Professional skills of management accountants: text mining of job advertisements
In recent decades, the role of management accountants has transformed significantly, evolving from conventional responsibilities to more intricate functions that meet the dynamic demands of the business environment. This study aims to identify the essential competencies employers prioritize for management accountants by examining job advertisements. This research investigates the primary skill areas highlighted in job advertisements for management accountants. Data was gathered from the LinkedIn platform, spanning the period from October 1, 2023, to February 29, 2024. Following preprocessing, the data set was analyzed using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to identify significant themes. Co-word Network Analysis further enriched this to examine the interconnections among relevant keywords. The examination of job advertisements disseminated during the defined period identified 14 prominent topics across five categories, which emerged as essential skill sets sought by employers in management accounting. The findings show that the management accounting profession is clearly transitioning toward a “hybrid” model, with dominance of technical and interpersonal skills. This study uses a quantitative approach to investigate the distribution patterns of job postings, enabling a detailed analysis of a collection of documents and revealing the essential skills that management accountants should develop and improve, free from subjective bias. The findings provide valuable insights into the role of management accountants from employers’ perspectives. The topics identified in this study emphasize the attributes that professional organizations and educators should include in their specialized training programs.