Understanding accounting professionals’ intention to adopt robotic process automation: a TOE-based empirical assessment from an emerging country

TL;DR

This study explores how South African accountants decide to adopt RPA, showing that institutional support strongly influences their intentions.

Contribution

The paper provides new empirical insights into RPA adoption in an emerging economy using the TOE framework.

Findings

Institutional support, especially normative pressure, strongly influences RPA adoption intention.

Mimetic pressure negatively affects RPA adoption due to concerns about job displacement.

Organizational readiness and technology readiness are crucial for RPA adoption in developing economies.

Abstract

The proliferation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is transforming the accounting landscape, with technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) changing the face of traditional accounting processes. This study investigates the level of RPA adoption among accountants in South Africa and examines how technological–organizational–environmental (TOE) factors influence the behavioral intention of RPA adoption. The study employed an exploratory cross-sectional survey comprising responses from 100 professional accountants in practice to analyze its data, combining descriptive statistics with a multiple linear regression model supported by correlation tests to determine significant predictors of RPA adoption intention. The robustness of the model, which was verified by multiple pre- and post-analysis checks, indicated that institutional support, particularly normative pressure, has the strongest influence on adoption intention, with an adjusted R2 value of 0.27 highly significant. This highlights the crucial role that organizational readiness, managerial support, and technology readiness play in enabling RPA adoption. On the other hand, mimetic pressure showed a negative influence, indicating that the industry-wide adoption of RPA technology may raise concerns and anxiety about job displacement. Overall, the findings reinforce the importance of organizational capacity-building in fostering RPA adoption while also revealing the complexity of environmental and technological factors that influence the adoption decisions of professional accountants in a developing-economy context. The findings support SDG 9 by emphasizing capacity building and inclusive digital transformation.

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