Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Faculty of Business, University of Alberta, School of Business, Department of Strategic Management and Organization, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2R6
Facult des sciences de ladministration, Pavillon Palasis-Prince, Bureau 6224, Universit Laval, Qubec City, Canada G1K 7P4
Centre for Innovative Management, Athabasca University, Edmonton, Canada
a b s t r a c t
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 eld) 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 nd, however, that the strongest espoused deviation from core professional values and logics has occurred in traditional work contexts (i.e. public accounting
rms), 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 rms. Accountants in higher ranks also tend to identify more with commercialistic
values. We speculate on the implications these ndings hold for the professional project of
accountancy.
2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction
The collapse of Arthur Andersen amid reports of the
venerable accounting rms role in misrepresenting the nances of Enron, WorldCom and other clients has raised
questions about the ethical integrity of the accounting profession (Wyatt, 2004). In addition to the dramatic personal
and nancial tragedies represented by the demise of
Andersen, the rms fall also represents a serious failure
in the professional project of accountancy. For many decades the accounting profession has claimed to espouse
independence as a core professional value. Independence
is also seen as a central and founding value of Arthur
Andersen (Squires, Smith, MacDougall, & Yeack, 2003).
The dubious relationship between Arthur Andersen and
Enron, as well as the apparent inability of even elite members of the profession to self-regulate, made evident in the
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +780 492 2386; fax: +780 492 3325.
E-mail addresses: roy.suddaby@ualberta.ca (R. Suddaby), yves.
gendron@fsa.ulaval.ca (Y. Gendron), Helenl@athabascau.ca (H. Lam).
1
Tel.: +418 656 2131x2431; fax: +418 656 7746.
0361-3682/$ - see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.aos.2009.01.007
410
have been documented in theoretical (Brint, 1994; Friedson, 1984; Friedson, 2001; Leicht & Fennell, 2001) and
empirical (Goode, 1957; Scott, 1987; Wallace, 1995) accounts, they were still largely based on the assumption
that professionals control professionals, even in bureaucratic settings (Leicht & Fennell, 1997, p. 217).
Beginning in the 1980s, however, the professions have
been subject to profound changes in the nature of their
work, largely because professional work has become
increasingly embedded in large and oftentimes heterogeneous organizations. This is particularly the case in
accounting where critics have suggested that organizations
have usurped traditional professional institutions, such as
professional societies and associations, as the core sites
of professionalization and regulation (Cooper & Robson,
2006; Grey, 1998). As a result, we have little empirical
knowledge about the extent of inuence in contemporary professional elds of organizational structures and
controls on professional values and commitments.2 How
do value commitments change when professionals work as
salaried employees? Do the relative commitments change
when they work in conditions where professionals no longer
control professionals? And how do value commitments
change when professionals engage in the delivery of nonprofessional services?
The empirical questions that arise out of the dynamic
interaction of organizations and professions also reect
important theoretical questions about the nature and
determinants of institutional change. There is a growing
awareness that institutional change is facilitated by dramatic shifts in core values (Greenwood & Hinings, 1996).
Large scale movements in core values, in turn, reect deeper changes in the central organizing principles of society,
or what Friedland and Alford (1991) term institutional
logics. Logics, reciprocally, are based upon rationalized
myths (Meyer & Rowan, 1977) or semi-autonomous value
structures that are taken for granted as manifestations of
powerful assumptions of appropriateness. Professionalism
is one such logic that is based on long standing mythologies of independence and autonomy which, over time,
has become a central discursive force in the eld (Larson,
1977).
The ethical lapses exhibited by accounting rms in the
events surrounding Enron, WorldCom, Sunbeam and related corporate scandals suggest a profound change has occurred in the institutional logic of professionalism, which
has traditionally been characterized as a logic designed
to counterbalance the logics of both the market and the
state (Friedson, 2001). While the core logic of the market
is accumulation and the commodication of human activity (Friedland & Alford, 1991, p. 248) and that of the state
is rationalization and the regulation of human activity by
legal and bureaucratic hierarchies (Friedland & Alford,
1991, p. 248), the central logic of professionalism is the
creation of a social space that is independent and autonomous from both the state and the market (Friedson, 2001;
Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005). Accounting rms promi2
Exceptions mainly consist of qualitative inquiries such as AndersonGough, Grey, and Robson (2001, 2005), Covaleski, Dirsmith, Heian, and
Samuel (1998), and Gendron (2002).
Theoretical background
There is a long history of interest in the potential problems that arise when professionals work in non-traditional
work settings (Aranya & Ferris, 1984; Benson, 1977; Blau &
Scott, 1962; Gunz & Gunz, 1994; Sorensen & Sorensen,
1974; Wallace, 1995). Wallace (1995) summarizes this research in two competing theories. The proletarianization
thesis argues that professionals and bureaucracies exemplify two contradictory models of work (Scott, 1966). The
idealized professional model is one in which individuals
are assumed to have the necessary knowledge and skills
to perform their work and are afforded considerable discretion in determining how and when the work will be
accomplished. The bureaucratic model, by contrast, holds
efciency as the primary goal and individual discretion is
compromised by organizational controls that seek to make
work routine, by partitioning work into component parts
and through highly specialized and formalized role structures. Placing professionals in bureaucratic work settings,
according to the proletarianization thesis, will necessarily erode professional values over time.
The adaptation view, by contrast, argues that professionals have been able to adjust to work in large organizations by erecting barriers around professional departments
that protect them from organizational controls. So, for
example, corporate law departments can create organizational boundaries, such as Chinese Walls, that effectively
structure mini-professional service rms inside organizations, thereby preserving professional norms and values
while simultaneously encouraging strong commitment by
professionals to their employing organization. In this view
there is no inherent conict between profession and
bureaucracy.
Most quantitative research seems to support the adaptation thesis. That is, there does not appear to be an inherent conict between maintaining commitment to both
ones profession and employing organization. Without
attempting to be exhaustive, Table 1 provides a comparative overview of quantitative studies of organizational
and professional commitment for accountants over the last
thirty years. The clear conclusion from these studies is that,
while some factors moderate the relationship, professionals seem to have adapted well to large bureaucratic organizations while retaining their commitment to their
profession.
The proletarianization thesis, however, continues to
nd support, primarily in ethnographic research. Qualitative studies of the largest accounting rms (the Big
Four)3 have shown that individual professionals are subject to a series of socialization practices or disciplinary
techniques designed to align professional and organizational goals and which constrain professional judgment
in a variety of more or less subtle ways (Covaleski
et al., 1998; Dirsmith, Heian, & Covaleski, 1997). Such
research offers an obvious explanation for the absence of
organizational professional conict in survey-based
research; if organizations have replaced professional
schools and institutes as the primary means of professional socialization, individual professionals may not even
be aware of conicts between professional and organizational norms and values.
Perhaps the strongest support for the proletarianization
thesis comes from the inside accounts of Enron and Arthur
3
The Big Four refers to the four largest international accounting rms
and consist of Deloitte and Touche, Ernst and Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers. In 1970 there were eight such rms but a series of
mergers in 1989 created the Big Six, the 1997 merger of Price Waterhouse
and Coopers & Lybrand reduced this to the Big Five and the recent
collapse of Arthur Andersen has left the Big Four. To be consistent, we
refer to this elite group of rms as the Big Four (as that was the status of
the rms at the time this research was conducted) except where context
suggests otherwise.
411
Andersen. Evidence from the ongoing stream of post mortem inquiries indicate that the professional judgment and
independence of Andersen auditors was compromised by
a variety of structural pressures that arose from changes
in the nature and organization of accounting work. These
structural pressures included, among others, the increasingly intimate relationship between the audit team and
their client (Macey & Sale, 2003; Tofer & Reingold,
2003), the co-production of audit and consulting work (Levitt, 2002) and cultural changes within accounting rm
organizations (especially the largest rms) that emphasized prot and commercial gain at the expense of professional independence and objectivity (Wyatt, 2004; Zeff,
2003a; Zeff, 2003b).4
The internal accounts from Arthur Andersen and the
ethnographies that support the proletarianization argument are consistent with broader theoretical descriptions
of how changes in the nature and context of professional
work have changed professional values. Brint (1994) argues that while the number of professionals in society is
rapidly increasing, the assumed gap in value preferences
between professionals and commercial businesspersons
is decreasing. He observes that the historical value set of
professionals as social trustees is being replaced by a value set of professional expertise. While the former value
set characterizes professional work as a calling imbued
with obligations of public duty, the more current value
set views professional work in technocratic terms based
on the market value of their knowledge and expertise.
Modern professionals, Brint (1994, p. xx) observes, only
rarely remark on the social importance of their work. A
similar shift in professional values has been observed by
Leicht and Fennell (2001) who add to the argument the
observation that the narrowing gap between professionalism and managerialism has been triggered by profound changes in the institutional structure of
professional work.
Collectively, these accounts suggest the need to revisit
the underlying premises of organizational/professional
commitment (OPC) research. One of the more signicant
problems of such research is that it has been imported
into studies of professionals and professional service
rms in toto from its origins in industrial and organizational psychology. Because of this history, OPC research
has tended to overemphasize organizational outcomes
that may arise from the tension between the organization
and the profession such as turnover and job satisfaction.
Too little attention has been paid to issues of interest that
are unique to professions, such as changes in core professional values. This oversight is best reected in the ways
in which professional commitment is measured. Typical
questions focus attention on an individual professionals
participation in, and attitude toward, professional institutions (i.e. professional associations, continuing education,
professional trade journals). Largely absent from these
4
A few discordant voices (e.g., Tinker, 2002) have argued that accounting
professionalism and the related idea of a golden age have always been
ctional. However, most studies on the matter point towards the idea of a
general reduction but by no means homogeneous in professional
accountants adherence to professional values.
412
Table 1
Prior studies of organizational professional commitment of accounting professionals.
Aranya, Pollock,
and Amernic
(1981)
Aranya and
Ferris (1984)
Lachman and
Aranya
(1986)
Jeffrey and
Weatherholt
(1996)
Lord and
DeZoort
(2001)
Bamber and Iyer
(2002)
Shafer, Lowe,
and Fogarty
(2002)
Subjects
Professional commitment
Organizational commitment
Construct
Measurement
Mean
(scale
of 5)
Construct
Measurement
Mean
(scale
of 5)
Professional
commitment
3.90
Organizational
commitment
3.91
Professional
commitment
Professional
commitment
3.79
3.84
3.85
Organizational
commitment
Organizational
commitment
Professional
commitment
3.68
N/A
N/A
N/A
Professional
commitment
3.62
Organizational
commitment
3.71
Professional
identication
3.71
Organizational
identication
4.26
319 US CMAs
Dedication to
the
profession
3.64
N/A
4.00
N/A
The data reported in Table 1 is not exhaustive. It aims to provide a temporal template to assess the variability of professional and organizational commitment. Although the scales used by authors vary somewhat,
they nonetheless overlap signicantly being related to the relationship between the individual and her/his profession/employing organization.
Paper
measures is any indication of the degree to which professionals accept and acknowledge core professional values
of independence, and autonomy in controlling the context
of work.
A second shortcoming of past research is that it has
not paid sufcient attention to changes in the context of
professional work. Previous studies tend to assume, for
example, that professionals who work in corporations as
in-house counsel or internal auditors are subject to significant bureaucratic pressures, but those who work in traditional professional service rms are not. In fact, Big Four
accounting rms are larger organizations than most Fortune 500 corporations.5 Moreover, work within large law
and accounting rms is increasingly fragmented and specialized, making work within professional service rms
much more similar to that of large bureaucracies (Leicht
& Fennell, 2001). It is also known that partner autonomy
in large accounting rms is now signicantly constrained,
as a result of a strengthening of professional control in
the aftermath of the collapse of Enron (Gibbins & Jamal,
2006).
A third shortcoming of prior research is that it fails to
adequately account for the ow of professional workers
into non-professional settings. Most prior literature was
based on the assumption that when professionals worked
in non-professional rms, they would be few in number
and, as a result, professionals would retain supervisory
control over other professionals (i.e. Scott, 1987). That is,
it was assumed that professionals would be able to reconstruct the basic elements of a professional rm inside a
large bureaucratic organization. This is clearly no longer
the case. More contemporary studies demonstrate that
professionals in both corporations and professional partnerships are often subject to decisions about compensation and promotion made by non-professionals (Hafferty
& Light, 1995; Leicht & Fennell, 2001; Tolbert & Stern,
1991).
A fourth shortcoming of prior research is that while it
has focused attention on the migration of professionals
into bureaucratic work settings, it has failed to examine
the migration of non-professional work and non-professional workers into professional settings. Over the past
two decades, professional service rms have become multidisciplinary (Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005; Wyatt, 2004).
Big Four accounting rms offer traditional professional services, such as audit and accounting work, in conjunction
with non-traditional services, like management consulting
and the provision of information technology services,
where professionals are asked to provide advice outside
their conventional professional training and jurisdiction.
Increasingly, large law and accounting rms are hiring
non-professionals, or professionals whose career has been
based in industry and government and who lack the socialization and training of a traditional professional service
rm. As professionals engage in non-professional projects,
5
In 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers, the largest of the, now, Big Four
employed over 140,000 people. Its 2006 revenues of $22 billion US, were it
a publicly traded corporation, would have placed it 96th in the Fortune 500
list and it had more international ofces than either Coca Cola or General
Motors (PwC, 2007).
413
and work alongside employees who do not share professional norms and values, we might expect that professional
practice will, increasingly, be driven by logics and assumptions drawn from a managerial rather than a professional
perspective.
We seek to correct these deciencies by re-examining
the relative strength of ve competing value commitments of individual accounting professionals across four
distinct variations in the context, content and location
of professional work. The ve competing value commitments are to ones profession, to the employing organization, to clients, to the rigor and enforcement of
independence requirements, and to attitudes about the
value of the CA designation. We categorize these commitments into two distinct logics. Following Friedson (2001),
Leicht and Fennell (2001), and Suddaby and Greenwood
(2005), we conceive of commitment to ones profession,
and acceptance of the rigor and enforcement of independence requirements as consistent with an ideal logic of
professionalism. Conversely, we categorize commitment
to ones employing organization, a strong identication
with clients and the espousal of the commercial value
of the CA designation as consistent with logic of managerialism. We measure the relative strength of these commitments across four distinct changes in the context of
professional work, each of which has been attributed as
a source for the erosion of ethics in the accounting profession: employment in non-traditional organizations;
engaging in non-traditional kinds of accounting work
(particularly management consulting); rank in organizational hierarchies; and the position of the employing rm
within the organizational eld. A brief description of
these changes, along with explicit hypotheses, is elaborated in the following section.
414
6
We recognize that the notion of professionalism is used in distinct
ways in literature. Professionalism is sometimes conceived of as a very
instable notion which encompasses contradictory value clusters (for
instance, one which celebrates the ideology of public service and another
which emphasizes commercial interests). From this perspective, the
broader logic of professionalism is continuously subject to change as a
result of ongoing contests between value clusters. From a different
perspective, however, professionalism is seen as a more stable notion,
consisting of the ideal discourse of public service and disinterest in
commercial matters. While in this paper we often represent professionalism from the rst perspective (i.e., as an encompassing notion), our ndings
and conclusions would not be signicantly altered if we had instead relied
on the second perspective. Whether or not the two perspectives are
reconcilable is beyond the objective of this paper.
415
audit. However, it is recognized that the threat to professional judgment created by consulting services has also
been oftentimes more subtle in that consulting introduced a new logic into audit rms that gradually reinforced the inuence of managerialism and progressively
undermined ideal professional values and judgment.
Wyatt (2004, pp. 4748), a former Andersen partner, describes the cultural shift that occurred inside accounting
rms as a result of the migration away from core audit
services:
Increasing numbers of new hires joined the organization without any accounting background in their college education. They progressed within the rm
without any accounting training and likely with little
or no understanding or appreciation of the level of professionalism that accounting rm personnel were
expected to meet in the conduct of their engagements.
Likewise, these individuals progressed without necessarily having been exposed to the accounting rules of
professional conduct, although they did have to abide
by the internal rules on restricted investments, a necessity that became increasingly distasteful for consulting
personnel in the gogo markets of the 1990s. As the
consulting practices grew, the numbers of nonaccounting-trained personnel likewise grew. These people were
not paraprofessionals, but rather they were relatively
high-paid personnel with strong skill sets in areas with
little or no relation to accounting or auditing. Their
numbers grew rapidly, and their success in generating
high-margin fees gave them an increasing voice in rm
management. [...] The relative success of the consultants created enormous pressure on the auditing and
tax practice, both to grow revenues and increase margins. The successes in the consulting practice increasingly inuenced behavior by auditing and tax leaders
and the impact of these behavioral changes gradually
affected the behavior patterns of audit and tax personnel as well. Improved protability became the key
focus.
Wyatt reports that the introduction of new practices
changed promotional criteria within rms; the ability to
cross-sell consulting services as part of audit arrangements
was a key issue when professionals were evaluated for
partnership.
We argue that the shift away from core audit and
accounting services is a key factor in shaping the mindset
of the individual professional. Most particularly, we believe that professionals who work primarily in the provision of non-core services are more likely to display
characteristics, attitudes and values consistent with a commercial rather than an ideal professional orientation. In
sum, we predict that professionals whose work content
falls outside the traditional areas of audit and accounting
will be more embedded in a managerial logic than their
counterparts whose work content falls in these traditional
areas.
Hypothesis 2. Professionals who deliver work content in
non-traditional professional services are more likely to
416
from organizations (Abbott, 1988). An important consequence of this is that professional norms become more
subordinated to managerial concerns (Kunda, 1992), particularly as ones career progresses up the organizational
hierarchy (Leicht & Fennell, 2001).
Based on these prior ndings, therefore, we predict that
professionals of higher rank in an organization are more
likely to adopt a managerial logic than those professionals
of lower rank in the organization.
Hypothesis 3. Professionals of higher rank in an organization are more likely to adopt a managerial logic than
professionals of lower rank.
Specically, we expect high ranking organizational professionals to express stronger commitment to their organization and their clients, and are less likely to accept the
espoused logic of the need of professional institutions to
enforce independence than professionals of lower or intermediate rank. Professionals of higher rank will be more
likely to view their career in utilitarian terms.
Location in an organizational eld
Institutional theory offers a slightly different way of
interpreting the profound contextual changes in the nature
of accounting work with different predictions about where,
across the spectrum of accounting practice, we will rst
observe the erosion of norms and practices that underpin
the idealistic logic of professionalism. A prominent way
of understanding institutional change is to focus on the
role of central and peripheral organizations within an organizational eld. Peripheral actors are usually thought to be
more likely to initiate institutional change because they
are less embedded within their eld and are more able to
resist coercive, normative and cognitive pressures (Garud,
Jain, & Kumaraswamy, 2002; Ingram, 1998; Kraatz & Zajac,
1996; Lawrence, Hardy, & Phillips, 2002; Leblebici, Salancik, Copay, & King, 1991).
While there is considerable evidence that peripheral actors are more likely to initiate institutional change, there
are some prominent examples where actors centrally positioned in the eld act as change agents. This is particularly
the case in the professions where, both in law (Sherer &
Lee, 2002) and accounting (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006;
Greenwood, Suddaby, & Hinings, 2002), prominent and
large partnerships were the rst to adopt organizational
reforms. The largest accounting rms were the rst to
adopt multidisciplinary practices because their powerful
position within the eld exposed them to new ideas and
gave them the capacity to resist institutional pressures
and norms (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006). By embracing
multidiciplinarity, however, the largest accounting rms
moved away from the jurisdictional and normative centre
of their eld. Anecdotal accounts of the evolution of bigger
accounting rms also emphasize that, between 1980 and
2000, these rms moved from being the cornerstone of
the accounting profession to more like their Fortune 500
clients (Wyatt, 2004). It is reasonable to argue that over
this time period, the biggest rms evolved away from
being a central component of the accounting eld to become a peripheral member of Fortune 500.
417
Measures
Dependent variables
Organizational commitment
Organizational commitment is typically characterized
by three factors: a strong belief in and acceptance of the
goals and values of an organization; expressed willingness
to exert effort on behalf of the organization; and a strong
identication with the organization and an expressed desire to maintain organizational membership (Price, 1997).
These factors were captured with six questions drawn
7
The qualitative interviews were aimed at developing a better understanding of the ties between individual accountants and their profession.
Fifteen experienced Canadian CAs were interviewed in late 2000 and early
2001, several months before the collapse of Enron: seven public accountants; three practitioners in industry; and ve directors of the Canadian
Institute of Chartered Accountants or provincial institutes of CAs. We
restrained our interviews to CAs occupying high hierarchical functions
because these individuals went through and were able to observe
signicant changes in the accounting profession, such as the emergence
of multidisciplinary rms and the commodication of nancial auditing. All
interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed, and were conducted by
one, or two of the authors.
418
Table 2
Measurement of variables: questions.
Organizational commitment
1. I am proud to tell my friends that I am part of my current employer/rm
2. When someone criticizes my current employer/rm, it feels like a personal insult
3. I hope to be working for my current employer/rm until I retire
4. My current job gives me considerable opportunity for freedom in how I do the work
5. I seriously intend to look for a job at another employer/rm within the next year. (Reversely coded)
6. My own sense of who I am (i.e. my personal identity) overlaps to a great extent with my own sense of what my current employer/rm represents
Professional commitment
1. My CA is a signicant part of my working life
2. I am extremely glad that I chose this profession over others I was considering at the time I joined
3. I consider the CA designation as a signicant accomplishment in my career
4. I am proud to tell my friends that I am a CA
5. I identify myself as a CA in my working environment
6. I feel pride when I see other CAs being recognized
7. I deeply care about the future of the CA profession
Client commitment
1. When someone praises my largest client, it feels like a personal compliment
2. When I talk about my largest client, I usually say we rather than they
3. The successes of my largest client are my successes
Rigor and enforcement of independence requirements
1. I believe that independence is one of the main foundations of the CA profession
2. I believe that the professions independence requirements need to be strictly enforced in every sphere of activities in which public accounting rms
are involved
3. I think the profession would be better off if the professions independence requirements for CAs in public practice were more rigorous
4. I think that the business community in general would be better off if the professions independence requirements for CAs in public practice were
more rigorous
Value of the CA designation
1. The CA designation is a very good foundation to start a career in business
2. The CA designation has contributed to a large extent to my career
3. The CA designation provides the opportunity to earn sufcient nancial rewards
4. The CA designation provides a lot of exibility in employment opportunities
419
Gender
Female
Male
Organizational type
Big Four rm
Medium accounting rma
Smaller accounting rm
Sole practitioner
Total in public accounting
Industry
Government
Other
Hierarchical positionb
Higher
Middle
Lower
Other
Alberta
British Columbia
Nova Scotia
Totalc
Qubec
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
90
197
287
31
69
100
150
341
491
31
69
100
88
175
263
33
67
100
92
186
278
33
67
100
420
899
1319
32
68
100
29
12
55
32
128
113
20
25
286
10
4
19
11
45
40
7
9
100
72
28
102
44
246
151
43
44
484
15
6
21
9
51
31
9
9
100
20
25
44
17
106
119
30
34
289
7
9
15
6
37
41
10
12
100
20
20
38
20
98
103
49
22
272
7
7
14
7
36
38
18
8
100
141
85
239
113
578
486
142
125
1331
11
6
18
8
43
37
11
9
100
135
117
15
12
279
48
42
5
4
100
221
228
22
13
484
46
47
5
3
100
148
107
16
16
287
52
37
6
6
100
129
118
11
16
274
47
43
4
6
100
633
570
64
57
1324
48
43
5
4
100
a
Respondents were specied that medium accounting rms include the following: BDO Dunwoody; BHD Canada; Collins Barrow/Mintz and Partners;
Grant Thornton; HLB/Schwartz Levitsky Feldman; Mallette Maheu; Meyers Norris and Penny; and Richer, Usher and Vineberg. These rms employ a
professional staff that varies from 228 to 1610 individuals (The Bottom Line, 2002).
b
The higher hierarchical position comprises partners (public accounting) and top managers (non-public accounting settings). The middle position
comprises managers and seniors (public accounting) and middle managers (non-public accounting settings). The lower position includes juniors (public
accounting) and junior managers (non-public accounting settings).
c
The numbers do not add up to the total response number because of missing information. A number of respondents did not clearly indicate their
afliated provincial institute.
audit because auditing contained a higher objective thirdparty duty to the shareholders. Tax, by contrast, invites an
accountant to become more closely aligned with the client,
much like the subjective alignment between a lawyer and
her client. Second, this categorization is borne out by professional legislation in North America which gives accountants a closed professional jurisdiction with respect to
audit work but not with respect to tax. Respondents who
indicated less than half their time is spent in audit and
accounting were categorized as non-core.8
Finally, respondents in public accounting rms were
categorized as being employed in one of four size groupings of rms: Big Four; medium (see Table 3), small (all
others except sole practitioners) and sole practitioners.
This categorization scheme follows that commonly accepted in the Canadian accounting industry and is identical
to the categorizations used in the trade publication The
Bottom Line.
Analysis
Because the intent of this study is to offer a preliminary
exploration of shifts in value and logic orientation within
the accounting profession across different contexts of
work, we focus analytic attention on measuring the degree
8
While tax has been considered a non-core activity in this paper, we
understand that this categorization may be subject to challenge. Accordingly, we re-ran the statistics with tax included as a core activity. Although
there are some differences in the two sets of analyses, the major ndings as
indicated in the Discussion section are not affected.
9
As one of the fundamental assumptions of ANOVA is homogeneity of
the variance a homogeneity of variance test was conducted with every
analysis. Where this assumption was violated, the Browne Forsythe test
was used to determine if the results are comparable to the ANOVA Fstatistics and p-values and whether any adjustments to the interpretation
of the results would be needed. The results of the two tests were found to
be comparable.
10
The second author, who is uent in both French and English, translated
all of the questions (originally formulated in English) in French. The French
questionnaire was subsequently checked for clarity by four individuals: one
director of the Ordre des comptables agrs du Qubec; one retired CGA
and his wife; and one academic in sociology. Only minor modications
resulted from their comments.
420
2001 represented 48% of the total number of CAs in Canada.11 The questionnaire gathered information on the
respondents current job, their articling experience, measures of professional and organizational commitment, and
the degree to which they characterized their career in utilitarianism terms. Most questions were randomized
although the order of the sections was not.12
Data collection started several months after the collapse
of Arthur Andersen, in the last quarter of 2002, and ended
mid-January, 2003. Table 3 summarizes descriptive data on
the sample.
A request to participate in the survey was sent by each
of the four provincial institutes to a randomized sample of
7169 active members. Prospective participants were informed of: the purpose of the survey; an estimate of completion time (about 20 m); brief biographies of the
researchers; details about condentiality; a hyperlink or
address to the appropriate website as well as the required
username and password to log in. Two reminders, approximately 10 and 20 days after the initial request, were sent
to individuals included in the original sample.13
A total of 1606 members responded to the questionnaire. Of these, over 1200 respondents on average were
usable for each full set of analyses. The response rates by
province are as follows: British Columbia 20.5%, Nova Scotia 20.1%, and Qubec 11.7%.14
To assess how well our sample represents the population
we compared the gender, organizational type and hierarchical position of our respondents with provincial data on
membership. The gender split of our sample is nearly identical to that of the underlying population. Similarly, the
organizational type proportions in Alberta, Nova Scotia
and Qubec closely approximate that of the population.
Our sample from British Columbia, however, appears to
over-represent members in public practice (51% of our
respondents, versus 36% of the underlying population). We
also seem to have a disproportionate number of high ranking respondents (4652%, depending upon the province)
as compared to the underlying population (2935%).15
11
We asked the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario to
participate but were unable to obtain permission to contact their
membership. Despite this we have no reason to believe the absence of
respondents from Ontario biased our results.
12
A copy of the survey instrument is available from the rst author.
13
A temporary cookie was placed on the respondents computer once s/he
initially answered the survey to ensure that people would only complete
the survey once. We were unable to send specic reminders in Alberta due
to changes in the institutes information technology system. As a result, we
were unable to calculate a response rate for Alberta comparable with the
rate for the other provinces.
14
Although somewhat low, these response rates compare favorably to
contemporary large scale surveys of accountants See Bamber and Iyer
(2002) (22.8%); Elias (2002) (15.2%) and Valentine and Fleischman (2003)
(9.5%). The lower response rate in Qubec may be due to various reasons
including doubt as to whether researchers from English-speaking universities were able to conceive a meaningful questionnaire in French. One
French-speaking respondent indeed sent an e-mail to us after having
completed the survey, highlighting that he almost decided not to answer
the survey for this reason, and how surprised he was about the high quality
of the French questionnaire.
15
In three institutes members voluntarily provide information on their
hierarchical position. In two institutes, data on hierarchical position was
available for about 30% of the membership. In the third institute the
corresponding proportion is 82%.
16
In accordance with Roberts (1999), we assessed non-response bias, for
each of the provincial institutes, by comparing early (i.e. the earliest 25%
responding in each province) and late respondents (i.e. the latest 25%
responding in each province). A comparison of the means of all dependent
and independent variables of interest (as specied in Tables 47), as well as
the general demographic variables of age and gender, found little difference
between early and late respondents. In general, independent-sample t-tests
did not reveal signs of signicant non-response bias, except that late
respondents were slightly older, they occupied more senior ranks within
their employing organizations, and there were fewer late respondents from
mid-size rms. However, two of such differences disappeared with a
different method of comparing early and late respondents (using the cut-off
point of 20 days from the survey start date in the province, i.e., around the
second reminder time). These results suggest that there is unlikely to be a
systematic bias due to differences between those who responded and those
who did not.
421
Organizational
commitment
Professional
commitment
Independence
enforcement
Utilitarian view of CA
designation
Mean
S.D.
Mean
S.D.
Mean
S.D.
Mean
S.D.
Public practice
Industry, government and other
23.17
21.53
4.93
4.55
30.26
28.90
3.56
4.19
14.49
16.26
3.11
2.55
17.33
17.09
2.09
2.28
35.57***
40.21***
132.94***
4.05*
p < .05.
p < .001.
***
These results paint an interesting, if somewhat confusing, picture. Clearly there are statistically signicant differences in attitudes and commitments to various elements of
professionalism between those practitioners who migrated
to more bureaucratic forms of practice and those who remained in traditional professional partnerships. The results
regarding commitment to ones profession and ones organization are consistent with prior research on organizational professional conict. That is, there does not appear
to be inherent contradiction between commitment to ones
profession and commitment to the persons employing
organization, at least in public practice rms. Professionals
in traditional professional service rms have higher mean
scores on both forms of commitment. Indeed, the results
seem to demonstrate that accountants in public practice
are more engaged in both their organizational and professional environments than are those who work in government and industry.
More surprising, however, is the observation that
accountants in public practice are more likely to view their
professional designation in utilitarian terms than are
accountants in industry and government. While this result
is consistent with common interpretations of recent scandals in the audit profession, it offers a somewhat unsettling
view of professionalism in public accounting rms as
devaluing the intrinsic value of professional work. It is similarly surprising that accountants in public practice are less
supportive of the rigorous enforcement of professional
independence. While this, again, is consistent with widespread understandings of the events surrounding Enron,
it suggests that the traditional professional partnership
has failed to reproduce core values of the coercive role of
professional institutions. The results also reinforce the
important point made earlier regarding the limitations of
Table 5
Content of work: means, standard deviations and analysis of variance: core versus non-core work.
Type of work
Organizational
commitment
Mean
S.D.
Mean
S.D.
Mean
S.D.
Mean
S.D.
Mean
S.D.
Core
Non-core
21.59
22.55
4.65
4.82
29.6
29.4
3.82
4.10
9.05
9.65
2.79
3.10
15.15
15.65
2.99
2.91
17.14
17.20
2.10
2.28
10.77***
*
**
p < .05.
p < .01.
p < .001.
***
Professional
commitment
.989
Client
commitment
5.74*
Independence
enforcement
8.71**
Utilitarian view of CA
designation
.195
422
Table 6
Position in organization: means, standard deviations and analysis of variance: rank.
Rank
Organizational
commitment
Mean
S.D.
Mean
S.D.
Mean
S.D.
Mean
S.D.
Mean
S.D.
Top level
Lower levels
24.48
20.09
4.14
4.32
30.05
29.01
4.03
3.84
10.03
8.63
2.98
2.80
15.57
15.34
3.00
2.89
17.57
16.90
2.09
2.19
308.83***
***
p < .001.
Professional
commitment
22.89***
Client
commitment
31.63***
Independence
enforcement
2.01
Utilitarian view of CA
designation
32.36***
423
Organizational
commitment
Professional
commitment
Client
commitment
Independence
enforcement
Utilitarian view of CA
designation
Mean
S.D.
Mean
S.D.
Mean
S.D.
Mean
S.D.
Mean
S.D.
Sole practice
Small size
Mid tier
Big Four
25.90
24.26
22.05
20.00
3.14
4.67
4.68
4.78
30.41
30.24
30.19
30.18
3.21
3.87
3.32
3.51
9.80
9.43
9.60
8.78
3.34
2.92
2.77
2.77
15.22
14.27
15.33
13.82
3.29
3.19
2.78
2.85
17.48
17.30
17.32
17.25
2.03
2.15
1.93
2.14
39.23***
0.108
2.70*
7.20***
0.31
p < .05.
p < .001.
***
accounting rms, it should be noted that the Big Four professionals mean score on this measure is still higher than
the scale mid-point score (12). Further, it cannot be inferred from the results that professionals in Big Four rms
have adopted a managerial logic across all of the variables
investigated in this study. Rather, the results seem to indicate that Big Four professionals are characterized by contradictory attitudes regarding professionalism, being
simultaneously lower on client commitment, organizational commitment and independence enforcement. This
observation is perhaps not surprising given that historical
accounts indicate a growing disengagement of then the
Big Five rms from their historically close relationship
with accounting professional associations (Suddaby &
Greenwood, 2005). In comparison with other public
accountants, accountants who work in the largest rms
would be exposed in their daily life to different and contradictory discourses regarding the nature of professionalism,
translating into a paradoxical set of professional attitudes.
At the very least, our results suggest that the cluster of values and attitudes represented by traditional professionalism is not consistently reected in the mindset of Big
Four accountants.
Discussion
The results sketch a useful picture of how four distinct
changes in the organizational context of work correlate
with variation in attitudes of chartered accountants toward professional values and institutions. The changes
are depicted schematically in Fig. 1, which charts four distinct moments or variation from traditional contexts, content and position of professional work to new and
emerging contexts, content and position of professional
work. Fig. 1 also identies where commitments to organization, profession, client, independence enforcement and
utilitarian view of the CA designation are high and where
there are statistically signicant differences.
Fig. 1. Commitment clusters in four types of change in the context of accounting work (only variables with signicant differences found between categories
are included).
424
Conclusion
This study is a preliminary attempt to map the variation
in professional attitudes and values as the conditions of
425
426
the critique of professional ethics has focused on the individual professional. Our results suggest this is somewhat
misguided, that ethicists must also attend to the way in
which professional work is organized if they want to seriously address ethical issues in professional service rms.
The role of large organizations in structuring the conditions by which professional work is produced, and its concomitant effect on professional projects, is a subject also
overlooked in the sociology of professions. Accountants
(and, arguably, engineers) are more organizationally
embedded than other professions and offer a unique
opportunity to extend our understanding of how the growing importance of large organizations will alter our taken
for granted assumptions about professionalism and professional work.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the nancial support of the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Deloitte & Touche/Canadian Academic Accounting
Association Research Grant Program, and the H.E. Pearson
endowment.
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