Experience level: 
Intermediate
Intended Audience: 
All
Authors: 
Christie Novak, Assistant Professor, Le Moyne College Valentina Zamora, Associate Professor, Seattle University

THE INSPIRATIONAL PARADIGM IN ACCOUNTING: CURRENT GAPS AND INTEGRATION OPPORTUNITIES

Where are gaps between the demand for and supply of teaching materials for introductory and intermediate accounting courses that explore the accountant’s role in organizations with objective functions beyond profit maximization? How can these gaps provide opportunities for encouraging faculty to ultimately respond to the call to integrate the Inspirational Paradigm into the accounting curriculum? We address these questions in three steps. First, for the demand side, we review the literature on the challenges that accounting faculty experience when adopting ethics-related, sustainability-related, and other relevant course materials into accounting courses. What emerges are three key challenge themes - individual, institutional, and instructional. Second, for the supply side, we review three groups of suppliers of published teaching resources. Our examination reveals three commonalities – a concentration in financial and audit courses, subject areas as the default search starting point, and much less attention to the non-manufacturing sectors – that in turn present potential opportunities for IPJBE integration. Finally, we analyze the above data to identify where the gaps are between the demand for and supply of teaching materials. Such a gap analysis serves as a first step in determining where the most fruitful opportunities are to meeting accounting faculty’s demands given the extant supply of teaching materials. We conclude this analysis with a discussion of its practical implications.