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The purpose of this paper is to examine how professional service firms (PSFs) manage the linguistic tensions between global Englishization and local multilingualism. It achieves this by analysing the work of Big Four audit firms in Luxembourg, where three official languages co-exist: Luxembourgish, French, and German. In addition, expatriates bring with them their native languages in a corporate environment that uses English as its lingua franca.

The paper combines the institutionalist sociology of the professions with theoretical concepts from sociolinguistics to study the multifaceted role of language in PSFs. Empirically, the paper draws from 25 interviews with current and former audit professionals.

The client orientation of the Big Four segments each firm into language teams based on the client’s language. It is thus the client languages, rather than English as the corporate language, that mediate, define, and structure intra- and inter-organizational relationships. While the firms emphasize the benefits of their linguistic adaptability, the paper reveals tensions along language lines, suggesting that language can be a means of creating cohesion and division within the firms.

This paper connects research on PSFs with that on the role of language in multinational organizations. In light of the Big Four’s increasingly global workforce, it draws attention to the linguistic divisions within the firms that question the existence of a singular corporate culture. While prior literature has centred on firms’ global–local divide, the paper shows that even single branches of such firm networks are not monolithic constructs, as conflicts and clashes unfold amid a series of “local–local” divides.

This chapter makes the assertion that social class is a verb, which is to say, an individual's class identifications are not fixed and ascribed at birth but must be understood as something that is practised and lived. In an era in which hyper mobility is the norm among a growing segment of the global population, social class identifications are increasingly fluid, context-dependent and could only be understood in relation to ‘other’ social class categories. By taking a discourse analytic approach to closely look at the episodes of my interactions with a range of interlocutors in my biographical trajectory across multiple contexts, this chapter provides accounts of the complexities of my class identifications as an academic in the UK higher education (HE) sector. Following Marxist scholarship in general, this linguistic autoethnography shows how class is not depicted as an attribute of people that is stationary in contemporary stratified societies. It argues that class must be understood as a social relation, as evolving in the social interactions with human subjects and the cumulative relationships that people engaged with, all arising out of the economic order in societies. Second, the interactional episodes highlighted in this chapter also shows how social class is interconnected with other identity inscriptions, such as gender, ethnicity, race and nationality. As such, this chapter shows how the nature of social class identifications in contemporary times are impacted by an individual's alignments with a range of social categories.

This paper reports a sub-set of results from a mixed-method ethnographic study of literacy among female graduates and undergraduates of a United Arab Emirates public university. With reference to survey data and two in-depth interviews, the paper focuses in particular on the predispositions and preferences of these women with regard to reading and writing in English and Modern Standard Arabic. Employing a New Literacy Studies theoretical framework along with a number of concepts developed by Bourdieu, the paper finds that literacy practices in this context are developing rapidly, influenced by the diverse transnational linguistic marketplaces in which these women grow up. Suggestions are made with regard to possible directions for curricular development in higher education in this region based on the opinions expressed by these young women.

Higher education and leadership educators have long been tasked to develop the next generation of leaders both in the classroom and outside of the classroom. Many educators use the Social Change Model of Leadership to highlight a nonhierarchical and collaborative approach to leadership while upholding the idea that everyone can be a leader regardless of the position they hold. However, the Social Change Model overlooks concepts of power and oppression and perpetuates whiteness in the process. With educators being tasked now more than ever to prepare students to solve complex social issues, this paper adds on new values to the Social Change Model of Leadership, using Yosso’s model of Community Cultural Wealth, to ensure that racially minoritized and other students from marginalized groups can tap into their capital and locate themselves within the model to make impactful and meaningful social change.

Perceived increases in the proportion of human capital in the production mix are matched by calls for the development of methods of accounting for human capital. The term “capital” is used in a range of academic and professional fields. Cultural capital is a term from sociology, closely related in meaning to human capital and human resources, but providing a unique perspective of its own. This paper suggests that, by reaching outside the traditional economic rationality of the discourse on human resources or human capital, cultural capital provides insights for accounting. In particular, it suggests that a form of human resource accounting based on cultural capital is needed to reflect the plural authority and accountability structures of organizations.

Educational statistics in Britain make depressing reading. Recent surveys show that 80% of children from professional families gain university degrees compared with 14% from working class homes:¹ that black children are more likely to leave school with fewer academic qualifications even though they enter the system showing promise: that only a small minority of children from comprehensive schools² gain places at Oxbridge although 90% of the population attend such schools: that a mere 4% of medical and dentistry students come from working class backgrounds etc. In spite of John Major’s³ optimistic insistence that Britain has become a classless society, it would appear that class differences in educational performance are not disappearing. On the contrary, a recent OECD⁴ survey, based on data gathered from 16,000 people born in 1958 and 1970 shows that the detrimental effects of inequality of opportunity are actually growing and that the opportunities gap between those from different social backgrounds is no better for those born in 1970 than it was for those born a generation earlier in 1958.

This paper aims to present research on the assets of first-generation college students and offer asset-based practices that can be implemented to support students during emergency transitions.

This paper reviews the literature related to first-generation college students and cultural wealth and then details practices for implementation by librarians working to enhance the transition to online learning for this student group.

The author identified in the literature six assets of first-generation college students: reflexivity, optimism, academic resilience, goal-orientation, civic-mindedness and proactivity. These assets coupled with Yosso’s concept of community cultural wealth provide a frame of reference for examining and implementing services and programs to enhance the educational experience of first-generation college students during emergency transitions.

Whereas existing literature on first-generation college students assumes a deficit lens, this paper puts forth the cultural assets of this population that may be leveraged by librarians. Student assets are positioned alongside forms of capital that also may be utilized to guide the work of librarians.

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.