FEB UI Accounting Students Win Two Awards at DASH 2020

FEB UI Accounting Students Win Two Awards at DASH 2020

 

Nino Eka Putra ~ FEB UI Public Relations Officer

DEPOK – (26/9/2020)  Students of the Undergraduate Program in Accounting, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Indonesia, Class of 2018, won first and third places in the Accounting Paper Competition at Diponegoro Accounting’s Harmony (DASH) 2020 organized online by the Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Diponegoro, on Saturday (26/9/2020).

DASH 2020, which took “The Role of Accounting in Facing Economic Challenges” as its theme, had two contests: the Diponegoro Accounting Competition (DAC) and the Accounting Paper Competition (APC). The DAC was a problem-solving olympiad while the APC was a science writing competition. In addition to students from FEB UI,  students from other universities, such as Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), Universitas Brawijaya (Unibraw), Universitas Pajajaran (Unpad), Perbanas Institute, Universitas Atma Jaya, and UPN Veteran Jakarta, also took part in the contests.

Each contesting team consisted of two active students from the same university. After filling out the registration form, the teams selected one of the three sub-themes offered and submitted an abstract of their sub-theme according to contest rules. Participants were also required to cover all expenses incurred when their abstracts passed review and they advanced to the next stages of the competition.

The Masih Belajar (literally meaning Still Learning) Team consisting of Ruth Agustini Sirait and Gabrielle Angela Christie from FEB UI won first place in the Accounting Paper Competition for their paper entitled “Sustainability Accounting as A Future Corporate Sustainability Strategy: Proof & Solution”. They were  supervised by their academic adviser, Desi Adhariani, Ph.D.

The paper  discusses the important role of sustainability accounting as a corporate sustainability strategy. Today, companies should also consider environmental issues, not just profits. The team sought to prove that sustainability accounting will have positive internal and external impacts on a company. However, the conventional accounting system has yet to accommodate the sustainability issue. The current frameworks for sustainability reporting, such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Environmental, Sustainable and Governance (ESG) standards, still have drawbacks in terms of their implementation and mismatch of concepts.

The Masih Belajar  Team sees that companies still face challenges in following the sustainability reporting guidelines. To that end, the team proposes the use of artifical intelligence (deep learning method) to create a sustainability index through the processing of data in sustainability reports.

According to Ruth Agustini Sirait, “Hopefully, the sustainability index could serve as a guideline for investors to invest, and to encourage companies  to score high in the sustainability index.” Ruth went on to say that “I’m grateful to God. It was only because of His blessings that we won this competition. However, I hope that going forward, we can make achivements in other places and make our parents and alma mater proud. By coincidence, we passed the selection for the International Conference of Sustainability (ICS), which is jointly organized by FEB UI, the Institute of Certified Sustainability Practitioners and the National Center for Sustainability Reporting. We will present the paper on 4 November 2020. We hope that through this paper we can at least  share ideas that can be realized in Indonesia.”

Gabrielle Angela Christie, added: “I’m thankful the Masih Belajar Team won the competition. True to its name, as a team we are still in the learning and trial phase. The most important thing for us is to complete this series of competitions.”

The Quaranteam Team that consists of Yohana Olivia and Birgitta Aurelia won third place in the Accounting Paper Competition for their paper entitled “Hambatan Dibalik Peran Green Accounting dalam Mewujudkan Pembangunan Berkelanjutan” (The Challenges of Green Accounting Implementation for Sustainable Development). The team was supervised by their academic adviser, Dr. Chaerul D. Djakman, S.E., Ak., M.B.A.

The title of the paper was based on their findings that many companies in Indonesia are still profit oriented and fail to pay attention to people’s welfare and environmental sustainability. This is indicated by business practices that are not sustainable development-oriented. This is due in part to the fact that the implementation of green accounting, particularly in Indonesia, is still not optimal due to three main constraints that make companies reluctant to implement green accounting to drive sustainable development besides a lack of a sense of urgency.

Yohana Olivia said: “I’m thrilled to win the competition. Two months of hard work – writing the abstract and the paper and giving the presentation – were not in vain;  our hard work bore fruits. Our achievement was also possible because of the support from our academic adviser, who gave us input and direction. Going forward, we plan to participate in other competitions to improve our skills outside our srea of expertise and to gain experience.”

Birgitta Aurelia added: “We are proud of our achievement, but we won’t become complacent. We will participate in other competitions to hone in our skills.” (hjtp)