Developing teamwork skills in accounting students: is communication apprehension a potential barrier?

Although research and pronouncements have identified the increased relevance of 'soft' skills for future professionals in accounting, graduates continue to exhibit deficiencies in those skills. Employers and prac-titioners emphasize that the dynamic business environment requires more than just technical knowledge; excellent teamwork, communication and analytical skills are also of paramount importance. Despite nu-merous attempts to improve teamwork skills there is evidence that the responses to the acknowledged deficiencies have not been successful and there is a lack of understanding about the constraints that could hinder the skills development. Some results point to anxiety towards communication as a reason for the un-willingness to interact in group situations and therefore as a constraint for skills development, although the connection between communication apprehension and development of teamwork skills has not been invest-igated. Therefore, the present study examines the relationships between communication apprehension and communication self-efficacy and teamwork skills self-efficacy, in order to understand to what extent com-munication apprehension influences self-efficacy beliefs and forms a potential barrier. Our results indicate a negative influence of communication apprehension on teamwork self-efficacy, both direct and mediated by communication self-efficacy; whereas there is a relevant positive association between self-efficacy beliefs. This pattern of relationships provides relevant insights about how the constraints could be alleviated, which that are discussed in the paper.(c) 2023 ASEPUC. Published by EDITUM -Universidad de Murcia. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).