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An Analysis of the Impact of the Work Environment on Chartered Accountants' Professional Examination Performance

THERE HAS BEEN A LIMITED AMOUNT OF RESEARCH on the performance of accountants in professional examinations (Dunn & Hall, 1984, 1988; Kapoor, 1988; Reilly & Stettler, 1972; Stettler, 1978). It seems that no researcher has examined the relationship between accountants’ professional examination performance and their feelings about various aspects of their work environments. My purpose in the present study was to assess the strength of the relationship between professional examination performance-defined as the number of attempts by newly qualified chartered accountants to pass Professional Examination 2 (PE2) of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Walesand the accountants’ perceptions of the level of their workload, attitudes of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, professional commitment, intention to leave the firm, and intention to leave the profession. According to my six null hypotheses, accountants’ workload, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, professional commitment, intention to leave the firm, and intention to leave their profession are not related to professional examination performance. I sent out 637 questionnaires to newly qualified chartered accountants whose names were published in the newspaper; I received 191 usable responses. On a 5-point scale, I scored the number of attempts taken to pass PE2. The possible outcomes of sitting all the examination papers of PE2 were that candidates could (a) pass all the papers (and pass PE2), (b) fail at least one paper (and fail PE2), or (c) be referred. A referral means that a single paper can be retaken if the candidate’s failing grade was less than 5% lower than the passing grade. (Failing one paper by more than 5% means automatically failing the entire examination.) Referred candidates are allowed a maximum of two attempts to pass the referred