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This study aims to explore intersectional gender inequalities that exist in accounting organizations.

A review of the literature, covering the period from 1990 to 2020, assesses the intersectionality of professional and social factors that shape inequalities in women’s professional accounting careers.

This study presents the complex facets of women’s inequality in gendered accounting organizations. The results reveal that inequity persists in accounting organizations despite organizational changes. The findings highlight the relevance of further research in gendered organizations to capture the intersectionality of gender with other forms of inequality.

This review informs professional organizations, accountants and company managers about the persistence of gender concerns in the accountancy profession in the last 30 years, despite stated accounting profession commitments to achieve gender equality, as promoted by United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Moreover, some possible solutions are proposed.

This study focuses on a complex and challenging issue, contributing to the literature by extending classical narrative literature. This study presents a structured view of the various intersections of professional and social characteristics that created inequalities and the suggested solutions.

In 2016, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) introduced new standards for human resource management (HRM). The purpose of this paper is to describe and explain the significance that human resource (HR) professionals attribute to global HRM standards, what outcomes they envisage for the profession and organizations, and what influences engagement in the standardization project.

The analyses interpret the relationship between standards, professions, and organizations by combining theories of professions with concepts from institutional theory. The study is ethnographic and consists of observations of meetings and interviews with eight participants from the Swedish committee participating in the ISO project.

HR professionals consider HRM standards positive for the profession’s legitimacy, status, and development, which are also considered beneficial for organizations. However, difficulties in recruiting participants and organizations to the standardization project may prevent positive exchanges for the profession, and point to a weak interest in HRM issues from the HR professionals themselves.

The generalizability of the results is somewhat limited due to the small sample size. Nevertheless, the study provides insights into how HR professionals reason about their profession and professionalization.

Gaining insights into the forthcoming global standards for HRM is important for HR professionals. These standards may be implemented in organizations worldwide and affect how HRM is conducted, and therefore also have a profound effect on the profession.

The ISO’s targeting of a specific occupation is unique. The paper contributes with the knowledge on how professionals relates to standardization of the given field.

In this paper, we explore the effects of emerging digital technologies on professionalization within organizations. Specifically, we examine how the emergence of data analytics as a new cross-functional profession rooted in new digital technologies is challenging human resources (HR) as an established organizational profession. Our qualitative study reveals how rhetorical work and material work have established a symbiosis between data science and HR. Rather than leading to de-professionalization, new technologies are enabling HR practices to be augmented and new actors to be integrated into the professionalization project, thereby elevating the status of HR. These findings contribute to the literature on the role of technology in institutional theory and its influences on the professionalization.

The article's main purpose is to investigate the relationship between organizational and professional commitment and accountants' construction of corporate social responsibility (CSR) competencies.

A survey of accounting professionals in Canada (chief financial officers/finance directors) was conducted to ask them about their organization's CSR position, their openness to CSR, involvement in related activities, the codified knowledge they use and their organizational and professional commitment.

The results show the dominance of normative commitment to the profession or organization and its relationship with professional CSR training. Professional CSR training and organizational and other CSR training activities are also related to the professional's openness to CSR.

The study's main limitation is the small number of participants. Future research is needed to investigate the conditions under which normative commitment is developed.

The results make a practical contribution by suggesting that organizations seeking to involve accounting professionals in CSR activities might want to consider encouraging them to get CSR training using professional resources because of its link to both forms of normative commitment. Further, the findings indicate that the profession could integrate CSR issues more extensively in its accreditation process to enhance its role as a resource provider in the construction of accountants' CSR competencies.

To the authors' knowledge, the study is the first one to investigate the relationship between organizational and professional commitment and accountants' construction of CSR competencies.

The first veterinary school was founded in 1761, as a professional school not as a trade school. This has had a lasting impact on the role of the veterinarian in society, in industry, and in organizations. This paper recounts the circumstances of the founding of that first school in France and discusses the impact that professional institutions can have on ethics in organizations more generally.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that are associated with internal auditors’ professional turnover intentions.

The study analyzes data from responses to the Institute of Internal Auditors’ (IIA) (2015) Common Body of Knowledge global survey and uses a multivariate approach to identify factors that influence internal auditor turnover intentions.

Results show that internal auditor turnover intentions are negatively associated with an academic background in accounting, possessing internal audit professional certification, and having access to more training opportunities. Turnover intentions are positively associated with organizational-professional conflict, restricted access to documents and personnel, and the existence of a program of using the internal audit function as management training ground. Differences by IIA global region highlight the diversity in the turnover challenges that face the professional globally.

Results from this study are important because they bring attention to issues that potentially lead to internal auditors leaving the profession. This can help the profession and organizations take measures to motivate internal auditors to remain in the profession and alleviate the current staffing challenges faced by the profession.

This paper aims to advance understanding of the disciplinary decision‐making process underpinning the professional ethics machinery employed by professional accounting organisations, using elements of francophone organisational analysis to examine the influence of the key formal organisational components established by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland (ICAI) to administer its disciplinary decision‐making process up to December 1999.

The paper uses evidence gathered from a series of in‐depth interviews with members of the ICAI disciplinary and investigation committees.

Illuminates the internal tensions and conflicts permeating the disciplinary decision‐making process of the ICAI and the influence key organisational components have on resolving these conflicts through their encouragement of decision making driven by a preferred reasoning or logic of action.

The evidence presented questions the public interest proclamations of the ICAI with respect to its disciplinary procedures pre‐December 1999. It further exposes the tensions between profession protection and society protection motives in the disciplinary decision making of accounting bodies.

This paper represents a first attempt at getting inside the disciplinary decision‐making process of a professional accounting body to examine the process using the voices of process participants.

Explores the genesis of a plan to erect a statutory “ring fence” around the accountancy profession in Britain during the 1960s. Focuses on two elemental problems in actualising a closure strategy: defining a basis for inclusion and exclusion; and, gaining the sanction of the state. Reveals that the complexities of devising an exclusionary code permitted opportunities for “inclusionary usurpation” by “outside” practitioner groups. Examines the quest by accountants to elicit government support for monopolisation during a period in which restrictive practices were outlawed and the professions were “under fire”. The achievement of de jure closure is shown to be dependent on the predilections of senior bureaucrats and the capacity of the profession to negotiate an “informal contract” with the state. Contends that the profession‐state interface primarily engages the apex of the organisational élite and mandrinate Civil Servants.

This paper aims to describe the integrating and disintegrating effects of professional actions in customised care.

Using a qualitative case study, the authors examine the work practices and cultures of three Swedish child and adolescent psychiatric care units (CAP) charged with providing customised care in collaboration with other organisations. The authors conducted 62 interviews, made 11 half‐day observations, and shadowed employees for two days.

The social embeddedness of action is crucial to understanding the professions' integrating/disintegrating activities. In the internal social context of CAP, the professions adapt to productivity‐enhancing new public management (NPM) principles, resulting in integrating effects between the different professions and administrative management in the CAP units. However, CAP exercises professional dominance over the cooperating organisations. Thus, in the external social context, CAP's resistance to customised care principles exacerbates the disintegration problems among the different organisations.

The study concludes that, contrary to findings in many other studies, neither the professional logic nor NPM/customised care reforms determine the actions of professionals. In this case, the institutionalisation of some NPM methods blocks the adoption of customised care practices.

Contrary to the widely accepted idea that resource restriction is a main source of conflict between management and the professions, the professions accept and adapt to resource restrictions, even at the expense of de‐emphasising the practices of customised care. Thus, since professionals choose different operational strategies depending on the social context, the success of a normative reform measure may depend in part on its social context.

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.