The Didactic Challenge of Accounting Information Systems and ERPs for Business Schools: A Proposal for the Italian Universities

The strong integration triggered by the adoption of Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERPs) impacts many processes and tasks; more specifically, the way accounting data are collected, elaborated, communicated and used often changes even dramatically when an ERP system is adopted. This design-oriented paper stems from multi-year didactic experiences in the Italian context, where the Business Economics courses still poorly take into account the emerging educational needs stemming from this scenario: in most Italian universities, in fact, subjects such as accounting, administration, controlling and auditing are taught according to traditional approaches, which tend to see these activities as scarcely integrated with the operations, on the one side, and with the strategic management processes, on the other side. In other words, ERPs, despite their nature of integrated Accounting Information Systems (AIS), are often considered as a “subject for engineers” and, as a consequence, Italian companies have difficulties in finding economics graduates capable of an up-to-date, integrated view of accounting and administration issues. This paper proposes a framework for innovating the educational strategies for basic and advanced courses related to accounting, administration, controlling and auditing, in order to fill the identified gap between real-world demand and higher education supply in this context.