Insights

“A fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing.” There are several dimensions to how organisations and teams can be diverse 1 and ways in which diversity can strengthen the problem-solving and creativity of teams and organisations. Here the focus is on the difference between generalists and specialists. It is perhaps accepted wisdom that you need to be a specialist to succeed; to identify a niche or narrow field of knowledge and become a recognised expert. In his book, Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (2020), David Epstein argues that while specialists are clearly necessary, particularly in technical contexts, there is also an important role for generalists in a world that is “unkind” or “wicked” in the sense of being unpredictable, subject to rapid and continual change. Specialists thrive where boundaries are clearly defined, and repeated experience is beneficial. Epstein gives the examples of chess masters and firefighters, whose domains, though challenging, are “kind” learning environments in the sense that patterns of events repeat and are predictable. We rely on specialists every day to get it right, to provide accurate advice, to make the correct decision, but when it comes to “wicked” domains, where the rules are not established, specialists may be at a disadvantage. Generalists know relatively little about a lot, have a broad range of skills and experience. They tend to be curious and can transfer their knowledge and experience between disciplines, applying concepts from one domain to solve a problem in another, unrelated field. Generalists can see problems in the abstract, releasing them from their conventional, contextual straitjackets. Making (unexpected) connections through analogical thinking is the secret to the generalist’s power to solve problems. Introducing ideas from non-related contexts, outside of the team’s comfort zone, will help it come up with better answers in an unpredictable world. Isaiah Berlin’s influential 1953 essay on Tolstoy’s view of history, “The Hedgehog and the Fox”, was inspired by a fragment from the Greek poet Archilochus, “A fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing”. Berlin speculates that, taken figuratively, these “words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general”. In his 20-year study of the accuracy of the geopolitical forecasts of almost 300 experts, psychologist Philip Tetlock drew on Berlin’s essay, distinguishing between two types or sub-groups: ‘hedgehogs’, who know one big thing, and ‘foxes’, who know many little things and integrate them. Tetlock found it was the foxes who are more likely to be correct in their predictions, although as Daniel Kahneman points out in Thinking Fast and Slow (2012), these predictions were still largely inaccurate (it is a challenging thing to predict the future). Kahneman elaborates on the distinction of types. As a hedgehog “acquires more knowledge, they develop an enhanced illusion of their skill and become unrealistically overconfident”. Accounting for events within a coherent framework, they are “especially reluctant to admit error”. In contrast, ‘foxes’ “recognise that reality emerges from the interactions of many different agents and forces”. Hedgehogs (by analogy, specialists) do one thing very well, and tend to want to bend reality to fit their experience and hard-won expertise. Foxes (generalists) have a broader understanding of multiple disciplines, tend to be more curious, more open to ambiguity and ready to listen to counterarguments. Faced with the uncertainty of today’s wicked world, it is important that teams, particularly those working in technical contexts, have a mix of hedgehogs and foxes, specialists and generalists. Innovation and problem-solving happen when teams include individuals with diverse backgrounds, bringing wider perspectives, from within and outside the norm. Diverse teams can apply the vertical thinking of their specialists, working within the detail of the core technical framework to address more familiar problems, while availing of the lateral thinking of their generalists for the unexpected. Working with technical teams, generalists tend to be ‘outsiders’ in that they are not initiates in the core discipline(s). However, as Epstein argues, generalists can have the “outsider advantage”, bringing new perspectives and techniques to what seem intractable problems to insiders. Insider hedgehogs tend to focus on what they already know within their discipline, industry, or profession, being invested in their specialist knowledge and attached to tools and techniques with which they are comfortable and familiar. When teams are faced with unfamiliar problems, such attachments can lead to disaster. For example, the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster in 1986, in which the lives of all seven crewmembers were lost, discussed by Epstein in a chapter titled “Learning to Drop Your Familiar Tools”. Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds after launch due to a damaged ‘O-ring seal’ in one of its solid rocket boosters which failed to contain pressurised burning gas. Engineers from a contractor company outside of the NASA organisation had spotted an unfamiliar problem with the O-ring seals and asked NASA to postpone the launch based on their qualitative opinion. However, NASA refused the request because the outside engineers could not quantify their opinion – it did not fit with the quantitative tools and techniques of NASA’s established culture. Faced with an unfamiliar situation, rather than adapting, the NASA team behaved like a collective hedgehog and tried to bend the problem to the one they had experienced before. To deal with the unexpected and unpredictable, to drop familiar tools when necessary and adopt new approaches, while also excelling at the core purpose of the organisation, its ‘business as usual’, teams need specialists and generalists, insiders and outsiders, hedgehogs and foxes. And while congruence has been the hallmark of effective organisations, where all are aligned with vision, goals and leadership, a level of incongruence, of ambiguity, is also healthy to counter the less beneficial effects of conformity, such as ‘groupthink’, or applying old tools to new problems, failing to adapt. An effective problem-solving culture balances standard practice with different perspectives, knowledge and experiences. Diverse teams of specialists and generalists (or of individuals who can combine and balance these traits) will expand the range of organisations to cope with today’s wicked world. Michael Diviney Executive Head of Thought Leadership 1. According to Lee Gardenswartz and Anita Rowe in Diverse Teams at Work: Capitalizing on the Power of Diversity (2nd ed., 2003) there are four dimensions or layers to the diversity of people within an organisation: organisational, external, internal and personality. The specialist/generalist axis is part of the external dimension. ↩

In the week of International Women’s Day, we consider the important role that male allies can play in breaking the bias that women still face in the workplace. Male allies start by first acknowledging bias, are aware of the effect of their words, share work equitably, and are vocal in their support of gender equity. This week, International Women’s Day was themed #BreaktheBias, asking how we can break the bias that women face every day and achieve genuine gender equity in all spheres of life, including the workplace. And it is important to be vigilant and support gender equity because it may have taken a step backwards in the pandemic. Last year, Irish business representatives, Ibec, published a survey report highlighting the impact Covid had on women working for member organisations: “20% of organisations had noticed a change in the position of women in their organisations over the past 12 months, citing changes such as increased pressure and stress, childcare responsibilities, and requests from women for worktime flexibility to accommodate childcare and/or eldercare. … almost half of respondents (48%) said that more women than men had requested for changes to their working patterns to facilitate caring responsibilities. The survey also shows that 31% of respondents said that more of their female employees than their male counterparts had requested unpaid leave to facilitate caring responsibilities over the past 12 months.” 1 As we are now putting the pandemic behind us, we want to recover some of the ground lost to this inequity. One way to do this is to encourage allyship – male allyship particularly – in the workplace, to make sure that everyone is on the same page and willing to support one another. What is allyship? From the perspective of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI), an ally is someone who is in a position of power, privilege, part of the majority, but who takes actions to support those who are not in the same position. In this case, male allyship is the evident, vocal support of women in the workplace. Further, it is not just restricted to male senior management: any man in the workplace can be an ally, showing leadership in this way, from a new starter all the way to the top of the organisation. How to be a male ally Here are some starting points for being a male ally: Acknowledge your bias  Bias may be deliberate, but most often it is unconscious, part of one’s cultural conditioning. The first step in breaking bias is to become aware of it, to acknowledge it – then it is much easier to address it. Go out of your way to challenge your bias, check your privilege, and assess how you view and interact with women. Language  Words are important and can carry a lot of baggage. Think about how you and other men address and refer to the women you work with. (Is it appropriate to refer to an adult, professional woman as a ‘girl’?) If you’re a hiring manager, is the language you use in a job posting gendered? For example, are you using traditional, masculine-coded language to advertise a leader’s position? Make use of tools like the Gender Decoder to check your language. Share the workload and the stage  Research has shown that women are more likely to volunteer for low-status tasks that need to be done but that do not benefit their promotability. 2 If you are a manager, distribute such tasks more equitably rather than ask for volunteers. Give all colleagues the space to be heard in meetings or in presentations, making sure some colleagues are not dominating the conversation. Sponsor and mentor  Experienced male leaders can play an important role in supporting women in their careers through active sponsorship and mentoring. Speak up, be a visible and vocal ally  Actively show women you support them by: Calling out sexist behaviour, like inappropriate jokes or remarks. Get into the habit of doing so, even when women are not around. Call out other men when they are talking over women in meetings. Publicly advocate for gender equity through social media, at town halls, team meetings. By being an active supporter and promoter of gender equity, male allies can make a huge difference to workplace culture and inclusivity. If women feel they are being supported, they will thrive, leading to more productivity, staff attraction and retention, and all-round better business. Such an inclusive workplace will benefit everyone. Sacha Brinkley and Michael Diviney Advocacy & Voice 1. Ibec, New Ibec research reveals impact of Covid on women in business, 19 April 2021. Available at https://www.ibec.ie/connect-and-learn/media/2021/04/18/new-ibec-research-reveals-impact-of-covid-on-women-in-business ↩ 2. “Why Women Volunteer for Tasks That Don’t Lead to Promotions” by Linda Babcock, Maria P. Recalde, and Lise Vesterlund, Harvard Business Review, 16 July 2018. Available at https://hbr.org/2018/07/why-women-volunteer-for-tasks-that-dont-lead-to-promotions ↩

Professor Anne Marie Ward and Professor Niamh Brennan, both Chartered Accountants, make the case for diversified accounting faculties with a healthy proportion of accounting academics who are professionally and doctoral qualified. The accounting profession comprises three pillars: research, policy, and practice. Rigorous research should inform policy, which leads to best practice. Accounting faculties in higher education institutions can foster links between the three pillars. They prepare students for entry to the accountancy profession; hence, they have the potential to influence future practice. They also undertake research that can inform policy, including regulation of the profession, standard-setting, accounting education, and ethical approaches. What is the problem? Some argue that accounting education is too focused on techniques, rules, processes, and procedures, with insufficient focus on the ethical implications of accounting and its role in the economy and society. Some also argue that accounting research is too academic, unrelated to accounting practice and hence has little impact on policy formulation. In academic circles, this is referred to as the ‘theory-practice gap’. We believe that having a healthy proportion of accounting academics with both a professional qualification and an academic qualification (i.e. PhD) within accounting faculties can help resolve these problems. As these individuals have experience in practice, they can better inform student learning. In addition, they are best placed to identify research areas that would benefit the profession. Unfortunately, however, the proportion of professionally trained and research-trained academics within accounting faculties across the globe is dwindling due to retirements and a dearth of accounting doctoral graduates. University ranking metrics have not helped. For example, recruitment policies in the UK since the 1980s have largely ignored the professional accountant pool due to pressures from higher-education performance metrics. Research scoring systems, such as the UK Research Excellence Framework, feed into university rankings and influence university funding. Consequently, university managers focus on recruiting individuals with PhDs who are more likely to achieve the research outputs required to enable the university to move up the rankings and optimise funding. Therefore, there has been a shift to recruiting PhD graduates from other disciplines, for example economics and engineering, to accounting posts because of a lack of accounting doctoral graduates. However, these individuals are not equipped to service technical accounting subjects. Thus, university managers employ non-research trained professional accountants as teaching associates/part-time lecturers to service professionally accredited modules. As a result, accounting faculties in some universities comprise two cohorts: those academically trained (i.e. PhDs) and those professionally trained and qualified (e.g. Chartered Accountants). This dichotomy is concerning for the future of accounting as an academic discipline, as it serves to widen the gap between theory and practice. Indeed, academics argue that the future of accounting as a separate academic discipline is at a crisis point, with accounting departments increasingly seen as service providers (‘cash cows’) that help to finance other academic subject areas, as opposed to being a premium academic subject in its own right. International interventions Accounting profession representative bodies and policymakers in the US, England and Wales consider it strategically important to retain accounting as a quality academic subject area that actively produces research to inform accounting policy and practice. To this end, they have implemented strategies to reduce the shortfall of academically trained professional accountants. For example, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ (AICPA) Accounting Doctoral Scholars (ADS) programme manages the largest investment ever made by the accounting profession to address the shortage of accounting faculty members (www.adsphd.org). This started in 2008 when accounting firms, state CPA societies, the AICPA Foundation and others invested over $17 million in the programme. By 2020, this funding had helped more than 100 CPAs transition into academic careers. In the UK, the Institute of Chartered Accountants England and Wales, (ICAEW) Livery Charity provides four grants every year to successful ICAEW members who decide to pursue a career in academia and undertake doctoral studies. The total grant is £15,000 per successful applicant and is paid on a pro-rata basis throughout the doctoral programme. The situation in Ireland In Ireland, the links between the accounting profession and higher education institutions are strong and recruitment policies to accounting faculty posts have historically favoured professionally qualified candidates. Thus, most Irish higher education institutions have a diverse mix of accounting academics, including those who are: Both professionally and research trained; Research trained only; and Professionally trained only. This diverse range of backgrounds should foster communion between research, policy, and practice. However, increasing pressure on higher education institutions to meet the performance targets required under university quality ranking systems means that recruitment strategies now favour doctoral qualified candidates. Care is needed to ensure that the dichotomy observed in other countries does not become a feature of Ireland’s accounting faculties. A balance between the three pillars is necessary to ensure that accounting remains an important academic subject in its own right within higher education institutions and not a cash cow that generates income to fund other academic subject areas. Lecturers with both professional and academic skills can serve as a bridge between academia and practitioners and between non-professionally qualified, research-focused academics and teaching associates. Combining the skills of a professionally orientated faculty alongside relevant and high-impact academic research not only prepares students for the future of work as professionally trained accountants, it also contributes favourably to the development of accounting, business, society, and the broader economy. The UK Research Excellence Framework places a premium on research that has impact, where research can be proven to have informed society or business. This is more achievable if accounting faculties include professionally qualified individuals with links to the profession who are also research trained. Research has shown that university managers identify an ideal academic as someone who can produce “rigorous and high-quality research, to teach to a high standard, to fuse academic and professional knowledge and experience, and foster relationships with the wider accounting community”.1 This suggests a market for accounting lecturers that are both professionally and academically trained. Why do professional accountants enrol for doctoral education? Research has not examined what drives professionally qualified accountants, who have an established career, to start again at the bottom rung of the ladder in academia. In response to this gap in knowledge, we addressed two questions in our research: What motivates students to enrol in accounting doctoral programmes? Is there a difference in the motivation of professionally qualified and non-professionally qualified accounting doctoral students to enrol?2 To investigate these issues, we surveyed and interviewed 36 accounting doctoral students enrolled at higher education institutions on the island of Ireland. Of these, 13 were professionally qualified. In total, 14 reasons for enrolling for doctoral education were uncovered. Interviewees reported that their main motivations for enrolling for doctoral education were expectations of a career in academia, enjoyment of research or interest in their doctoral topic, the status of the PhD qualification and work-life balance. In terms of differences, non-professionally qualified doctoral students were predominately motivated to enrol by the pursuit of knowledge and financial rewards. In contrast, most professionally qualified doctoral researchers were initially motivated to enrol because of dissatisfaction with their professional careers. In the main, they felt they lacked autonomy over their work and work-life balance. Autonomy is a key psychological need. When individuals consider that they do not have autonomy over their life, it can affect their well-being and happiness. In addition, about half of the 13 professionally qualified interviewees felt that they did not have a sense of belonging in the profession. Those dissatisfied with their professional career anticipated that an academic career would enable them to have more autonomy over their work and work-life balance. In addition, they were attracted by the status of the PhD qualification, and most interviewees identified that they were interested in researching a topic in depth. A career in academia? We end this article with a call to Chartered Accountants wishing to change careers. If you enjoy learning new things, working independently, and being challenged, you will enjoy research. If you enjoy developing other people, you will enjoy teaching. Finally, if you are ambitious, you will be given plenty of leadership opportunities. Most lecturers are course directors or have other leadership positions from early in their careers. Therefore, if you are considering a career change, why not consider a career in academia? 1 Paisey, C., and Paisey, N.J. (2017). The decline of the professionally-qualified accounting academic: Recruitment into the accounting academic community, Accounting Forum, 14(2), 57–76. 2 Ward, A.M., Brennan, N., and Wylie, J. (2021) Enrolment motivation of accounting doctoral students: Professionally qualified and non-professionally qualified accountants, Accounting Forum, 1–24.  This research was funded by the Chartered Accountants Irish Educational Accountancy Trust, CAIET Grant number 201/15. Full details of our research study are available at the following link: https://doi.org/10.1080/01559982.2021.2001127 Anne Marie Ward FCA is Professor of Accounting at Ulster University. Niamh Brennan FCA is Michael MacCormac Professor of Management at University College Dublin.