Professionally Steered: Accounting’s Impact on Sri Lanka’s Evolving Business Landscape

This study investigates how accounting professionals in business, in Sri Lanka, navigated through a volatile environment, in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, with adaptive strategies employed to assert cultural control of jurisdiction over emerging business issues. Based on the qualitative methodological approach, this explanatory comparative case study was carried out to address business issues by accounting professionals in a crisis. Data were collected through primary sources by conducting semi-structured interviews with 45 accounting professionals across 19 companies during the pilot phase. Thereafter, five companies were selected, and 12 accounting professionals were interviewed from the selected companies during the in-depth field study phase. More data were collected through secondary sources on events that occurred in the political, economic, and social spheres. Data were analysed thematically, grounded in Abbott’s (1988) writings on cultural control of jurisdiction in response to a turbulent business environment. The findings revealed that accounting professionals diligently redefined their jurisdiction by addressing complex business issues across three domains: conforming to regulations when addressing customer demand, responding to an increase in competition with a drop in customer demand, and managing competition by addressing customer demand. The study accentuates the critical significance of embedding contextually adaptive and interdisciplinary competencies into accounting education, training, and continuing professional development. This study underscores the role of external socio-political and economic disturbances in driving jurisdictional shifts, and foregrounds, based on Abbott’s (1988) writings, ‘professional knowledge in use’ as a principal mechanism through which accounting professionals synthesise cultural control and strategic relevance in emerging economies.