تغییرات سازمانی در آموزش حسابداری دانشگاه در چین پس از انقلاب: از جهت گیری سیاسی تا بین المللی سازی

Since the formation of the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the broad field of accounting education in China has undergone many changes in the context of a dramatically changing sociopolitical environment. The institutional mechanisms in Chinese university accounting education are examined in this paper, principally through a re-reading of the historical experience since 1949. We utilize an institutional theory frame to examine how action in the regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive pillars have shaped accounting education from its heavily political orientation in the early years of the PRC to a more internationalized university accounting education system that has begun to take shape in contemporary China. We seek to contribute a contextualized understanding of contemporary China's accounting education, while adapting and extending the role of institutional theory in explaining education changes more broadly.

In the six decades since the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, China's system of accounting education has undergone a number of fundamental shifts that largely reflect the broader socio-political environment. In the first twelve years of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule, there were no fewer than five reorganizations of the higher education system (Watne and Baldwin, 1988). Periods of comprehensive social revolution under CCP rule both during the early years of the People's Republic and in subsequent years were particularly devastating for universities, and for university accounting education. However, in more recent decades there has been a renewed recognition of the importance of higher education and of accounting education as a key component. China's international outlook since the turn of the 21st century, particularly with its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, has seen the country open itself to the outside world and become a significant and influential member of the international community. Market-based economic reforms have created domestic demand for accounting professionals and academicians, and there has been a corresponding rapid expansion of university accounting education within the country. Following these developments, organizational and curricular changes and substantial growth in the system to produce more university-qualified graduates have sought to serve both local and international needs. University accounting education has taken on an internationalized dimension, reflecting both domestic economic changes and wider developments beyond China's borders. The extent of historical and continuing centralized government guidance and administration, combined with political system reform and economic transition, make Chinese accounting education unique in its nature and evolution. The prior literature concerning university accounting education in China has depicted a number of aspects of development in this area, but is primarily a collection of descriptive accounts that are lacking in integration, historical perspective, and in-depth analysis. Several prior studies are based on accounts of individual experiences or perspectives.2 Thus, the overall account of the post-1949 history and current state of accounting education in China is impressionistic and piecemeal and our understanding to date does not include a contextualized or theorized understanding of the nature of contemporary accounting education in China. Few theoretical resources have been brought to bear to provide an integrated analysis of historical context and factors associated with recent change. To address the situation outlined above, in this study we adopt an institutional perspective in order to analyze and account for the key domestic and external factors impinging on university accounting education change in China since the establishment of the PRC 1949.3 In many senses, accounting is an epiphenomenon that is largely a product of its environment, reflecting, reinforcing and recursively shaping particular characteristics that may be unique to particular national environments (Radebaugh and Gray, 1997). Thus, it is appropriate to examine accounting education change in China utilizing an institutional perspective. We seek both to add to our understanding of the present state of university accounting education in China, as a historical product, and to provide a basis for future studies of its development.

The analysis in Section 4 shows that the clearest and strongest institutional influence throughout the first sixty years of the PRC has been the coercive mechanisms promulgated within the regulative pillar under the CCP's and the Government's mandates, regulations and rules. The CCP and Government actions have played a direct and thorough function in shaping university accounting education in the country. This overall finding is consistent with our prior expectations (see Table 3, item 1), but the continued strength, and overriding influence, of the regulative pillar, notwithstanding the emergence of more balanced institutional influences in recent years, was more significant than we had anticipated (Table 3, item 3). Our analysis showed that changing political dynamics within China have been the consistent theme underlying changes in university accounting education. Although the era of internationalization in recent years has produced a more balanced set of institutional influences across the three pillars (as expected – Table 3, item 4), it remains the case that processes in the normative and cultural-cognitive pillar are driven and/or filtered through the regulative pillar and operate under the authority or influence of the CCP and the state (see Fig. 4). Contrary to our initial expectations, we find the existence of relatively strong mimetic and normative mechanisms in period 1, is largely related to the strong Sino–Soviet relationship. This weakened in the successive two periods. Notable mimetic mechanisms in the cultural-cognitive pillar were also found in period 3, related to the borrowing from former (pre-Revolution) systems of accounting after the withdrawal and rejection of influences from the Soviet Union. In retrospect, this should not be surprising, for these were times of significant uncertainty and, in different degrees, both openness to different ideas and uncertainty about the future.