| The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, with an objective of positioning of the profession, has undertaken a historic exercise to revisit the whole gamut of profession and evolve New Vision and to re-structure appropriately for achieving the same. |
| The impact of new industrial policy introduced in 1991 has emanated many conceptual changes in business and economic scenario of the country, affecting the profession of Chartered Accountants in many ways. It was observed that the mindset of the Government was changing from regulation to management and further to de-regulation. In view of this, the Institute took an initiative and constituted a Committee namely Committee on Vision and Re-structuring and entrusted this strategic objective of the Institute to the Committee for evolving new Vision for the profession so as to re-establish the same in the rapidly changing economic scenario of the Asia-Pacific in general and of India in particular. It was also felt that the Committee will formulate appropriate strategies to enable the profession to cope with the challenges and threats being emerged in such market and translate these threats and challenges into opportunities for the profession. The Committee took charge and designed the whole exercise broadly into two phases - (i) Conceptualisation Phase, and (ii) Implementation Phase. |
| The Committee decided to elicit the views/opinions/suggestions/expectations from all stakeholders of the profession to know the pulse of the profession in existing scenario and also about the future in the changing global economy from broad base of the profession even at grass root level. To make the exercise more and more interactive and participative, the Committee designed structured questionnaire for eliciting the valuable inputs from Members in practice, Members in service and students. Committee also has given full emphasis to the concern of other side of the coin that is the users of the services of the Chartered Accountants namely industry, business, regulators, and the Government. To mobilise the process, various task forces, future forums and interactive groups were constituted all across the country including the representatives of the profession at branch, regional and central level. Committee also approached the legends of other professions and society at large to elicit the views on the role of Chartered Accountants in the turbulent economic scenario and WTO regime. As such the views were elicited through questionnaires by publishing the same in the Institute?s Journal and Students Newsletter and hosting the same on the website of the Institute too. |
| The Vision exercise was initiated with an objective of helping the Chartered Accountants to be on the top of the professions, that is why it was triggered with direct involvement of members at grass root level so as to create a comprehensive and integrated Vision for the profession. Exhaustive research has been conducted to create the foundation of the exercise and assist the Vision process with the help of team of professionals/consultants. A series of focus groups were constituted to collect the views of the members of the profession from various segments on important aspects affecting the future of profession under the guidance of Regional and Central representatives. In addition, market research was conducted with potential clients and employers of Chartered Accountants to obtain information about the skills needed for various types of decision making and the challenges before these stakeholders, and their opinions and concern on the services being rendered by the profession and the expectation towards new service products and, further value addition to the services being rendered by the profession. Several interviews were conducted with the individuals from industry, other professions, regulators, decision makers and policy makers for industry and the Government. The Committee was supported by a team of external professional management consultants under able guidance of Dr. M.B. Athreya, the commitee analysed and filtered the basic data collected through research and interviews, to evolve a new Vision for the profession to keep pace with threats and challenges emerging in the economy and translating the same into opportunities for the profession. |
| Thereafter the Committee formulated the model and the Visioning process geared up. Each and every component of the Vision Statement, observed as the mission, the Vision and core value, were elaborated from the point of view of all the stakeholders. The Vision document was prepared and released for public dissemination. A self-appraisal questionnaire was also designed to take up the feed back and eliciting the views of the stakeholders on the Vision Document which provided a platform for the Members of the profession to introspect themselves and appraise their professional grounding at present as well as what they expect out of them in near future. The aforesaid self-appraisal was used as a tool to direct the mindset of the Members of the profession to inculcate a habit of visualising their role and comparing their skill with the needs of the market and formulate a future Plan with a strategy using a growth plan divided into different time segments. This was done with the view that members may think to add value in their endeavour and develop towards achieving more service products to become a total business solution provider. |
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To revisit all segments of the profession in order to better understand its concerns, viewpoints, issues, needs and hopes for the future; |
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To develop new vision for the profession and to restructure in order to achieve the same |
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To formulate strategies for the success of
profession in rapidly changing economic scenario; and |
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To give a platform for paradigm shift and to
become total business solution provider. | |
| This historical project involved multiple projects involving a collection of variety of primary and secondary (internal and external) database, views, suggestions and interpretation of historical data as well as review of parallel exercises in the institutions and accounting bodies elsewhere in the world. The collection of data and interpretation was done through: |
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Structured and focussed questionnaires |
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Interviews/interactions with various stakeholders; |
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Focus groups; |
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Task Forces; |
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Future Forums; |
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Review of parallel exercises; and |
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Desk Research. | |
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