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Purpose – The connections between religious factors and stratification outcomes were long ignored in the sociological literature, yet a growing number of studies show that religion remains important for determining the life chances of individuals. I add to this literature by examining how religious affiliation is associated with the structure of occupational attainment in the United States.

Methodology – I analyze data from the 1972–2008 General Social Surveys to show how religious affiliation is related to occupational attainment and occupational mobility by gender and race.

Findings – I find that sectarian Protestants occupy the lower rungs of the occupational structure, even relative to their low rates of educational attainment. In contrast, Jews and nonidentifying respondents show considerable occupational advantage. Catholics also have specific patterns of occupational attainment that hint at their growing wealth parity with mainline Protestants. I also show that religious influences hold across racial and gender groupings, and across cohorts.

Social implications – Religion continues to significantly influence the occupational structure in the United States, and sectarian religion serves as an important anchor hindering occupational attainment.

The Chief Financial Officer (CFO), despite being a critical organization member responsible for ensuring quality of financial reporting, audit and compliance, is under-researched. Grouped as a member of top management teams (TMS) in studies, factors influencing decision making in this group rely on static measures of characteristics without regard for dynamic and longitudinal influences of career trajectories and industry occupational group memberships. The relationship between the high-tech industry as a site of notable reported internal control (IC) weakness and influences on CFOs requires closer examination. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The study draws together the upper echelons theory and occupational communities (OCs) to explore the impact of shared values and behavioral norms from different sources on executive decision making. Internal and external sources of OC are proposed and their influence on activities with respect to corporate IC is tested. The sample of 1,573 firm/year observations includes high-tech firms listed on major US exchanges was developed using data from five distinct databases. Executives’ biographic information was manually collected.

Results indicate that senior financial executives belong not only to their firm and its culture but also to OCs that extend beyond the firm. Membership in professional credential granting occupational groups has less impact on effective IC than experience in the high-tech industry. In combination, multiple OCs show evidence of compound and counteracting effects on IC. The OC that arises in the high-tech industry makes a measurable positive difference in the quality of IC in sample firms, in contrast with the OC among credentialed accounting and financial professionals.

This quantitative study of OC reveals the differential impact of different sources of OC and contributes to the literature on TMS a new framework for examining decision making. OC is typically studied through qualitative methods and, thus, potential exists to further explore the specific nature and dynamics of the OCs identified in this study.

The study highlights the role of broad affiliations and networks among senior financial executives which may have bearing on their ability to effectively manage IC. The role of these networks may also partially explain instances of CFO failure and thus dismissal. Knowledge of the role of OC may help boards of directors in the selection and promotion of senior financial officers of the firm.

The paper offers a different perspective on professional accounting expertise in one specific industry where incidence of IC weakness is high relative to other industries. Study results expand recent research on TMS to include sociological impacts of cohort groups. Despite generally weaker IC in the high-tech sector, this study demonstrates the value of exploring group membership within the industry as an important predictor of behavior. The result is a new perspective to CFO decision making which illustrates the relevance of OCs among upper echelons. The implications of findings for CFO recruitment and promotion are borne out in recent instances of senior financial executive failure in the sector.

This study investigates whether or not accounting and legal decision-makers at publicly traded US firms exhibit a professional affiliation bias with respect to their selection of business service providers. Executives at NYSE or NASDAQ firms who were affiliated with the accounting profession, the legal profession, or neither profession indicated their likelihood of using one of three randomly assigned types of firms (i.e., a CPA firm, a law firm, or a firm with both CPA and attorney partners) to provide five selected business services. The five business services represent the range of accounting and legal services that firms often outsource: audit, tax representation, mergers and acquisitions, trade regulation/interstate commerce, and litigation. We find that executive level decision-makers at publicly traded US firms do exhibit a professional affiliation bias in the selection of business service providers and that this professional affiliation bias is stronger in attorneys than in CPAs. The fact that all respondents were NYSE or NASDAQ executives, rather than students or another surrogate population, provides additional relevance and generalizability to our findings. Identifying this bias can help executives avoid suboptimal initial selection decisions and/or inaccurate performance evaluations of external business service providers.

Whistle-blowing has the important role of reducing the prevalence and impact of wrongdoing in organisations. The purpose of this paper is to utilise a very large survey of Australian Public Service (APS) workers to replicate the findings of previous studies in relation to whistle-blowing likelihood and to extend the quantitative findings in relation to whistle-blowing antecedents to include ethnicity or cultural marginalisation and occupational and professional role and affiliation.

The authors utilise the 2014 APS Census, a large data set containing 100,000 observations relating to employee engagement, leadership, health, satisfaction and general impressions of the public service. Logistic regression is employed to obtain estimates and marginal effects in respect to predictors for whistle-blowing. The authors determine the Bayesian information criterion to assess the impact of ethnicity on the probability of whistle-blowing.

The findings support the notion that organisational “outsiders” tend to report perceived wrongdoing less than those who feel assured of their cultural or organisational status. The authors further find support for the notion that membership of small organisational groupings, primarily measured by organisational size, also tends to reduce the whistle-blowing likelihood. Opportunities for further research and potential policy and practical issues are discussed briefly in conclusion.

While confirming the predictors seen in many previous studies, the authors identify groups who report more or less than expected that have not been reported in previous research. These include employees from a non-English speaking background and various occupational and professional groups “at risk” of low reporting.

The study aims to explore whether there is diversity of occupational culture among IT workers. Prior work conceptualizes IT occupational culture (ITOC) as based around six distinctive values (ASPIRE) but has not explored whether there is variation in ITOC.

Survey data from 496 New Zealand IT workers was used to create factors representing IT occupational values based on the ASPIRE tool. Hierarchical cluster analysis and discriminant analysis were applied to identify distinctive segments of ITOC.

Four ITOC segments were identified: fun-lovers, innovators, independents and institutionalists. These differed in the relative emphasis ascribed to the ITOC values with each segment being distinguished by 1–2 dominant values. Segment membership varied according to level of responsibility and birth country. Institutionalists and innovators had higher concern about organizational and IT issues than fun-lovers and independents. Job satisfaction was lowest among innovators and highest along institutionalists.

This study challenges the concept of a unified ITOC, suggesting that ITOC is pluralistic. It also theorizes about interactions between ITOC, individual motivation and values and national culture.

Management needs to be cognizant of the fact that IT occupational culture is not homogeneous and different IT occupational segments require unique management approaches, and that their own values may not match those of others in IT work. By understanding ITOC segments, managers can tailor support, assign tasks appropriately and design teams to optimize synergies and avoid conflict.

This study reveals the existence of ITOC segments and theorizes about the relationship of these to innovation-orientation, job satisfaction, individual motivation, work styles and national culture. The combination of cluster and discriminant analysis is a valuable replicable inductive method that is underrepresented in Information Systems (IS) research.

The current study examines the effect of socialization on the inculcation of professional accounting values. Three sources of socialization are examined: public accounting firms, non-public accounting firms (industry) and accounting professional associations. Specifically, the study compares the professionalism of public and industry accountants. Consistent with expectations, the results suggest that public accountants have stronger beliefs in professional autonomy and self-regulation than industry accountants, and that industry accountants have stronger beliefs in professional affiliation, social obligation and professional dedication than public accountants. It was hypothesized that while professional associations promote all professional values, public accounting firms and industry have different promoting priorities. Public accounting firms foster beliefs in self-regulation and professional autonomy while industry opposes these values, resulting in public accountants having stronger beliefs in these values. Conversely, it was posited that industry encourage beliefs in professional affiliation, social obligation and professional dedication to a greater extent than public accounting firms. The result is that the industry accountants have stronger beliefs in these values than the public accountants. Investigating these issues increase understanding of the importance of the socialization process fostering accounting professional values and identifying areas of potential conflict and reinforcement accountants face when working in public accounting and industry.

Social mobility has long been viewed as an integrative mechanism for societies. For example, whereas earlier American researchers saw opportunities for social mobility as a vital factor in promoting political stability and the maximisation of equality of opportunity, more recent British sociologists have noted the role of social mobility in legitimising inequalities and impeding class formation and class action. Despite this stress on the importance of social mobility for societal stability, however, there has been little sustained empirical study of the influence of marital homogany either in terms of societal integration or the reproduction of class relations. Yet, as Jones (1987) notes, this neglect of the issue is somewhat puzzling. Not only have earlier studies of class phenomena such as Sorokin (1927) and Schumpeter (1951) paid considerable attention to marriage and the family in relation to social stability, class formation and class cohesion, but, marital patterns, in terms of the economic and social resources of parents, are consistently emphasised as one vital factor in accounting for the subsequent occupational achievements of children (Hayes and Miller, 1991; Miller and Hayes, 1990; Abbott and Sapsford, 1987; Boyd, 1985; Dale et.al., 1985; Cooney et.al., 1982; Marini, 1980) and the political attitudes of households in general (Leiulfsrud and Woodward, 1988, 1987; Abbott, 1987; Britten, 1984).

Numerous studies have examined the institutional setting of accounting as a professional occupation. However, institutional deeds and outcomes derive from the behaviour of individual actors, particularly those key players who drive the creation, policy development and outlook of practitioner associations. Recognising this, and in search of a more detailed understanding of the dynamics of professional formation, this study applies the prosopographical method of inquiry to accounting development in Australia during the period 1886 to 1908. Motives and actions are identified with the founding members of the Incorporated Institute of Accountants, Victoria, during this formative era, which saw key personalities transfer their allegiance to the Australasian Corporation of Public Accountants. The beliefs, preferences and ambitions of individual participants are shown to exert significant influence over the process of professional formation, highlighting the capacity of prosopographical studies to augment the predominantly vocational and institutional focus of the prior sociology of professions literature.

The current study examines public accountants' professionalism and professional commitment (PC) and their effect on job performance. Results provide support for four of five dimensions of Hall's (1968) professionalism framework (beliefs in professional affiliation, professional dedication, self-regulation, and social obligation) and Meyer et al.'s (1993) three-dimensional PC framework (affective, continuance, and normative professional commitment) for modeling public accountants. Support was also found for most of the hypothesized relationships between professionalism and PC. Beliefs in professional affiliation, professional dedication, and self-regulation positively influenced affective professional commitment (APC). Belief in professional affiliation was negatively influenced by continuance professional commitment (CPC) but positively influenced by normative professional commitment (NPC). Belief in social obligation was also positively influenced by NPC. As expected, professionalism and PC were associated with job performance. Professionalism had an incremental effect beyond PC on job performance and as well, PC had an incremental effect over professionalism on job performance. Identifying relationships between professionalism and professional commitment with desirable outcomes is important for justifying future investments in the public accounting profession. Understanding these issues will assist in determining the types of professional attributes and commitments that are and should be fostered by the accounting profession.

Through a survey of 200 employees working in five of the thirty establishments analysed in previous research about the microeconomic effects of reducing the working time (Cahier 25), the consequences on employees of such a reduction can be assessed; and relevant attitudes and aspirations better known.