Accounting faculty and the technology imperative: an institutional analysis

Technological change is reshaping the accounting profession, yet the integration of emerging technologies into accounting education depends not only on faculty capabilities but also on how technological expectations become institutionalised within universities. This study examines how accounting faculty in Indonesia respond when technological expectations become institutional priorities and how these responses are translated into teaching practice. Drawing on institutional work theory, it analyses semi-structured interviews with accounting faculty at a private Indonesian university. The findings show that technology was first valorised as a legitimate and desirable direction, lecturer alignment was produced through enabling and policing mechanisms, and pedagogical enactment remained selective, bounded, and only partially routinised. Lecturers were often willing to engage with technology when it was directly tied to teaching responsibilities, but sustained uptake was constrained by workload, role-specific relevance, institutional support, and material conditions. The study contributes by shifting attention from technology adoption as individual readiness or resistance to the institutional processes through which technological priorities are valued, reinforced, and enacted in practice. It also broadens the geographical scope of accounting education research by examining an Indonesian private university context.