RESEARCH PROPOSAL

RUNNING HEAD: RESEARCH PROPOSAL 1

RESEARCH PROPOSAL 10

Topic: “How Online Collaboration and Remote Work Has Impacted Accounting, Finance, and Management.”

Accounting, Finance and Management Seminar

Research Proposal

Table of Contents

Introduction 4

Statement of the Problem 6

Purpose of the Study 8

Significance of the Study 9

References 11

Introduction

Accounting, Finance, and Management practices have undergone a fundamental shift in the way they operate. Teamwork was traditionally done in the office, with the occasional opportunity for remote work. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many previously office-based employees are now working from home, Wolters Kluwer (December 2020). Employees may use communication and collaboration technologies to not only work more effectively, but also to keep informed and feel closer to their coworkers. In March 2020, for example, people’s sentiments toward labor, as well as their attitudes toward their country and citizenship, shifted substantially. In the age of remote work, location and opportunity are no longer connected. The days of top vocations being concentrated in major cities throughout the world are long gone. Employees from other departments may now use the internet and work remotely to achieve identical results. The Turks and Caicos Islands Government’s, Accounting General Department is approaching a time when more “anywhere jobs” are accessible than ever before, and a growing number of people may work from home.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments all over the world were functioning in a condition of tremendous uncertainty, with enormous trade-offs as a result of the health, economic, and social issues it created. Knowledge-based employees are expected to be the worst hit, in part because much of their work is around gathering, analyzing, and disseminating information (Amankwah-Amoah et.al, 2021). Not only can the number of face-to-face meetings be reduced, but so can the amount of time spent traveling, planning, and following up. Collaboration tools, for example, allow dialogue and feedback to take place in the same area where papers are exchanged, reducing the need to sift through emails, navigate to shared folder links, and update spreadsheets (Monterio, 2016). For the accounts department, individuals have to possess soft skills and practice excellent communication skills which have been enhanced by the online collaboration.

When people and teams are not physically present simultaneously, collaboration is crucial in order to meet a common goal. The combination of modern technology and the worldwide pandemic created a huge demand for virtual collaboration and distant working. Teams are becoming more geographically dispersed, and they’ve learned to work from a range of locations. In order to meet tight deadlines, accounting companies are increasingly outsourcing accounting work to other firms (Hua, Huang & Zheng, 2019). Significant degrees of collaboration are required both inside and outside at a corporation. Collaboration necessitates problem-solving, assuming responsibility for particular obligations within a client’s case, empathy in identifying a colleague’s stress levels, and discovering workflow bottlenecks. It seems self-evident that being able to work successfully in a group is critical. Collaboration is an all-around and difficult skill set to master because projects that require cross-departmental collaboration can be difficult.

Organizations are rapidly expanding their remote/telecommuting work possibilities in tandem with the loss in engagement culture (Amankwah-Amoah et.al, 2021). For many businesses, working remotely has become the standard rather than the exception. Organizational culture experts have dubbed this rise in remote work a “culture of engagement” (Mancini, 2016), which refers to a work environment defined by productive work, deep job involvement, collaboration, job and organizational fit, and potent authentic leadership. With the fast development of remote working options, business leaders are becoming increasingly concerned about their ability to create, manage, and maintain a workplace culture of collaboration with employees they never see in person. The Turks and Caicos Islands Government’s, Accounting General Department is no exception as the emerging remote employee culture would be developed.

Statement of the Problem

Organizational leaders’ capacity to govern and lead their organizations has been hampered by rapidly changing technologies (Mancini, 2016). Many employees urge their organization’s executives to integrate mobile devices and computers into the workplace to improve their remote work possibilities because of their accessibility. Organizational leaders used to give face-to-face monitoring and management to workers who worked within walking distance of their offices; this allowed them to respond quickly to their employees’ needs and complaints (Savić, 2020). The workplace has evolved into a hybrid working environment that includes both in-office and remote employees, yet their engagement demands differ due to their diverse working conditions (Hua, Huang & Zheng, 2019). The overall management issue was that the number of remote workers has consistently climbed while workplace engagement levels have gradually decreased (Yang et al., 2021). Prior to the pandemic, the majority of Turks and Caicos Islands civil servants were not working remotely; as a result, the abrupt shift cost the government a large sum of money.

More than half of the country’s disengaged workers work remotely, however they are subjected to a work culture that limits their career growth prospects, reduces their visibility within the business and enhances their sense of isolation. Employers play a key role in the yearly cost of employee disengagement to businesses, which can run into the billions of dollars (Mancini,2016). Nonetheless, even though the COVID-19 pandemic has fast-tracked online collaboration and remote working, there is a scarcity of research on remote workers’ collaboration experiences, especially denoting the extent to which it has impacted accounting, finance, and management. Therefore, there’s a need to determine the degree to which they are influenced. Hence, this study will investigate remote workers’ online collaboration and develop a taxonomy of critical incidents and responses that can help strengthen and uphold favorable engagement levels while avoiding incidents that could undermine remote worker engagement.

Purpose of the Study

The goal of this study is to assess how online collaboration and remote work have impacted accounting, finance, and management, particularly in light of the recent increase in the adaption of online collaboration and remote working as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, this research will provide answers to queries regarding the extent to which the Accountant General Department has been influenced, as well as shed light on some of the workers’ experiences. Finance and accounting professionals will have spent much of the previous years, battling with new issues, but by now, organizations must be primed and ready to execute long-term strategies in order to scale and preserve profitability.

One of the high points of the COVID-19 pandemic is that it has demonstrated how well financial institutions can function with remote employees. Organizations working remotely can nevertheless provide high-quality service thanks to a combination of developing technologies and digital accounting. As a result, businesses are becoming more open to the idea of having their employees working remotely or in a hybrid environment on a permanent basis. Thus, through this research and the findings, it produces, we anticipate that it will provide these individuals and organizations with a vast amount of useful information, which is necessary to facilitate this change. As well as create opportunity for more discussions on this issue.

Significance of the Study

The online collaboration and remote work has impacted accounting, finance and management in multiple ways. For example, companies and their employees may experience cost savings in some aspect of the process and in others, if the company is not fully automated, it is difficult for the employees to realize its targets, stretch goals and function efficiently, especially if the employees are not able to access the data or share it with their co-workers and supervisors. However, for the most part and because of complimentary accounting, finance, and management software packages businesses are collaborating with technology to make it work effectively. Muskett (2020), suggests that the rate at which finance and accounting are using software and other technology tools to work on their books virtually has increased, this is in due in part to the COVID-19 environment that business must now operate in, which is dictated in part by the protocols. The trends seem to be working effectively for many organizations and it can be predicted that most of the tasks will be executed virtually on a remote basis and the physical office will only be used occasionally to set schedules.

Working remotely and using collaborative technology has had a significant impact on accounting, finance, and management departments in the following ways. First, remote work has enabled such departments to experience lower overhead costs. Some expenses like rent, office supplies, utilities etc., have been reduced and the money has been allocated in other areas such as funding personal protection gear and necessary equipment to work remotely. Secondly, it reduces the need for physical expansions as employees are working remotely and they have familiarized themselves with required technological tools such as Zoom and Teams, used for verbal communication and the sharing of documents and related information. There is no need to look for more space as employees within the various departments can meet their clients’ needs virtually while working from the home.

Thirdly, provided the employee exercise good judgment in managing their time; more work can get done, and greater cost savings can be experienced. Staff working remotely can save the company money which could be used on related projects. The time which could have been used to travel to offices is saved and used to work on client issues. Therefore, it can be concluded that the future of accounting, finance, and management can be bright, provided you have state of the art technology and people who know how to maximize the use of this technology.

References

Amankwah-Amoah, J. Khan, Z. Wood, G. & Knight, G. (2021). COVID-19 and digitalization: The great acceleration. Journal of Business Research, 136: 602-611.

Hua, X. Huang, Y. & Zheng, Y. (2019). Current practices, new insights, and emerging trends of financial technologies. Industrial Management & Data Systems.

Kluwer, W. (December 2020).

Mancini, D. (2016). Accounting Information Systems in an Open Society: Emerging Trends and Issues. Accounting Information Systems in an Open Society: Emerging Trends and Issues. 5-16.

Monterio, B. J. (2016). Technology trends to watch: here are some of the latest technology trends that could impact management accountants and their jobs. Strategic Finance, 98(2): 86-88.

Muskett L. (2020). Is working remotely the future of finance? Retrieved from: https://www.cfo.com/corporate-finance/2020/09/virtual-cfos-have-their-day/

Savić, D. (2020). COVID-19 and work from home: digital transformation of the workforce. Grey Journal (TGJ), 16(2): 101-104.

Yang, L. Holtz, D. Jaffe, S. Suri, S. Sinha, S. Weston, J. & Teevan, J. (2021). The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers. Nature human behavior, 1-12.