Cultural values and learning styles of Brazilian public sector accounting operators in the process of adopting international standards
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1982-6486.rco.2019.144322Keywords:
Adoption of IPSAS, Cultural dimensions, Learning styles, Accounting operators, Epistemic CommunityAbstract
We analyze the cultural values and learning styles of accounting professionals from the epistemic community working on the IPSAS adoption in Brazil. We used the theory of cultural values of Hofstede (1980) and the experiential learning of Kolb (1984) to formulate the questionnaire. We collected responses from 426 respondents from all Brazilian states. The epistemic community involved in the design or teaching of norms (regulators) and in the operation and adoption (federal, state and municipal executors) present cultural values of Hierarchical Balanced Distance, Collectivism, Femininity, Low Aversion to Uncertainty and high Long-Term Orientation. The learning style is different among federal and state accounting executors, compared to municipal one. For the first group (feral and state) the executors operate based on abstract reflections, and for the second group (municipal) the executors has a learning style based on concrete experiences and practical cases. In practice, the public organizations must provide trainings programs based on distinct learning conceptions, including those applied on IPSAS training initiatives.
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