Search

This paper presents a compilation of personal reflections from 66 contributors on the impact of, and responses to, COVID-19 in accounting education in 45 different countries around the world. It reveals a commonality of issues, and a variability in responses, many positive outcomes, including the creation of opportunities to realign learning and teaching strategies away from the comfort of traditional formats, but many more that are negative, primarily relating to the impact on faculty and student health and well-being, and the accompanying stress. It identifies issues that need to be addressed in the recovery and redesign stages of the management of this crisis, and it sets a new research agenda for studies in accounting education.

At times of crisis, existing institutional arrangements of societies are thrown into question. Crises that occur in multiple societies simultaneously present rare opportunities for comparative empirical analysis. Social theory can reveal the framing conditions of the responses to crises and the sources of variations between them. This paper compares the immediate responses of the Australian, UK and US governments to the global COVID-19 pandemic, particularly with regard to financing lockdowns, and points out significant differences between the three approaches. Drawing on Polanyi's method of institutional analysis, we compare the responses of these same national groups to an earlier crisis, the Japanese prisoner of war camps during the Second World War, to show similar patterns of integration recurring eight decades apart. This analysis shows that aspects of moral economies that are not usually apparent can become pronounced during crises, and points to the importance of enduring social imaginaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]