 gender groups.

Median = 2, which depicts meaningless in the measure of central tendency. The Gender group is 2 and hence, we are not in a position to sort categorical groups from the smallest to the largest.

Mode = 2 and this central tendency measure is useful for categorical group and suggests that the most people in the survey are females.

Analysis of Quantitative Variables 

In the accounting department the males and females are satisfied with their nature of work, which is visible from the mean. The masculine females show a much higher level of satisfaction when it comes to their general nature of work. The male satisfaction in relation to their nature of work was lowest for accountants in the middle range, while those in the lower ranges had high satisfaction of their work. The general nature of work facet looks at the growth, responsibility and interest of female and male in the accounting department.

Promotion

The aspect of promotion satisfaction among accounts in a company shows that more men are prone to be promoted in an organization compared to women or their female counterparts. From this observation, it is clear that leaders in an organization should be able to identify the factors that contribute to the levels of dissatisfaction within an organization. The aspect of promotion in terms of satisfaction needs to be investigated by company managers especially in the accounting department. This is because the females in the accounting department are facing the obstacle of promotion and thus, they are not satisfied with their job. This challenge is important for leaders to evaluate and investigate because it concerns the organizational goal and performance levels of employees in the organization. The JDI facet of promotion looks at the opportunities accorded to employees in an organization and refer to the chances of advancement accorded to both male and female. The future of the organization looks into nourishing the lives of their employees and giving them a bright future.

Pay

The pay satisfaction shows that males are more satisfied in their accountancy profession compared to the female. Even though the female counterparts holding accounting positions in an organization are not being payed well, their level of satisfaction is greater to that of men. This is because women appreciate the little compensation given to them and want to foster a good relationship between them and the organization. This has been achieved by meeting organizational goals and objectives and thus, females in the accounting department will always render themselves loyal to the organization. Pay is not all the benefits one gets from working in a company diligently. However, loyalty and trust to customers of an organization and employees are tools that have continued to help female accountants obtain their goal. Pay facet looks at the adequacy and perceived pay equity among male and female of an organization.

Supervision

In regard to the supervision, both male and female are satisfied with their levels or supervisors because they have been given social support and technical help to all employees. Both male and female employees showed equal levels of satisfaction regarding supervision. In this case, it appears that the male are more satisfied compared to the female because they have no issues with the management and leadership style applied in the organization. However, when it comes to the female, they have a issue with the supervision of the organization and most of them feel that the executive leaders in the accounting department are unfair in terms of delegating duties and responsibilities to their staff. The management of the organization needs to look into the supervision of the accounting department because they need to be satisfied with the level of supervision in order to work well. Furthermore, supervision satisfaction is vital for the accountants in a company because it reduces the chances of them committing fraudulent things. As such, supervision in the organization looks into many aspects of the company that includes how work is conducted by employees and the level of satisfaction given in meeting customer needs and preferences. Moreover, the result of this research show that supervision among male in the accounting department is higher compared to the female accountants in the organization.

Co-workers

Like any other organization, males work well with co-worker and are satisfied with the respect and social harmony existing among them. However, when it comes to females, they are not satisfied with working with their co-worker. As such, conflicts arise more often among females than among males. Therefore, the male are more satisfied with their co-worker and work together in meeting organizational goals. Furthermore, they share knowledge and ideas that help in making the company grow. Hence, the satisfaction of having co-workers is a good idea because it helps an organization move to global heights. This implies that an organization can manage to handle international markets.

Conclusion

In today’s world, we are seeing more women embracing professions meant to be associated with the male figures in society. However, their contribution to growth in many companies has been tremendous, and many managers are happy with the results of hiring female counterparts. The accounting profession has been associated with males around the world, but this stereotype is being investigated by the help of many researchers in the field of business and statistics among others.

As such, the academic arm of accountancy has seen an increase in entrants of the female gender into the academic environment, but traditionally it was a male dominated the faculty. According to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), a report of 1994 revealed that of all accounting faculty members, 26 percent were female. From the research, it is evident that a relationship exists between job satisfaction scores and gender.