Competency Map development as an identity movement: a Canadian perspective

Abstract

Extant research on competency-based accounting education has largely ignored how competency map development is a political process. Combining interviews and documentary analysis, we explore the evolution in the Canadian Professional Accounting (CPA) Canada Competency Map, from its implementation in 2013 through its first review in 2019, to study how changing levels of information technology coverage in the Map reflect changing perceptions about the centrality of IT to the profession’s collective identity. We present the Map revision as an identity movement whereby stakeholders mobilize competing institutional logics to articulate incongruent visions for the profession’s collective identity. Our study makes three contributions to the literature: First, we show that a competency map is the outcome of a collective identity movement. Second, we demonstrate how professions adapt their collective identity to external threats. Finally, we theorize on the role of professional accounting bodies as arbitrators of competing collective identities.

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