Human capital and industry 4.0: embracing technology and skills of accountants in the business organizations

Industry 4.0 and its rising technologies have been gaining tremendous popularity in recent years with the impacts and challenges that spark many interests in different aspects of the business environment. This revolution has brought about advanced development, innovation, transformation and variation to how production and manufacturing works, how employees play their roles and how decision makers made strategic decisions. One of the many affected roles is the accountant’s role. The accountant is an important person in the business where he or she keep tracks of the transaction and reports it accurately and reliably. However, with the rapid changes of technologies, many accountants and future accountants are concern about their relevance in their contribution to the business environment. The purpose of this research is twofold. The first section explores and examines the perceptions, opinions and thoughts from professional accounting bodies (i.e. MIA, CGMA, ACCA and ICAEW), industry specialists (i.e. Technology industry practice leader and owner of accounting firm) and journals on the transformation of future accountant’s roles and skills needed towards Industry 4.0 to stay sustainable and pertinent. Hence, a collection of viewpoints and insights from 15 articles and reports by professional accounting bodies relating to future accountant’s role and skills needed for Industry 4.0, 5 recent online podcasts with reference to technology and accountants were collected to analyse and determine the future role anticipated for accountants and the skills needed to be germane to the era of Industry 4.0. As for the second section, online questionnaires were distributed to accounting students in Malaysia to determine their awareness, perception and attitude on the significance of embracing technology on the future accounting role and the sufficiency of skills and knowledge towards Industry 4.0 with only 121 relevant responses. It is crucial to determine the readiness of the priv