Emotional intelligence capabilities that can improve the non-technical skills of accounting students

The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) requires its member professional accounting organisations and their authorised educators to adopt the overarching guidelines that are provided in the International Education Standards (IES). Despite these requirements, which include that accounting students develop several non-technical skills (NTS), students fail to adequately develop such skills. Furthermore, several studies advise that accounting programmes must incorporate emotional intelligence (EI) development initiatives, but this requirement is excluded from the IES. Resultantly, educators may disregard EI development within accounting programmes, especially since these programmes are already considered overloaded. This study investigates whether it is possible to advance the NTS of accounting students while facilitating the development of their EI competencies by aiming to answer the following question: which EI capabilities can improve the NTS of accounting students? By following a qualitative research approach and performing a systematic literature review, the study found that the enhancement of multiple EI capabilities can lead to the improvement of several NTS of accounting students. Educators that want to renew their NTS development offering, or introduce EI development initiatives within their accounting programmes, can use these findings as a guide to determine which EI capabilities (or combination thereof) can advance the essential NTS of accounting students.