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1. Introduction
• This research aims to determine finance executives’
opinions of academicians on the seven facets of
professionalism.
• A mail survey was distributed to 500 chief financial officers
from fortune 1000 firms.
• A t- test of significance was performed on each facet of
professionalism to compare means of the finance
practitioners’ opinions of practitioners versus academicians.
• There is informational value in feedback from practitioners
concerning academic research in the field of finance.
• The findings provide an indication of finance executives
opinions of their own strengths relative to those of
academicians on several of the dimensions measured.

2. Objective
• This study measures the seven dimensions of
professionalism i.e. knowledge of business in general,
knowledge of problems facing business, knowledge of
current research, ability to generate creative ideas, ability to
develop applicable finance theories, ability to solve practical
finance problems and ethical standard. The specific study
are as follows:
• To determine finance executives’ opinions of academicians
on the above seven facets of professionalism.
• To determine finance executives’ opinions of finance
practitioners on the above seven facets of professionalism.
• To compare finance executives’ opinions of academicians
and practitioners on the above seven facets of
professionalism and
• To determine which and to what extent finance academic
journals and selected general periodicals are read by finance
executives.

3. Methodology
• A mail survey was distributed to 500 chief financial officers
from Fortune 1000 firms.
• Respondent demographics are reported in Exhibit 1.

4. • Determination of practitioner’s opinions regarding the
various facets off professionalism with respects to both
finance academicians and to finance practitioners was
accomplished using 5 – point Likert – type scales. Items
and responses to each are reported in Exhibit 2 for
finance academicians.

6. Exhibit 3 for finance practitioners.

7. • Results are reported in Exhibit 4.

8. Responses are reported in Exhibit 5.

9. Major Findings
• Practitioners believed that they have better knowledge on general
business, business problem solving, ability to generate creative ideas and
ability to solve practical financial problems and academicians have better
knowledge on research methodologies, research findings and ability to
develop applicable finance theories.
• Finance practitioners in US corporations do not appear to avail
themselves of available academic publications but they prefer to read the
most popular business periodicals namely Wall Street Journal, Forbes and
Fortune.
• Exhibit 2 results indicate that finance practitioners believe themselves to
be very knowledgeable about business in general and problems facing
business.
• This is evidenced within a combined rating of the excellent and good
category, which produced ratings of 76% and 72% respectively. Exhibit 3
result shows the majority of the practitioners rated finance academicians
as being above average on their knowledge of research methodologies
(89%); knowledge of current research findings (88%); ability to develop
applicable finance theories (54%); and ethical standard (76%).
• Exhibit 4 shows there is rejection of null hypothesis that the difference
between means for practitioners vs. finance academicians is equal to 0.

10. Conclusions
• This research aims to determine finance executives’ opinions of
academicians on the seven facets of professionalism.
• The findings provide an indication of finance executives opinions of their
own strengths relative to those of academicians on several of the
dimensions measured.
• Specifically, finance practitioners view a number of their strengths
differently relative to those of academicians on several of the dimensions
measured. These practitioners not only believe themselves to have a
better knowledge of business in general and the types of problems facing
business but they also favorably distinguish between themselves and
academicians in their ability to solve practical finance problems and to
generate creative ideas.
• With respect to rating of ethical standards, there were no significant
differences found between finance practitioners’ self-ratings of
academicians.
• The findings of the study confirm the obvious expectations and previous
research findings that practitioners view research methodology and
journal publication as basically academic domains.
• In other words, the findings provide an indication of their own strength
relative to those of their academic counter parts.

11. Critical Appreciation/ Future Scope
• Although the sample size of the current study limits fine demographics
distinctions of CFOs, it would be of interest in future studies to compare
financial executives attitudes by blocking on various dimensions such as
understanding executive differences across such variables as educational
levels, types of industries and years of work related experience would
provide a richer understanding of variation in practitioners views and
attitudes about the perceived contribution of academic research.
• Based on the scope of Heaton’s work, only one question: Is the research
done by academics of any relevance to actual decision makers? was
picked and made the comments.
• He tried to explain the need of academic research for actual decision
makers. His responses are classified into four points which are explained
as Point One: I’m not surprised. Point Two: The same survey if a different
set of practitioners would have yielded very different results. Point three:
One of the unspoken concerns of this study is that the emphasis on
research by universities in tenure, promotion and merit-pay decisions is
misplaced. However, that emphasis may be legitimate even if research is
irrelevant to practitioners. Point Four: This research opens a number of
unanswered, but important questions.