‘Employability’ is not enough: values-aligned career development for Gen Z accounting students

Universities are intensifying their employability agendas, yet recruitment and retention challenges persist in accounting. Career choice is shaped by both employment prospects and whether the profession offers a viable and liveable professional identity. This paper reframes career choice among Gen Z students as grounded in values congruence and identity sustainability. Using Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), we examine how students negotiate professional narratives and revise career goals following a values-aligned workshop and a scaffolded reflection sequence in a second-year financial accounting course at an Australian university. Analysing 90 reflections using reflexive thematic analysis, we found that while students positioned financial security as central to career choice, it was rarely framed in terms of wealth maximisation. Instead, Gen Z students moralised money through notions of sufficiency and stability. Rejecting a trade-off between success and wellbeing, students evaluated careers through the lenses of ethical legitimacy and social usefulness. These domains functioned as composite feasibility judgements that shaped goal commitments. Values-aligned reflection serves as contextual support within SCCT, translating diffuse concern into boundary-setting practices and actionable criteria. While bounded by a single-course intervention, the findings offer accounting educators, curriculum designers, and professional bodies a values-congruence mechanism linking employability messaging to sustainable career commitment.