Visual Representations of Women Accountants and The Impact of Community Norms and Expectations on Female Learning and Practicing Accounting in Saudi Arabia

 

 

Visual Representations of Women Accountants and The Impact of Community Norms and Expectations on Female Learning and Practicing Accounting in Saudi Arabia

 

 

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Methodology

3.1 introduction

The study’s main aim is to explore the visual representation of women accountants and the impact of community norms and expectations on female leaning and practicing accounting in Saudi Arabia within the big four accounting firms and the implication for the accounting profession. The big four firms used in this research include Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), Earnest, and Young (EY), and Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler (KPMG). The study narrowed down to Saudi Arabia because it has gender exclusion laws that are enforced by authorities. This is unlike in western countries where such laws do not exist as both male and female gender are considered equal. Although the big four accounting firms operate both at local and international levels, Saudi Arabia’s laws and policies on women’s gender have negatively affected the recruitment of women.

With this background information, this chapter explains or justifies the research design and the methods used to the research questions of this study. Besides, this chapter will describe the type of data spokes used and why they have been used. The type of research used in the study will also be explained and justified. The last part of the chapter will focus on the ethical issues involved in the study.

3.2 Research Design

Research design is a framework used in research (Brannen, 2017; Rutberg and Bouikidis, 2018). It consists of methods and techniques employed in study. Research design enables a researcher to choose the most suitable research techniques and methods-based don the type of research and the sources of data needed in research. Besides research techniques and data methods, research design enables researchers to determine whether to use descriptive research design, experimental research design, correlational research design, diagnostic design, or explanatory research design (Allan, 2020).  This research employed explanatory research design because the nature of the study is qualitative, and there have been few studies on this subject. Qualitative research is best analyzed thought explanatory analysis since the data or information collected is nonstatistical.

3.3 Research Method

This study has employed qualitative research. Qualitative research refers to a research method where researchers focus on words instead of numbers. Specifically, qualitative research entails analysis of correspondents’ opinions, thoughts, and feelings (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2017). While qualitative research techniques may look ineffective, they answer research questions the same way quantitative research is applied. Unlike in quantitative research where the questionnaire is used, making it hard to get fine details, qualitative research provides researchers with a unique and depth comprehension of issues being studied. In qualitative research, there is much freedom of expression. Researchers are also unlimited in looking for the kind of details they want with little or no restrictions. Besides, researchers and correspondents can explain or justify their data or information they have collected, unlike in quantitative research, where it is not easy to explain the reason behind the statistics collected (Bryman, 2017).

Therefore, qualitative research was used in this study because it was deemed the most suitable method compared to quantitative research. This is because through qualitative research, there are fewer chances of bias or collection of wrong information since the collection of data was focused on the company’s social media (Oflazoglu, 2017). Besides, the data sources explored in the research is verifiable since it existed before this research was conducted.  Most importantly, qualitative research has been used because it is challenging to determine the exact population of the study in this type of study. In research where it is not possible to determine population, qualitative research is used. Thus, in this study, it was impossible to establish the population since the companies may decide to present wrong information to conceal information regarding diversity.

One of the research techniques used in the study is the analysis of pictures and videos used on the companies’ social media accounts and websites. Businesses or organizations with social media accounts posts typically pictures and videos of their workers, managers, or relevant stakeholders to show their experiences in the organizations they work. Also, pictures and videos can be used to illustrate feedback from happy clients and stakeholders.  Using photos and pictures posted in the companies’ social media helped establish how the companies’ perception of female gender in their workplace. Besides pictures and videos, a search for information using keywords in the companies’ websites and social media is another qualitative technique employed in the study. The keywords used in this technique include diversity, inclusivity, equality, and equal representation.

3.4 Data and Sources

The primary data sources for this study are the companies’ websites and their social media platforms. The social media platform used to get information regarding the big four accounting firms include Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Today, social media platforms and company websites have become the leading communication platforms for companies and organizations. Social media platforms are the primary platforms used by companies to pass a message to the public.  A simple search of a company’s social media can reveal almost every public information about the company. This includes advertisements, company polices recruitment processes, procedures, and other relevant information regarding the organizations.

A company website is another major platform where one can get considerable information about an organization or company. Websites can accommodate much information compared to websites since it acts as a database for a company’s information. Unlike in social media, when one has to keep searching for specific information, websites provide links for various web pages. These links are provided on the home page of the company websites, making it possible for researchers to access certain information with much ease.

One of the main reasons why the study focused on website and social media data is because these platforms have become vital spaces for studying humans. One can easily study the organization’s corporate values, organizational culture, policies, and company’s stand on various social, economic, and political aspects. While some of these companies operate both nationally and globally, this study focused on social media and company websites used in Saudi Arabia. The research’s emphasis was on texts, photos, videos, and stories shared or posted on the companies’ social media platforms and websites. The use of keywords to search for relevant information was employed since it helped in avoiding manual search of information, which is tedious. Through a simple search of keywords such as diversity, inclusivity, equality and equal representation, it was possible to get information that can be analyzed to explore the visual representations of women accountants and the impact of community norms and expectations on female learning and practicing accounting in Saudi Arabia within the big four accounting firms, and the implications for the accounting profession. The table below shows the big four companies selected for this study, their websites, their social media sites, and the type of data collected (texts, videos, and stories).

Table 1.

Firm	Website (Photos, texts, and videos)	Twitter (feeds, Photos, texts, videos)	LinkedIn (Text, photos)	Location
PWC	xx	xx	xx	Saudi Arabia
EY	xx	xx	xx	Saudi Arabia
KPMG	xx	xx	xx	Saudi Arabia
Deloitte	xx	xx	xx	Saudi Arabia

 

Storytelling was the most common way of passing information to the public through the companies’ social media and websites. It is also one of the common ways of evoking relationships between authors and their reads or audience.  An examination of the firms’ social media platforms and websites, storytelling is common where texts, images, and videos of employees presenting their testimonials are occasionally posted, especially during the recruitment periods.  The four firms typically post testimonials of their employees to attract candidates to apply for vacant positions that have been advertised in the firms. The main focus of these testimonials was the image used to represent the gender employee gender.  The main questions used to explore testimonials presented in the social media and websites of these four firms include “have the companies used male or gender employees or both to present testimonials?, if so “how often has the company depicted certain gender in their testimonials?” and “Have the companies used terms such as gender, male or female in their employee testimonials?”.  These three questions provided a quick way of evaluating testimonials of employees to establish whether the firms prefer specific gender in the positions they advertise.

While it was not possible to examine all the information related to diversity in the companies’ websites and social media platforms, this study focused on 80 stories from the four firms.  The collection of the data took two months. This was between May and June 2020. The collected data was stored to inform of text files. The collected information was analyzed where numerical data, keys words, images, and descriptive phrases were used to assess the visual representations of women accountants in the selected firms. While analyzing the data, the themes sought during this process include diversity and professionalism.

3.4 Research Ethics

Research ethics constitutes one of the critical elements of research. It refers to the accepted standards that govern data collection, storage, and publishing during a research process (Park and Park, 2016). During a research process, researchers are expected to maintain transparency, confidentiality, and integrity. Data or information collected in a research process is kept confidentially since leaking personal data or organizational data can result in ethical or legal issues (Park and Park, 2016). Research ethics plays several vital roles in the research process. Firstly, they promote the objectives of the research, such as knowledge expansion. Secondly, research ethics are used to support the values and principles needed in teamwork. In other words, it ensures researchers respect one another in addition to respecting correspondents and the information they provide (Rutberg and Bouikidis, 2018). Research ethics instills the element of accountability among researchers. Issues such as plagiarism and confidentiality make researchers more accountable in that they cannot publish research done by other researchers. They cannot publicize personal data collected during the research process. Most importantly, research ethics support vital social and moral values and principles (Rutberg and Bouikidis, 2018)

One of the ethical issues considered during this study is transparency in extracting data from the company websites and social media platforms. Usually, during data collection from organizations or individuals, consent is sought. Likewise, permission was sought via email not because it was challenging to get the required data but because a lack of consent can lead to legal issues during publication of the study results. Therefore, for the sake of transparency, permission was sought from the four companies via email through the companies’ directors.

Ethical issues that were addressed during the research are the protection of personal data collected from the website. Such data include photos and pictures of employees. In the consent letter, the directors of the companies were assured that that data collected from their websites and social media would be kept anonymous. While the extraction of information from the company website may entail collecting photos and videos for diversity analysis, the data is still confidential since the people depicted in the pictures and videos are not aware of this research. Even after the results are published online, the employees represented in the pictures and videos used in the study would not know whether their photos were used in the research.

Most importantly, a high level of integrity was employed during the analysis and publication of this research. This research is entirely original.  Before the commencement of the study, previous related research was critically evaluated to prevent the repetition of what has been done before. Honesty and integrity were the guiding principles while conducting the research. Therefore, this research is original because it was not published before this study was carried out.

 

Bibliography

Allan, G., 2020. Qualitative research. In Handbook for research students in the social sciences (pp. 177-189). Routledge.

Brannen, J. ed., 2017. Mixing methods: Qualitative and quantitative research. Routledge.

Bryman, A., 2017. Quantitative and qualitative research: further reflections on their integration. In Mixing methods: Qualitative and quantitative research (pp. 57-78). Routledge.

Connelly, L.M., 2016. Trustworthiness in qualitative research. Medsurg Nursing, 25(6), pp.435-437.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2017. Fostering integrity in research. National Academies Press.

Park, J., and Park, M., 2016. Qualitative versus quantitative research methods: Discovery or justification? Journal of Marketing Thought, 3(1), pp.1-8.

Oflazoglu, S. ed., 2017. Qualitative versus quantitative research. BoD–Books on Demand.

Rutberg, S., and Bouikidis, C.D., 2018. Focusing on the fundamentals: A simplistic differentiation between qualitative and quantitative research. Nephrology Nursing Journal, 45(2), pp.209-213.