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This paper aims to explore the structure of the accounting field in a post-Soviet context – Latvia. This study also aims to generate insights into the extent to which professionalization processes are shaped by national particularities and to demonstrate how self-styled professional fields change over time.

Drawing from the relational sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and drawing on 83 interviews, the paper highlights the forms of capital (cultural and social primarily) that help define what constitutes appropriate conduct for successful career progression in the accounting field.

The values ascribed to forms of capital that structure the Latvian accounting field fluctuate across time and space. This suggests that the structure of professional fields – as understood by the structuring properties of different forms of capital – is variable and fluid. Additionally, fields themselves can become more or less desirable over time to those who possess certain forms of capital.

Although the results may be specific to one national accounting field, the idiosyncrasies constitute the contribution of the paper, showing that the form and structure of accounting fields vary in accordance with national particularities. Overall, the paper highlights the importance of fit between habitus and field and of adjustment to the surrounding rules of the game in professional contexts.

The findings are important for understanding the form that an accounting field can take in an emerging economy that has fully embraced neoliberalism while maintaining strong residues of the Soviet system. The findings are also relevant for understanding the dynamics of change more broadly in self-styled professional fields.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the work practices of Big 4 firms in Bangladesh with the aim of exploring the extent to which global professional service firms (GPSFs) can be thought of as being genuinely “global”.

Interviews were undertaken with the vast majority of Big 4 partners in Bangladesh. These interviews explored a number of themes related to the professional service work context in Bangladesh and the relationship between local and global firms.

The central finding of this paper is that although the Big 4 have a long-established presence in Bangladesh, local societal factors heavily influence the realities of work for accountants there. In most cases the Big 4 firms establish correspondent firms (instead of full member firms) in Bangladesh and tend to offer restricted service lines. Additionally, the paper identifies professional, commercial and cultural barriers to greater Big 4 involvement in the local market. Conceptually, the chief contribution of this paper is to explore how the effects of globalizing capitalism and standardised “best practices” in global professional service work are mediated through the societal effects of Bangladeshi society, resulting in the Big 4 having only a tentative presence in the Bangladeshi market.

The findings cast doubt on the extent to which self-styled GPSFs are truly “global” in nature. Future work examining the Big 4, or accounting more generally, in the context of globalization, would do well to pay greater attention to the experience of professionals in emerging markets.

Whilst there has been much work looking at accounting and accountants in the context of globalization, this work has tended to privilege “core” western empirical settings. Very little is known about professional service firms in “peripheral” emerging markets. Furthermore, this study extends the application of the system, society and dominance framework by mapping the interactions and dynamics of these three sources of influence in the setting of PSFs.

This paper aims to show how The Audit Society was oriented towards, not just accounting scholars but also towards social scientific enquiry more broadly.

This is a reflective review of the impact that Mike Power’s The Audit Society has had on social science.

The authors find that The Audit Society successfully built conceptual bridges “up” and “out” towards other social science disciplines.

The authors highlight the importance of theorizing “up” and “out” for present day accounting scholars.

The authors offer a personal reflection on The Audit Society which has influenced the own study in various ways.

The purpose of this paper is to report the outcome of an interdisciplinary discussion on the concepts of profit and profitability and various ways in which we could potentially problematize these concepts. It is our hope that a much greater attention or reconsideration of the problematization of profit and related accounting numbers will be fostered in part by the exchanges we include here.

This paper adopts an interdisciplinary discussion approach and brings into conversation ideas and views of several scholars on problematizing profit and profitability in various contexts and explores potential implications of such problematization.

Profit and profitability measures make invisible the collective endeavour of people who work hard (backstage) to achieve a desired profit level for a division and/or an organization. Profit tends to preclude the social process of debate around contradictions among the ends and means of collective activity. An inherent message that we can discern from our contributors is the typical failure of managers to appreciate the value of critical theory and interpretive research for them. Practitioners and positivist researchers seem to be so influenced by neo-liberal economic ideas that organizations are distrusted and at times reviled in their attachment to profit.

Problematizing opens-up the potential for interesting and significant theoretical insights. A much greater pragmatic and theoretical reconsideration of profit and profitability will be fostered by the exchanges we include here.

In setting out a future research agenda, this paper fosters theoretical and methodological pluralism in the research community focussing on problematizing profit and profitability in various settings. The discussion perspectives offered in this paper provides not only a basis for further research in this critical area of discourse and regulation on the role and status of profit and profitability but also emancipatory potential for practitioners (to be reflective of their practices and their undesired consequences of such practices) whose overarching focus is on these accounting numbers.

The purpose of this paper is to understand: how and why do experienced professionals, who perceive themselves as autonomous, comply with organizational pressures to overwork? Unlike previous studies of professionals and overwork, the authors focus on experienced professionals who have achieved relatively high status within their firms and the considerable economic rewards that go with it. Drawing on the little used Bourdieusian concept of illusio, which describes the phenomenon whereby individuals are “taken in and by the game” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992), the authors help to explain the “autonomy paradox” in professional service firms.

This research is based on 36 semi-structured interviews primarily with experienced male and female accounting professionals in France.

The authors find that, in spite of their levels of experience, success, and seniority, these professionals describe themselves as feeling helpless and trapped, and experience bodily subjugation. The authors explain this in terms of individuals enhancing their social status, adopting the breadwinner role, and obtaining and retaining recognition. The authors suggest that this combination of factors cause professionals to be attracted to and captivated by the rewards that success within the accounting profession can confer.

As well as providing fresh insights into the autonomy paradox the authors seek to make four contributions to Bourdieusian scholarship in the professional field. First, the authors highlight the strong bodily component of overwork. Second, the authors raise questions about previous work on cynical distancing in this context. Third, the authors emphasize the significance of the pursuit of symbolic as well as economic capital. Finally, the authors argue that, while actors’ habitus may be in a state of “permanent mutation”, that mutability is in itself a sign that individuals are subject to illusio.

This paper is premised on the understanding that professions remain central means of institutionalising expertise in society. A summary of major issues that are prominent in recent studies of the professions is presented in order to inform the paper’s central objective which is to scope out an agenda for future research in the area. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This is a desk-based study informed by, but not limited to, the other papers appearing in this special issue.

This paper identifies and summarises a number of central themes: globalisation and neo-imperialism, the role of the state in professional projects, the rise of tax avoidance as a moral issue, the implications of tax professionals moving from the public to the private sector, the study of small-scale accounting firms, the rise of new expert groups and the emergence and implications of new audit spaces.

The value of this paper is in bringing together a number of important but eclectic themes to scope out an agenda for the future study of the accounting profession and expert labour more broadly. The paper questions whether the term profession is still meaningful in a context where many professions have been re-made in the image of commercialism; it suggests that a focus on experts might be more apposite.

In scoping out an agenda this paper calls for greater attention to be paid to: examining the role of experts and their role in some of the major crises of the times; exploring how professions have often undermined their own legitimacy; understanding better the relations between professions and the state; the extent to which the next generation of partners will behave very differently to the current incumbents; the way in which digitalisation opens up new vistas of expertise; and in investigating the position of different expert groups in relation to societal elites. The paper reiterates that major societal issues are framed through various forms of expert knowledge and as a corollary it is essential to engage with experts and the implications of their proposed solutions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine attempts at jurisdictional expansion in the audit field. Specifically, the authors critically analyse the professional implications of “new audit spaces”, that is, novel auditing and assurance services that have emerged at intersections between audit and other fields such as the environment, the public sector, sport and education. The purpose is two-fold. First, to better understand the dynamics of new audit spaces, and second, to highlight the major challenges and adaptations prompted by these dynamics.

Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of practice, the authors highlight and problematise four issues central to the construction of new audit spaces: independence; reporting; professional accreditation; and the nature of the audit role.

The audit profession has experienced mixed success in seeking to annex new audit spaces; in some instances, practices initially located at the margins of auditing have moved towards its centre, while elsewhere projects have been abandoned, colonised by others or remain in flux. In these ventures, the accounting profession is brought into competition with other bodies of expertise and modes of practice. In new audit spaces, core elements of auditing, as conventionally conceived, are transmogrified as they travel.

This analysis calls into question some of the “sacred cows” of auditing and challenges the transferability of the capitals and habitus of the accounting profession in other domains. Future research avenues are suggested.

This chapter argues that while Organization and Management Theory (OMT) appears in good health it stands on the precipice of a crisis of its own making. This stems from an overly self-referential and narrow focus on theoretical contribution, at the expense of a broader set of societal commitments. Paradoxically, this is particularly the case if a researcher is putatively engaging with broader societal issues. The central thesis advanced in this chapter is that researchers should be more socially reflexive about what they are researching, why they are researching it, and for whom. As a corollary, the chapter calls for researchers to interrogate the research that they are undertaking critically and to work out the broader social significance of their work. The chapter unfolds with concise analyses of two branches of OMT: the sociology of the professions and institutional theory. The chapter highlights how research into the professions runs the danger of being captured by the objects of its research: as researchers busy themselves examining pre-existing concepts, rather than exploring the power struggles that take place in particular fields. The chapter argues for a re-framing of research into the professions. The chapter highlights the rise of institutional theory to its current position of dominance within OMT. Institutional theory’s recent move to study ‘Grand Challenges’ is welcomed but also problematised. The chapter closes with reflections on a course of action for making OMT matter.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse role transition for professionals moving towards hybrid managerial roles. Specifically, the authors examine reforms to the national tax agency in the UK, focusing on attempts to shift hybrid managers away from a focus on tax compliance, to a greater customer focus. This extends understanding of the relationship between New Public Management (NPM) and the public professions, by offering greater insight into the dynamic between regulators and regulatees, as professionals are co-opted into management roles that encompass greater customer orientation.

The authors draw on documentary data relating to reform from 2003 to 2012 and 43 semi-structured interviews with senior tax inspectors co-opted into hybrid manager roles.

The findings support established accounts of the effect of NPM reform to public professions, as these professionals are co-opted into hybrid management roles. Some hybrid managers resist, others embrace the demands of the new role. Linked to a hitherto neglected aspect of analysis (the extent to which hybrid managers embrace a greater customer orientation) the findings also show a more novel third response: some hybrid managers leave the national tax agency for opportunities in the private sector. These public-to-private professionals the authors call “canny customers”. Canny customers are ideally placed to exploit aspects of NPM reform, and thereby accelerate changes in the governance of public agencies, but in a way that might undermine the function of the tax agency and tax professions.

In regulatory settings, policy reform to co-opt professionals into hybrid managerial roles may have mixed effects. In settings where a focal dynamic is the regulator-regulatee relationship, effective governance will require understanding of the labour market to temper excess influence by those hybrid managers who become canny customers, otherwise, in settings where it is easy for individuals to move from regulator to regulatee, the pace and consequences of reform will be harder to govern. This runs the danger of eroding professional values. The specific case of tax professionals reflects themes in the literature examining hybridisation for accountants, and provides novel insight into the dynamics of professionalism that extend to the case of accountants.

The contribution is to extend the literature on role transition of professionals. The authors focus on hybrid managers in the context of a regulatory agency: the UK national tax agency. Policy reforms associated with hybridisation emphasised customer orientation. The authors highlight labour market characteristics impacting the regulator-regulatee dynamic, and an as yet unexplored, unintended consequence of reform. The public professional who leaves for the private sector becomes a “canny customer” who can exploit and accelerate reform.

The small accounting practice, despite being the most numerous part of the profession by number of firms, remains largely under-researched. Part of the reason the small practice category remains elusive is that researchers find it difficult to precisely define the object to study, and yet, this may be precisely the reason for studying it. Envisaging how this category is “represented” in institutionalized settings, constitutes a rich agenda for future research as it allows the small practitioner world to be connected to the issue of intra-professional segmentation. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper proposes reinvigorating research around Bucher and Strauss’ (1961) conceptualization of professions as “segments in movement”. At the same time as advocating a better investigation of the small practitioner segment itself, it suggests to take the latter as an example to further explore the vision of professions as segments “more or less delicately held together”. To this end, there is a potential for cross-fertilization between Bucher and Strauss’ research programme and a range of other theoretical frameworks.

The discussion points towards how small practice, as a segment whose history and characteristics reflect the different struggles that have led to the creation of the professional accounting body and marked its subsequent evolution, is far from insignificant. Segmenting the profession in categories related to “size” offers an opportunity to deal with an under-investigated aspect of professions’ sociology and history, which encapsulates its inherent diversity and hierarchy. Whilst the professional body may replicate the hierarchy that structures broader society, the meaning of small itself, within a hierarchy of organizations, is also a relative concept. It is politically charged, and must be delicately managed in order to maintain harmony within the polarized professional space.

The small practitioner has been much overlooked in the accounting literature, and the literature on the professions has overemphasized aspects of its cohesiveness. The authors contribute a revitalized agenda for researchers to explore the dynamics of heterogeneity and unity in the professional body, by focusing a lens on the small practice and extending the “segments in movements” premise beyond the functional division of professions.