Accounting students’ internship experiences: an agentic perspective

While accounting students' engagement in internship is widely considered pivotal for developing their employability skills, its implications for student agency have largely been undertheorised in the accounting education literature. Using social cognitive theory (SCT) and a qualitative research approach involving interviews with accounting students, this study investigates the dynamic processes and mechanisms by which students experience and exercise agency. Our findings reveal various personal, environmental, and behavioural processes that support or inhibit student's agency during internship. Whilst motivational factors such as expected outcomes, self-efficacy, and goal mechanisms create the initial conditions and impetus for goal pursuit, it is the enactment of self-regulatory capabilities that enables students to effectively achieve those goals. Accounting students' agentic behaviour is further shaped by self-evaluative mechanisms, guided modelling, and socially mediated forms of agency, highlighting their workplace supervisors' roles in supporting student agency.