EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The organizational context of professionalism in accounting

Roy Suddaby, Yves Gendron and Helen Lam

Accounting, Organizations and Society, 2009, vol. 34, issue 3-4, 409-427

Abstract: This study analyses the degree to which change in the organizational context, content and location (both of the individual within the organization and the organization within the field) of professional work has contributed to variation in attitudes toward professional ideology and institutions. Through an online survey of Canadian chartered accountants we observe that, contrary to current accusations, a majority of accounting professionals remain committed to their profession, despite profound changes in the context, content and location of their work. We do find, however, that the strongest espoused deviation from core professional values and logics has occurred in traditional work contexts (i.e. public accounting firms), and for the distinctive value of commitment to independence enforcement, the deviation is most pronounced in the elite core of the profession - the Big Four professional service firms. Accountants in higher ranks also tend to identify more with commercialistic values. We speculate on the implications these findings hold for the professional project of accountancy.

Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (81)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361-3682(09)00017-8
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:aosoci:v:34:y:2009:i:3-4:p:409-427

Access Statistics for this article

Accounting, Organizations and Society is currently edited by Christopher Chapman

More articles in Accounting, Organizations and Society from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:aosoci:v:34:y:2009:i:3-4:p:409-427