Use hope to shift stress, strengthen culture, and keep talent. 

Know-How Korner

With Donny Shimamoto

Center for Accounting Transformation

Know How Korner, hosted by Donny Shimamoto, aims to translate peer-reviewed findings into practical actions for firms. In a recent episode, Shimamoto interviews Dr. Katelynn Hopson, assistant professor of accounting at Arkansas Tech University, whose dissertation quantifies a deceptively soft concept—hope—and links it to how public accountants experience stress and consider leaving their firms.

Hope, in the research literature, is not vague optimism. Psychologist C. R. Snyder frames it as goal-directed cognition comprising agency (“the will”) and pathways (“the ways”). Hopson studies state hope—how hopeful someone is about a specific time frame or event—rather than broad personality-level trait hope. State hope moves; it can be built or eroded by experience and context.

“People who have higher levels of hope are more likely to want to stay and less likely to feel burned out,” Hopson explains.