An Investigation Into The Importance Of Communication Skills

Abstract

Business leaders and academics agree that both written and oral communication skills are necessary for success in all fields of business and that recent graduates are deficient in these skills.  A lack of appreciation of the importance of communication skills has been suggested as one obstacle to accounting students achieving desired skill levels.  Questionnaires regarding the importance of communication skills were completed by 356 randomly selected accounting graduates of 13 universities and 287 students from 5 universities.  Students generally rated the skills as more important than practitioners.