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Article
Publication date: 19 October 2015

Ioana Lupu and Laura Empson

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…

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Abstract

Purpose

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.

Design/methodology/approach

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

Findings

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.

Originality/value

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.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 28 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 8 July 2021

Aybike Mergen and Mustafa Ozbilgin

Toxic leadership is often studied from a leader-centric perspective, which focuses on the detrimental outcomes of leaders with destructive ideas and practices. In this chapter, we…

Abstract

Toxic leadership is often studied from a leader-centric perspective, which focuses on the detrimental outcomes of leaders with destructive ideas and practices. In this chapter, we provide a global value chain (GVC) perspective, which accounts for effects of corporate leadership from inception of a product or service idea to its consumption across the value chain. In particular, we demonstrate how toxic leadership is sustained through an illusio, i.e., the allure of the often-charismatic leadership discourse, which is rendered unaccountable due to lack of global regulation of GVCs. This allows for global organizations and toxic leaders to exploit weaknesses in national-level regulation. Drawing on a netnographic study of toxic leadership in Amazon, we demonstrate how toxic leadership created the illusion of success while perpetuating toxicity and exploitation across their complex value chains internationally.

Details

Destructive Leadership and Management Hypocrisy
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-180-5

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 29 June 2012

Helen Colley

This paper seeks to discuss the impact of UK government austerity policies on learning in public service work, specifically youth support work. It also aims to argue that…

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper seeks to discuss the impact of UK government austerity policies on learning in public service work, specifically youth support work. It also aims to argue that austerity policies intensify “ethics work”, create emotional suffering, and obstruct workplace learning in a variety of ways.

Design/methodology/approach

The research adopts narrative methods and a critical interpretive paradigm to investigate practitioner perceptions within a broader analysis of neo‐liberal change. It draws on Bourdieu's sociology as an interpretive framework.

Findings

Austerity is shifting the “stakes” of the youth support field from a client‐centred ethos to the meeting of economically driven targets. This shatters the illusio of practitioners committed to client‐centred ethics, resulting in emotional suffering, difficulty in learning to cope with new demands, and an erosion of professional capacity.

Research limitations and implications

A particular limitation is the lack of longitudinal data. There is a pressing need for more research on ethics work, emotional suffering and (not) learning in public service workplaces facing austerity, and to continue theorising this nexus more thoroughly.

Practical and social implications

There is a need to promote a feminist ethics of care in such workplaces. There is also a need to stimulate public debate about the ethical impact of austerity on public service work as a whole. These might allow workplaces to encourage learning more effectively.

Originality/value

This paper departs from traditional discussions of workplace learning to consider instances of “not learning”. It introduces the innovative concept of “ethics work”, discusses ethics as a form of work, through a sociological rather than philosophical lens, and utilises Bourdieu's key concept of illusio, not previously addressed in workplace learning research.

Details

Journal of Workplace Learning, vol. 24 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1366-5626

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 25 September 2018

Athanasia Daskalopoulou and Alexandros Skandalis

This study aims to explore how membership (initially as a consumer) in a given field shapes individuals’ entrepreneurial journey.

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to explore how membership (initially as a consumer) in a given field shapes individuals’ entrepreneurial journey.

Design/methodology/approach

The research context is cultural and creative industries and, in particular, the independent (indie) music field in which unstructured interviews were conducted with nascent and established cultural entrepreneurs.

Findings

The authors introduce and justify their theoretical framework of consumption field driven entrepreneurship (CFDE) that captures the tripartite process via which the informants make the transition from indie music consumers to entrepreneurs by developing field-specific illusio, enacting entrepreneurial habitus and acquiring legitimacy via symbolic capital accumulation within the indie music field. The authors further illustrate how these entrepreneurs adopt paradoxical logics, aesthetics and ethos of the indie music field by moving in-between its authentic and commercial discourses to orchestrate their entrepreneurial journey.

Research limitations/implications

This study holds several theoretical implications for entrepreneurship-oriented research. First is highlighted the importance of non-financial resources (i.e. cultural and social capital) in individuals’ entrepreneurial journey. Second, this study illustrates the importance of consumption activities in the process of gaining entrepreneurial legitimation within a specific field. Finally, this study contributes to consumption-driven entrepreneurship research by offering a detailed description of individuals’ consumption-driven entrepreneurial journey.

Practical implications

This study provides some initial practical implications for entrepreneurs within the cultural and creative industries. The authors illustrate how membership in a field (initially as a consumer) might turn into a source of skills, competences and community for entrepreneurs by mobilising and converting different forms of non-material and material field-specific capital. To acquire entrepreneurial legitimation, nascent entrepreneurs should gain symbolic capital through approval, recognition and credit from members of the indie music field. Also, entrepreneurs can acquire symbolic capital and gain entrepreneurial legitimation by either “fitting in” or “standing out” from the existing logics of the field.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the growing body of literature that examines entrepreneurship fuelled by consumption practices and passions with our theoretical framework of CFDE which outlines the transition from indie music consumers to indie music entrepreneurs.

Details

European Journal of Marketing, vol. 53 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0309-0566

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 May 2021

John Millar

The fund management sector plays an important role in society. The sector exists in close proximity to the accounting profession and the concerns of the paper reflect themes…

Abstract

Purpose

The fund management sector plays an important role in society. The sector exists in close proximity to the accounting profession and the concerns of the paper reflect themes discussed by accounting scholars, particularly financialization, inequality and life within elite professional service organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

This is an interpretive study of the fund management field based in the UK. It is based on 32 semi-structured interviews with individuals with personal experience of the field, combined with reflections from the researcher's own experience as a practitioner within the field.

Findings

The paper describes the backgrounds and motivations of individuals entering the field, the recruitment processes through which they are admitted, and the different strategies used to gain admission to the field. It explores the habitus of successful professionals in the field and the effects of this habitus.

Social implications

An important social implication of the paper is the problematization of the fund management industry's dislocation from broader society.

Originality/value

By identifying the different strategies employed by applicants from different backgrounds, it highlights the role of reflexive agency and the complicity between agent and field. Recognizing that professional fund management is organized as a game, it suggests that individuals are so committed to the game they know they are playing that they fail to realize that they are also drawn into a different game, namely the absorbing game of being a fund manager.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 34 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 24 September 2020

Sid Lowe and Nirundon Tapachai

This paper aims to explore the implications of applying a Bourdieusian meta-framework to business interaction and relationship building within networks. The motive is to advocate…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to explore the implications of applying a Bourdieusian meta-framework to business interaction and relationship building within networks. The motive is to advocate the use of Bourdieu’s work in its entirety rather than sub-optimal use of selected concepts in isolation.

Design/methodology/approach

The aim of this conceptual paper is to explore how a Bourdieusian framework benefits understanding of structure/agency relations as a mutually constituted duality within business networks. The concept of duality regard relationships as emergent from synergies between structure and agency made possible by the translational capacity of “habitus”. Habitus is, therefore, the main intersection, catalyst or chiasmus between structure and agency facilitating enacted, emergent properties of business relationships.

Findings

The Bourdieusian framework suggests that structures and practices are related by multiple dualities brokered by multiple knowledge forms. The main contribution that this triadic framework brings to debates on structure-agency relationships is mostly contained in the concept of “habitus”, which is identified as a translation vehicle provides critical brokerage between actors’ resource structures and activities. It is a key concept that helps us understand how structures and agentic behaviours are equally important and mutually constituting influences upon emergent properties of business interaction. For business marketing, this means that the habitus of actors’ schemas are both embodied and cognitive. Habitus acts as the main catalyst for emergent and diverse capital resources and a plural set of skills essential for effective practical activities.

Research limitations/implications

The research focus of a Bourdieusian framework is upon investigating a triadic understanding of concepts of habitus, field and practice as elements of a “pan-relational” or mutually constituted amalgam facilitated by a corresponding triadic relationship between three types of knowledge; namely, “illusio”, “phrónesis” and “poíesis”.

Practical implications

By adopting a Bourdieusian framework, this paper can regard the practical development of durable business relationships as involving interactions that adequately co-ordinate the different habitus, sub-fields and practices of parties as shared. The implication is that the practitioner needs to be equally competent in their use of “illusio”, “phrónesis” and “poíesis” as different knowledge forms whose sum is greater than its parts.

Originality/value

The approach reveals that habitus emphasizes that structures are never entirely conscious and calculated schemas as they contain unconscious, embodied habits fuelled by tacit, cultural knowledge infused with symbolism, mythologies and rituals, which are communicated mostly indirectly through analogical reasoning, narrative, heuristics and embodied gestures.

Details

Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, vol. 36 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0885-8624

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 21 September 2018

Patrick P. Lonergan, Maurice Patterson and Maria Lichrou

This paper aims to elucidate how cultural intermediaries shape the subjectivity of other marketplace actors in fashion, thus preserving the illusio underpinning this field of…

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to elucidate how cultural intermediaries shape the subjectivity of other marketplace actors in fashion, thus preserving the illusio underpinning this field of cultural production.

Design/methodology/approach

Narrative interviews were conducted with cultural intermediaries in the fashion industry. These were supplemented with non-participant observations, carried out simultaneously during the research process. Interview transcripts and field notes were analysed using a combination of holistic-content and categorical-content analysis.

Findings

As the fashion field is constructed around beliefs as to what constitutes value, the empirical data demonstrate how fashion models’ embody the illusio of the field and authenticate the values, meanings and identities inherent in it through aestheticised and rarefied styles of performance. These activities seduce other market actors and engender a willing suspension of disbelief that in turn mobilises affective intensities resulting in perceptions of legitimacy.

Research limitations/implications

This research adds greater clarity to what cultural intermediaries do when they mediate between economy and culture. To do this, our research is analysed in terms of the ritual performance, the sensibility of the model, the use of the body and the performative fusion.

Practical implications

The paper offers practical implications insofar as it deconstructs the two core ritualistic aspects of the fashion industry which each season yields significant tangible outputs in various forms. The combination of narrative inquiry with observation allows for a better understanding of how these events can be best channelled to mediate the illusio of this cultural field.

Originality/value

To date, there has been very little consumer research that explores cultural intermediaries and less still that offers an empirical glimpse of their performance. This research adds greater clarity to these embodied performances that legitimate other market actors’ suspension of disbelief while also demystifying the ambiguity with which cultural intermediaries are discussed in consumer research.

Details

European Journal of Marketing, vol. 52 no. 9/10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0309-0566

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 7 April 2020

Payyazhi Jayashree, Valerie Lindsay and Grace McCarthy

Taking a career capital approach, this paper addresses the issue of “pipeline block” frequently experienced by women seeking career advancement. Focusing on the Arab Middle East…

Abstract

Purpose

Taking a career capital approach, this paper addresses the issue of “pipeline block” frequently experienced by women seeking career advancement. Focusing on the Arab Middle East (AME) region, the authors take a contextually relevant multi-level approach to examine these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

The study uses a qualitative, interview-based approach, drawing on data obtained from women leaders from the AME region. Drawing on Bourdieu's capital-field-habitus framework, we explore how women in the AME developed career capital in particular organisational fields.

Findings

The findings show the importance of human and social capital, as well as the influence of habitus for women's career advancement in specific fields. The study also highlights the unique contribution of cultural capital in helping women to navigate organisational fields where it is necessary to both challenge, and conform to, traditional norms.

Research limitations/implications

Limitations of the study include assumptions of homogeneity across countries of the AME, whereas differences are known to exist. Future research should consider these contextual differences, and also include a study of women who were not successful in gaining career advancement.

Practical implications

The study’s multi-level approach highlights practical implications for women, organisations and society. For organisations, the authors propose some context-relevant coaching strategies that can help women to attain leadership positions.

Social implications

The study’s multi-level approach highlights practical implications for women, organisations,and society. Focusing on organisations, the authors propose some context-relevant coaching strategies that can help women to attain advancement in their careers.

Originality/value

The study demonstrates originality in the findings by showing how women overcome the pipeline block in relation to their career advancement. The use of the Bourdieusian framework, an in-depth qualitative approach, and the AME context also add to the study's originality.

Details

Personnel Review, vol. 50 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0048-3486

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 4 May 2012

Christine Cooper and Joanne Johnston

The purpose of this paper is to critically reflect upon the use of the term accountability in the twenty‐first century and its role in “remaking the world in favour of the most…

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to critically reflect upon the use of the term accountability in the twenty‐first century and its role in “remaking the world in favour of the most powerful” using the theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Lacan.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper examines the notion of accountability by analyzing a case study of the hostile takeover of Manchester United Football Club by the Glazer family. The field of football presents an interesting arena in which to study accountability because of its extremely interested and active fans who search for information on every aspect of their clubs. Lacanian theory is drawn upon to add to understanding of the psychopathology which the demands for accountability and transparency place on individuals. Bourdieu's work on illusio is drawn upon to understand the motivations of the field of football.

Findings

The paper finds that calls to “hold the most powerful to account” in practice lack political force. Thus the case study demonstrates the common (mis)recognition of the term of accountability. The ability to correct the abuses of the most powerful requires power.

Originality/value

The conflation of Bourdieu and Lacan adds to understanding of accountability as an empty cipher with performative power.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 25 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 23 December 2022

Siasa Issa Mzenzi

This paper investigates the relationship between accounting and accountability practices in Muslim secondary schools in Tanzania using Bourdieusian perspective. The purpose of…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper investigates the relationship between accounting and accountability practices in Muslim secondary schools in Tanzania using Bourdieusian perspective. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

Design/methodology/approach

In-depth interviews were conducted with school owners, teachers, accountants, an imam and leaders of Muslim organizations. Corroborative evidence was gathered through review of documentary sources. The data were analyzed using a mapping approach.

Findings

The findings show that powerful actors in the schools studied proactively selected accounting practices that supported their particular doxa of survival, access or legitimacy. Also, Fiisabilillah is identified as an existential doxa, and this was found to be more influential than individual accountability doxa and responsible for adherence to work among weak agents despite an inappropriate environment. As a result, accounting practices become “rhetoric” and play a minimal role in discharging both “sacred” and “secular” accountability to both human beings and God.

Practical implications

The findings suggest that accounting practices must be understood in the context of the socioeconomic and political settings in which the organization operates.

Originality/value

Most studies of accounting and accountability have focused on developed countries. This is one of the few studies to explore the phenomenon in the context of Muslim schools in a developing country.

Details

International Journal of Public Sector Management, vol. 36 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3558

Keywords

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