Description
As Giddens has observed ‘‘Nothing is clearer than that gender is a matter of learning and continuous work, rather
than a simple extension of biologically given sexual difference’’ (1991, p. 63). In this paper, we discuss the processes of
professional socialization implicated in the reproduction of gender relationships in UK offices of two multi-national
audit firms
‘‘Helping them to forget..’’: the organizational embedding
of gender relations in public audit ?rms
Fiona Anderson-Gough
a
, Christopher Grey
b
, Keith Robson
c,
*
a
University of Leicester, UK
b
University of Cambridge, UK
c
School of Management, UMIST, P.O. Box 88, Manchester M60 1QD, UK
Abstract
As Giddens has observed ‘‘Nothing is clearer than that gender is a matter of learning and continuous work, rather
than a simple extension of biologically given sexual di?erence’’ (1991, p. 63). In this paper, we discuss the processes of
professional socialization implicated in the reproduction of gender relationships in UK o?ces of two multi-national
audit ?rms. The gendering of audit ?rms is viewed as connected not simply to important elements of the formal
organizational structures, such as temporal organization and appraisal processes, but also to the tacit, informal
components, such as the correct form of socializing involved in ‘getting in and getting on’ [Sociology 28 (2) (1994) 479]
within Big Five audit ?rms. Our focus is upon practices, including the discursive practices trainees pick up and mobilize
during their everyday interactions. In our conclusion, we signal how informal and formal organizational processes are
intertwined so as to reproduce gender domination, and comment upon the problems that policy initiatives and reforms
face in attempting to redress organizational gender imbalances.
Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Gender; Audit ?rms; Socialization; Professions; Recruitment; Appraisal; Organizational embedding
Professional socialization and the gendering of audit
?rms
Whereas 15 years ago there was remarkably
limited study of audit ?rms and accountancy vis-a-
vis medicine (Atkinson, 1981; Becker, Geer,
Hughes, & Strauss, 1961; Freidson, 1970, 1986,
1994) or law (Abbott, 1988; Rueschemeyer, 1986),
the past decade has seen a comparative accumu-
lation of interpretative studies of auditors and
accountants socialization (Anderson-Gough,
Grey, & Robson, 1998a, 1998b; Co?ey, 1993,
1994; Dirsmith, Heian, & Covaleski, 1997; Harper,
1988). Such studies of accountancy have a?rmed
the importance of ‘conduct’ to the development of
a professional self. Many studies have noted
common emphases upon appropriate modes of
dress, time management, appropriate socializing,
discourses of the client and general enthusiasm for
the task.
Although a number of these studies indicate
gendering e?ects, few have taken directly as their
subject the character of gender relations inside
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +44-161-200-3455; fax: +44-
161-200-3505.
E-mail address: [email protected] (K. Robson).
0361-3682/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.aos.2004.05.003
Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490
www.elsevier.com/locate/aos
accountancy ?rms. Excellent studies now exist of
the history of accountancy, and accompanying
processes of female marginalization and occa-
sional inclusivity (Kirkham & Loft, 1993; Lehman,
1990, 1992; Lehman & Tinker, 1987; Matthews &
Pirie, 2001; Tinker & Neimark, 1987) have been
explored. Studies of the perceived e?ects of family
ties and sex-role stereotypes upon career progres-
sion in audit ?rms have con?rmed the in?uence of
gendered notions of ‘social appropriateness’ upon
career success (Anderson, Johnson, & Reckers,
1994; Maupin & Lehman, 1994). Empirical, often
survey, evidence has a?rmed consistently that the
representation of women among the professions in
general is increasing (Crompton & Sanderson,
1986; Seaward, 2001; Silverstone, 1980; Walby,
1997, p. 35), though many studies counting the
proportion of women in senior positions in audit
?rms have con?rmed that women appear under-
represented at the manager, senior manager and
partner levels in the Big Five professional service
?rms (Ciancanelli, Gallhofer, Humphrey, &
Kirkham, 1990; Roberts & Coutts, 1992; Jackson
& Heyday, 1997; Loft, 1992), and that salary levels
appear to di?er according to sex (Gri?ths, 2001),
in accord with many other domains of corporate
and commercial life.
Little, however has been written about the
micro-organizational processes that structure gen-
der domination in the modern Big Four audit ?rm
(Hooks, 1992). While Kirkham and Loft’s exami-
nation of the gendering of the accounting profes-
sion adopted an insightful macro-historical
approach, few, if any, studies in accountancy have
attempted to consider the ways in which modern
audit ?rms come to be gendered, the micro-prac-
tices through which gender relations in audit ?rms
are constructed and re-produced, and appear
resistant to change, or, in particular, to equality
initiatives (Cockburn, 1991). No doubt this has
much to do with the di?culties in conducting any
kinds of research in Big Five ?rms, and the prob-
lems of gaining access into institutions who see
their organizational practices as competitive
weapons, and appeal to client con?dentiality and
the partnership form in order to de?ect inquiries
into their practices. Nevertheless, the present paper
is based upon two intensive projects of socializa-
tion and professional identity in o?ces of two ‘Big
Five’ ?rms in the UK, studies which we believe to
be the largest of their kind in this country. In the
?rst study we interviewed around 80 British trainee
auditors, on three year professional accountancy
training contracts, concerning their experiences
qualifying to be accountants and in the second
study examined the processes on career develop-
ment among a sample of about 30 quali?ed sta?.
The interviews were conducted from 1995 to 2000.
In this paper, we attempt to address this ab-
sence and draw out the relationships between the
socialization of trainees into the organizational
practices of audit ?rms and the reproduction of
gender structures in audit ?rms. At the same time
we draw some attention to resistance amongst
trainees to speci?c organizational practices and the
gender e?ects these may be perceived to produce.
However, while we concur with the view that
where there are ‘power-e?ects’, there is also resis-
tance (Jermier, Knights, & Nord, 1994), the most
obvious evidence of ‘resistance’ in audit ?rms is
that trainees voluntarily leave the ?rm. While the
Big Five ?rms in the UK absorb a signi?cant
proportion of graduates from ‘old’ UK universi-
ties, a substantial proportion leave during the
training contract, or fail parts of the professional
examinations and are then asked to resign.
In this paper, we discuss the processes of pro-
fessional socialization implicated in the reproduc-
tion of gender relationships in Big Five audit ?rms.
The gendering of audit ?rms is viewed as con-
nected not simply to important elements of the
formal organizational structures, such as temporal
organization and appraisal processes, but also to
the tacit, informal components, such as the correct
form of socializing involved in ‘getting in and
getting on’ (Grey, 1994) within Big Five ?rms. Our
focus is upon practices, including the discursive
practices trainees pick up and mobilize during
their everyday interactions. Our concern is to see
gender relationships within organization as embed-
ded elements of organizational practices, rather
than the product of ‘gender di?erence’.
In conceptualizing the gender relationships in
audit ?rms we link organizational practices to the
reproduction of modes of gender domination. Our
paper develops a:
470 F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490
Perspective on gender and bureaucracy which
foregrounds gender relations as an embedded
property of organizations rather than valoriz-
ing gender di?erences as dichotomous sets of
attributes or distinctive orientations and
modes of action, which are simply ‘brought
to’ organizations (Savage & Witz, 1992,
Chapter 1).
By this it is meant that we did not see the
issues relevant to the gendering relationships in
audit ?rms as rooted in essentialist notions of
male and female characteristics. Rather the
structuration of audit ?rms is dependent upon
discursive and non-discursive practices into which
are embedded consequences and e?ects, often
unintentional, that have as their outcome various
forms of gender inequality. While it is undeniable
that essentialist discourses of male and female
characteristics and behaviours occupy the work-
place (Collinson & Collinson, 1989), audit
?rms are ensembles constructed of economic,
political and cultural processes into which, as an
integral part, gender processes are also sedi-
mented.
At one level, for example, many organizations
demonstrate a division of labour between the work
that men and women are expected or allowed to
perform (Jacobs, 1998). Certainly, it is a feature of
audit ?rms that secretaries, receptionists, and, in-
deed, personnel managers tend to be female and
while this is not untypical for industrial, com-
mercial, professional or, indeed, higher educa-
tional institutions, it is but one signi?cant aspect of
their gendering (Cooper & Taylor, 2000; Tancred-
Sheri?, 1989, p. 45). Thus while our focus is upon
the ‘professional’ trainees and quali?ed sta? it is
also the case that the ‘‘possibility of career pro-
gression from junior to senior jobs [is] premised on
the fact that large amounts of routine work [are]
carried out by women..not eligible for promotion’’
(Crompton, 1986; Delamont, 1989). Alongside the
gendered division of ?rm tasks, many concepts
and metaphors of the ?rm (or the ‘?rm type’) that
are embedded into culturally normalized organi-
zational discourses also express rooted notions of
‘masculinity’. And these discourses partly struc-
ture processes of thinking about the ‘self’ and the
identity of the ‘self’ with conceptions of appro-
priate male and female behaviour.
As Giddens has observed ‘‘Nothing is clearer
than that gender is a matter of learning and con-
tinuous work, rather than a simple extension of
biologically given sexual di?erence’’ (1991, p. 63).
This type of re?exivity helps to structure the sorts
of interactions that occur between sta? both
through formal mechanisms, such as audit work or
performance appraisals, and the informal ex-
changes of, for example, socializing. Of course, that
organizations are themselves embedded in a wider
context also means that certain norms and values
may re?ect received social norms concerning, for
example, ‘family roles’: as Mills has noted‘‘people
do not leave their cultural perceptions at the gates
of organizations, they enter with them’’ (Mills,
1992, p. 98; Sheppard, 1992). But organizational
processes are themselves media for the reproduc-
tion of such norms and values through the way in
which they may then follow assumptions about
men and women’s lives and (hetero-)sexuality
(Crompton & Jones, 1984; Hearn & Parkin, 1987,
1992; Hearn, Sheppard, & Burrell, 1989; Mills &
Tancred, 1992; Rich, 1983). In this way the ‘social’
may be thought of as passing through the ‘?rm’.
While our focus is upon organizational pro-
cesses rather than attitudes, that is not to say that
there are not views expressed in audit ?rms that
many might consider chauvinistic or even misog-
ynistic: for example, Grey (1994) noted a partner’s
remark on the subject of the importance to a ca-
reer of having a ‘‘well-packaged wife’’. Of course,
such an open expression of ‘wife-as-commodity’
would readily and ?ttingly attract scorn. However,
what is signi?cant about this quotation to our
study of gender processes, is the manner in which
it signals, albeit in an unusually vivid way, that
amongst partners and other audit ?rm sta? there is
a common understanding of the ?uidity (or ero-
sion) of the boundaries between private and public
time as a facet of professional self-identity. As we
shall note, the ‘correct form of socializing’ is crit-
ical to the career development of sta? in audit
?rms, not least where practice development issues,
(that is, selling skills, attracting new clients), are an
important, formal aspect of their organizational
appraisal.
F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490 471
Thus, a partner stating attitudes considered
‘sexist’ is doing so in a context where the ‘hostess’
attributes he appears to value in his spouse may
very well have served to promote his career within
the ?rm and is commonly understood by organi-
zational actors to have done so, probably at a level
of the taken-for-granted. Our point is that we do
not see necessarily see the practice development
emphases of the performance evaluation structure
as founded upon these generalized sexist attitudes,
but as consonant with a socialized sense of self that
understands career progression as a constitutive
element of identity and formal organizational
practices of evaluation and advancement that, in a
Foucauldian sense, help constitute the subject in
this manner.
Obviously over several years of research we
noted several instances of sentiments that we
might consider betray ‘sexist attitudes’ and which
possibly might be regarded as actionable in our
host institutions. Such accounts were rare,
though we also cannot discount the possibility
that sta? would not express such attitudes in
front of academic researchers. Yet such atti-
tudes as were expressed are intriguing as indica-
tive of a particular kind of organizational
practice wherein their articulation is linked to the
norms of ‘?tting in’ and the formal processes of
training into which professionals are accultur-
ated.
For example, one trainee suggested to us that
the ?rm was not a discriminatory workplace:
you hear all these stories about sex discrimi-
nation at work and it just doesn’t exist here..
Saying that it probably gets harder at later
levels, I think there is a handful of female
Partners in the ?rm out of several thousand
(audit trainee, third year, female).
On the one hand, female trainees or managers
might never experience outright discrimination or
misogyny in their everyday work, but at the same
time they recognize that there is a gendered hier-
archy and this is one condition in which they have
to operate. The character of the hierarchy also
makes visible the male-dominated experience of
trainees in the ?rm. Many trainees comment on
the lack of women at manager and, particularly,
partner level.
On the other hand, occasionally female trainees
remark on ‘stereotypical attitudes’ they experi-
enced from colleagues:
Things like we went out for a training lunchand
all the men started talking about football so I
was just playing with my salad and thinking
‘‘Oh God, this is really exciting’’ and then he
just turned to me and said ‘‘Oh are you bored,
well you can talk about shopping with Jessica’’
but he wasn’t really joking, that was the annoy-
ing thing. (tax trainee, ?rst year, female).
Nevertheless, while not seeking to deny that this
quotation conveys sexist stereotyping, it also sig-
nals the organizational and cultural practices
wherein which a comment about someone’s lack of
interest in sport provokes a response that falls little
short of hostility. As Sheppard (1992, p. 158) has
noted, the experience of ‘chatter’ or informal
organizational discourse as ‘‘like having a football
club at work’’ is but one expression of the di?er-
ential experience of organizational life commonly
noted by female managers.
1
Of course, there are many examples wherein
certain types of activity may be accounted as, for
example, ‘masculine’ by organizational actors.
Many kinds of organizational image connected to
competition, aggression, analytical powers, lead-
ership, for example are gendered in their cultural
meaning and application (Gutek, 1989, p. 60;
Sheppard, 1989). Yet again the instances that we
?nd are related to a form of ‘homo- sociality’
2
among male trainees that is not experienced in the
same way by female trainees, rather than to bio-
1
As we explore below, this is reinforced by a formal
organizational discourse in which team metaphors are domi-
nating ?gures in the formal appraisal, and to the role of sports-
talk which connects to an experience of homo-sociality in the
recruitment process––as we note below an active engagement in
team sports is a key signi?er of the appropriate ‘material’ to be
a member of Firm A or Firm B.
2
‘Homo-sociality’ here refers to the fact of same sex
organization acting as a condition for the reproduction of
gender domination.
472 F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490
logical imperatives. As such we see the gendering
of audit ?rms in terms of an embedding of orga-
nizational practices embracing both the formal
and the informal––indeed it is the speci?c articu-
lation between the formal and the informal that, in
our view, supports the organizational structur-
ation of gender relations.
In the next section, we outline the research
context to our research. This precedes our analysis
of gender relationships in audit ?rms.
Research context and methodology
The study employed a qualitative methodology
based principally upon a programme of semi-
structured interviews with audit trainees employed
by accountancy practices, and conducted face-
to-face in a private room on the premises of the
employing ?rm. Interviewees were all undertaking
their professional training contract (examinations)
with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in
England and Wales (ICAEW).
The training process within UK professional
bodies involves a three year contract during which
trainees are based at the ?rm’s o?ce (or, typically,
are out at the premises of audit clients), and study
for professional examinations at home, mainly
after o?ce hours. During much of the ?rm’s time,
trainees will be sent out ‘on jobs’, that is assisting
the audit of ‘client’ company on site. Much of the
work, particularly at the initial stages of the con-
tract, can be menial––photocopying, making co?ee
for the audit team, counting stock or following an
invoice trail, for example. Trainees are also ‘re-
leased’ from their ?rm o?ce for periods of six
weeks or longer at points during the three years to
attend formal examination tuition usually at the
premises of professional tutoring agencies. Profes-
sional examinations progress through three stages
during the training contract: Graduate Conversion
(foundation levels studies in accounting and core
business disciplines, such as law and economics),
Intermediate and Finals. If successful in their
examinations at the ?rst attempt, trainees would
normally take three years to qualify; failure to pass
an examination, not uncommon, would result in
the re-taking of part or all of the examinations at
that stage. Most trainees were graduates employed
on auditing work, although others worked in Tax
or Insolvency departments. Where the interviewee
was willing, interviews were tape-recorded.
The interviews emerged out of two studies.
First, 77 interviews were conducted with ICAEW
trainees in two provincial o?ces of two Big Six
?rms located in cities in the North of England for a
project on professional socialization were used this
study (see Grey, Robson, & Anderson, 1997).
Where appropriate we have identi?ed these ?rms
as Firm A and Firm B; otherwise they are identi-
?ed simply as LargeFirm. These interviews were
conducted between January 1996 and March 1997.
Second, around 30 interviews were conducted with
newly quali?ed seniors and managers as part of a
project concerned with socialization and career
progression in audit ?rms; these were conducted at
the same ?rms and included some interviewees
interviewed previously as trainees a few years
earlier, adding a longitudinal dimension to our
study. We also conducted some exit interviews
with sta? leaving or who had left our two large
?rms. The second set of interviews were conducted
during 1998 and 1999.
The basic pro?le of the ?rst interview pro-
gramme was as follows (Table 1):
In Firm A the pro?le of trainees interviewed
was as follows (Table 2):
Trainees in Firm B had the following pro?le
(Table 3):
For the second study the pro?le of interviewees
was as follows (Table 4):
Table 1
Pro?le of ?rms and interviews: Study 1
Type No. of ?rms No. of trainees No. of interviews
a
No. with all passes
a; b
Big Five 2 154 77 (50%) 70 (91%)
a
Figures in bracket show percentage of total trainees in the two o?ces.
b
Number with all passes is the number of trainees who have passed the professional examinations taken thus far in their contract the
?rst time around.
F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490 473
Recordings of interviews were transcribed and
coded for Ethnograph, a qualitative data analysis
programme (Dey, 1993; Weaver & Atkinson,
1994). Ethnograph allows interview material to be
coded line-by-line under categories determined by
the researchers. Codes can be drawn up from
three obvious sources: existing research questions,
theory, ‘data’, but also and more importantly the
interaction of these three elements during the
conduct of the research.
3
Whilst the idea of
‘data’ as a source may seem to contradict the
epistemological commitments of our methodo-
logical approach to the construction of organi-
zational culture and professional identity, this is
not so, since it is recognized that the researched
are actors in reality-construction. Therefore,
researchers cannot ignore persistent meanings and
interpretations and these can provide a source of
codes. In any case, even where the ‘data’ does not
yield codes directly, it is likely to in?uence the
extent to which codes are actually used. The
other sources of codes are more straightforward.
Clearly, concern with professional and organiza-
tional socialization yielded certain self-evident
codes which derived from the basic research
questions outlined at the outset of the study. Fi-
nally, theory, in that it is itself a way in which
data is structured and called into existence will be
relevant in coding: the main issue here, as already
indicated, is to recognize the theory-ladenness of
coding rather than to see it as a purely ‘technical’
activity.
4
Each line of interview can be assigned
up to twelve codes from the code set devised by
the researchers, although it would be possible to
assign twice that number simply by inputting the
same interview into the software twice. In prac-
tice it is often unnecessary to code every line
individually: rather, blocks of text can be coded
under as many codes as are appropriate subject
Table 2
Firm A interview programme
Audit Tax Insolvency Total
Year 1 8 (2) 5 (2) 1 (0) 14 (4)
Year 2 8 (2) 2 (2) 2 (0) 12 (4)
Year 3 6 (1) 3 (2) 2 (1) 11 (4)
Total 22 (5) 10 (6) 5 (1) 37 (12)
Numbers in ( ) indicate the number of trainees interviewed in that category that are female.
Table 3
Firm B interview programme
Audit Tax Total
Year 1 9 (2) 3 (1) 12 (3)
Year 2 13 (4) 2 (1) 15 (5)
Year 3 12 (5) 1 (0) 13 (5)
Total 34 (11) 6 (2) 40 (13)
Numbers in ( ) indicate the number of trainees interviewed in
that category that are female.
Table 4
Interview pro?les: Study 2
Firm A Firm B Total
Number 17 13 30
Male 13 10 23
Female 4 3 7
Previously
interviewed
7 4 11
Audit 6 7 13
Tax 3 4 7
Other 8 2 10
3
The identi?cation of appropriate codes was not attempted
until several interviews had been completed. The intention was
to identify from the issues emerging in the interview what the
categories for coding should be, rather than to conduct
interviews around the categories. This was a way of addressing
the issue of ‘dynamism’ in the research process.
4
Having drawn up an initial list of codes, each member of
the research team ?rst coded the same interview. Meetings were
held subsequently in which the categories were discussed,
re?ned, dropped or added according to the di?culties experi-
enced in operationalizing the categories or according to their
failure to yield adequate coding for interview material. Subse-
quently, changes were kept to a minimum, although new codes
were introduced afterwards but these were mainly made during
the early stages of coding in order to avoid substantial re-
coding of interviews already processed.
474 F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490
to the limitation that a maximum of seven over-
laps is possible between blocks of text. By the
same token, some lines or blocks of text may be
deemed as unworthy of coding if they supply
material which is unoriginal, irrelevant or unin-
teresting.
Having established a database of coded tran-
scripts, it is possible to commence analysis of the
material. Perhaps the major misconception that
persists around CAQDAS is the assumption that
the coding somehow constitutes analysis (Weaver
& Atkinson, 1994; Kelle, 1995). The crudest man-
ifestation of such a view would be simply to assign
signi?cance to a code based upon the number of its
usage, ignoring, for example, variations in these
usages. In this research, little analytical usage was
made of the Ethnograph codings on their own
terms. The package was used primarily as an
organizing and searching device to pull out mate-
rial relating to the main lines of analysis. Of course,
in searching out material, it is inevitable and
desirable that new lines of enquiry will be sug-
gested––that the researchers could compare ac-
counts given by interview subjects and think about
the material in new ways – but this represents only
a gently analytical approach to CAQDAS. The
database can the be searched by codeword (or by a
combination of codewords) and is thereby a pow-
erful data management tool. Moreover, details of
the age, position, gender, division, ?rm etc. of an
interviewee are input onto an initial ‘front sheet’
for each coded interview which allows the re-
searcher to target more speci?c searches of signi?-
cant sub-samples of the interviewee population in
relation to particular research issues, e.g. searches
by gender and position within an audit ?rm.
Although the interview programme was the
principal research instrument employed, the project
did utilize other sources of material. First, inevita-
bly, the background knowledge of the research
team was a natural source of understandings and
interpretations: our association through research
with the two ?rms has now lasted over nine years.
Second, in the course of the research a considerable
amount of time was spent on the premises of Firms
A and B, a form of research sometimes designated
‘hanging around and listening in’ (Strauss, 1987).
This can form a useful counterpart to more formal
methods for providing a richer sense of the research
site. Included in this category would be a range of
formal and informal contacts with members of each
?rm during the course of the research. Third, an-
other substantial source of research material came
in the form of documents and brochures supplied
by the ?rms. These helped to assemble a back-
ground for the interviews by helping to explain the
kinds of ‘messages’ which trainees might be ex-
pected to have received and which would therefore
be directly relevant to the socialization process. For
example, graduate recruitment material was one
kind of documentary source which seemed to be
vital in shaping trainees’ early perceptions of the
organization and of the type of work that they
would be undertaking. Similarly, documentary
material on appraisal and evaluation was vital to
the formulation of relevant and detailed question-
ing of trainees about their experience of these
matters. We also collected the time sheets used in
each of our ?rms. Clearly it would not be an e?ec-
tive use of interview time to require each trainee to
repeat the basic details of such procedures.
Gender relations and organizational practices in
two multi-national audit ?rms
In previous studies of professional socialization
the importance of conduct to the development of a
professional self has been a?rmed (Anderson-
Gough et al., 1998a, 1998b; Co?ey, 1993; Dirsmith
& Covaleski, 1985a, 1985b; Harper, 1988).
The dimensions of appropriate organizational
discourse, behaviour in front of clients, observance
of dress codes, demonstration of keen and enthu-
siastic demeanour, and indications of appropriate
time management and temporal commitments are
the key aspects of ‘being professional’ into which
trainees are normally socialized (Grey, 1998).
In this study we will of course touch upon some of
these elements of professional identity, but
with particular reference to their gendering
e?ects.
We begin our analysis by considering the pro-
cesses associated with recruitment and selection in
the two Big Five ?rms.
F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490 475
Pre-socialization and homo-sociality: formal
recruitment
I think it’s got something to do with my anat-
omy really (laughter). It’s di?cult to say but
that’s how it looks and that’s how it feels
really, but it is changing, but you get the same
number of women as men coming in at the
beginning and then by the top there aren’t
any there or there’s very, very few. Fair en-
ough, some leave and have a family, and some
of them leave and do whatever, but I ?nd it
di?cult to believe that there’s not more to it
than that. (audit trainee, third year, female)
As the above quote indicates, the process of
gender inequalities does not commence with an
obvious preference for employing male trainee
above female. Indeed, as we elaborate below, the
rise of HRM––inspired personnel management
policies within the ?rms has been re?ected in clear
and visible attention towards the monitoring and
adjustment of any practices considered to replicate
or enhance gender ‘biases’ in the recruitment
process. In both ?rms the human resources sec-
tions highlighted to us their concern with the
gender imbalance at senior levels of the ?rm––a
concern that is often visible in many of the
recruitment brochures and websites of the Big
Firms.
5
Many interview subjects stressed that at
the recruitment stage particular attention was
given to a balanced gender pro?le; indeed one year
in which this was not the case was regarded as
‘‘notorious’’ amongst sta? at Firm A. Yet within a
few years of qualifying the domination of the ?rm
hierarchy by men is overwhelming. This in turn
meant that it was normally male Managers, Senior
Managers and, later, Partners, who would take
responsibility for conducting interviews. It is this
organizational ‘reality’ that female trainees con-
front in their training contract.
In both ?rm sites, the processes of recruitment
were broadly similar. Approved applicants were
invited to a ?rst interview at which they would
normally be expected also to sit a numeracy test.
The ?rst interview was usually undertaken by
quali?ed sta? from various o?ces who had been
inducted into the in-house training procedures
regarding interview technique and monitoring of
behaviour in interviews. The interviewers at this
stage generally were not at Partner level in the
?rm.
At both ?rms candidates successful at the ?rst
interview stage were asked to return for a second
interview, perhaps with a Partner, and to complete
various other ‘assessment exercises’. At Firm A,
1993 saw the introduction of a written exercise and
a ‘productive thinking’ test of the type familiar to
practitioners of psychometric examining in occu-
pational psychology. These tests were introduced,
according to the rubric of the test paper, to test the
ability of candidates with regard to key skills
found to be important in successful performance
at senior levels of the ?rm. Despite this
encroachment of the in?uence of formalized means
of evaluating potential recruits, good ‘inter-per-
sonal skills’ were viewed as paramount and the
results of these tests seen as less important than
demonstration of these qualities in face-to-face
interaction.
At Firm B, candidates were usually asked to
perform an in-tray exercise and a group exercise.
A set of ‘competencies’ had been developed at
Firm B that were held to be crucial to the strategic
positioning of the ?rm. These competencies were
used as a framework to assess individual perfor-
mance during the recruitment stage and to evalu-
ate performance once trainees had been
5
Data on the precise proportion of female partners in Big
Firms is di?cult to access––not least in the UK where the Big
Firms appear reluctant to disclose much detail on almost any
aspects of their organization––though it is generally recognized
that the proportion of female partners is low. In 1999 KPMG
data showed that 7% of its partners were female (http://
www.vault.com/career/KPMG__1999_Edition.html). There has
been a recent trend in Big Firm recruitment brochures and
websites to emphasize the proportion of new partners each year
that are female and to emphasize any media awards for
‘‘Working Mother’’ friendliness (E.g.,http://athena.ucsd.edu/
2002_winners.htm;http://www.kpmgcampus.com/campus/news/
09_24_02.asp). For the ICAEW more widely the gender split
for partners who are active members of the ICAEW in both the
UK and Overseas are: UK: Male 19,792, Female 2238;
Overseas: Male 1659, Female 80. This in the UK the ICAEW
male–female percentage split is: 89.8% male, 10.2% female.
476 F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490
successfully employed by the ?rm. Yet despite the
apparent emphasis upon recruitment procedures
and ‘testing’, members of the personnel depart-
ment in Firm B occasionally found it di?cult to
persuade Partners that a candidate whom Partners
thought ‘‘was the best thing since sliced-bread’’
was not appropriate if he or she had performed
poorly on the assessment tests. As in Firm A,
tensions were apparent between the formal
mechanisms of administrative and personnel ap-
praisal, and the ‘hunches’ of experienced practis-
ing Partners or Managers. However, test scores
were generally seen as more important in Firm B
than in Firm A. Nevertheless, it was stressed that
if a candidate performed well on the tests but was
not liked by the Partner (in Firm B) it was highly
unlikely that they would be o?ered a training
contract––a clear distinction from the case in
Firm A.
The interviews permitted recruiters to assess the
social skills (manner and appearance etc.) of
applicants, and provided the opportunity to make
an assessment of the ‘type’ of person, with a view
to judging whether he or she would ‘?t into’ the
organization. At Firm A the applicant, at second
interview stage, was invited to meet other mem-
bers of the ?rm and taken to lunch by a trainee.
The idea of matching of ‘personalities’ was deemed
to be important both to the ?rm and the appli-
cant.
Despite the formal rhetoric of psychometric
pro?ling and testing, this ‘two-way’ selection
process assisted the process whereby the people
joining the ?rm were similar in several respects to
their peers and their superiors. In this way, the
‘?rm’ would be relatively assured that its new
trainees (at least within a work context) would (in
accordance with their interviewers): dress appro-
priately (that is, in conservative versions of con-
temporary business attire, such as, for male
trainees, a dark suit and shirt and tie that is stylish
rather than garish); be ambitious; work hard; be
intellectually competent; be socially skilled and
claim an interest in the ‘business world’.
In both recruitment brochures and the interview
act itself key concepts were understood to denote
an idea of the social skills required of applicants.
Of these possibly the most in?uential was the no-
tion of ‘team’ and being a team player. Recruit-
ment brochures of both ?rms listed team-working
as a key skill. For example, in Firm B the brochure
stated the importance of:
Team Spirit: Departments have a strong team
spirit. Although most sta? spend more time at
other people’s businesses than they do in our
own, the bond which exists between you and
your department means that you feel that
you belong.
However, while the formal processes or
recruitment, selection and evaluation of sta? pro-
vided the language and structure of an elaborate
team discourse (team player, team building, team
work, team leader, team spirit, etc.), the team
metaphor was also referenced in ways that con-
nected it to a in?uential informal discourse of
sports talk within the ?rms (we discuss this below);
activities which contributed to an apparent gen-
dering of the administrative discourse of team
organization. For example, interviewers accounted
the importance of active, and predominantly, if
not exclusively, male, team sports (rugby, football,
hockey) on the CV as an indication of the ‘team’
attributes desirable from an individual applicant.
6
Despite these sorts of normalizing processes
there were, of course, always exceptions, not least
because such attributes as ‘team player’ can be
always be assumed by the interviewee for the
purposes of the interview.
if you read them for all the Big Six they are
really the same documents slightly re-written.
The words they use in all the recruiting
brochures will, ‘challenge’ will be in there
sometime, ‘team-work’ will be in there some-
where. You know, the ‘dealing with people’
angle. You know, they all use the same termi-
nology so you know you’ve got to get ‘team-
work’ in there somewhere ‘‘I have been in a
6
This often had the unintended consequence later of
provoking resentment amongst trainees who later found they
had little time for such activities.
F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490 477
team’’ (laughter) - ‘‘Yes but I can work
equally well by myself’’ (laughter).You know,
‘‘I’m self-disciplined enough to monitor my-
self, structure my own workload’’ - you do
know what they want. (rachel, auditor, ?rm
A).
Therefore in certain cases the applicants may
adopt seemingly desirable qualities in an interview
context, but they are at the same time, even while
‘gaming’, acknowledging the importance of those
attributes.
However, as informal notions of being a team
player in?uenced how interviewees were judged,
the recruitment process, by focussing not merely
upon academic ability but also the match between
the social norms of recruiters and applicants,
shaped the conduct of the trainees as a group by
ensuring that, on the whole, those people who ?t
the social ‘model’ of ‘successful employee’ that
currently existed within the organization joined the
?rm. The prevalence of a male-dominated hierar-
chy and a recruitment process that is predisposed
towards shared languages and experiences as
characteristics of ‘‘?tting in’’ (Pringle, 1989) results
in a closed circle of male homo-sociality (Kanter,
1977). While this model of the ideal social type was
not explicitly gendered to the extent of favouring
more male applicants at the recruitment stage, it is
signi?cant to the organizational or career ‘life
chances’ of male and female trainees employed by
the ?rm, and in turn shapes both current and fu-
ture organizational membership (Halford, Savage,
& Witz, 1997, p. 18).
Organizational behaviour: clients and client service
As we and others have explored elsewhere, one
of the key lessons of professional socialization is
the importance of behaviour in front of clients
(Anderson-Gough, Grey, & Robson, 2001; Go?-
man, 1959). Harper (1988, 1989) observed that
trainees soon become acculturated into the
importance and norms of ‘impression manage-
ment’ while in the presence of clients (and saving
‘larking around’ for when the client is not about).
Training courses also make explicit the attempt to
ensure that the relevant behaviour displayed in
front of clients is reinforced and developed.
Trainees in both ?rms referred to sessions in their
introductory courses which ‘teach’ them how to
dress professionally––in gender divided classes––
and in one ?rm, how to answer the telephone. The
reactions of trainees to the formalized instruction
in dress codes were usually adverse, trainees that
commented on such courses tended to regard them
as insulting and/or amusing (cf. Co?ey, 1993):
On the ?rst day we did have a day like that of
being told what to wear which I thought was
rather stupid really (audit trainee, ?rst year,
female).
I know on my ?rst course we had sort of how
to answer the telephone...really it gets a bit
patronizing at times (audit trainee, ?rst year,
female).
The resentment of trainees towards this for-
malized instruction in dress codes seemed to re?ect
their views that either such points were obvious,
and therefore insulting, or that indications of
appropriate dress were readily gathered from those
peers with whom they worked. Yet the possibility
that a new trainee might be sent to a client very
soon after starting work at the ?rm seemed to
operate as su?cient justi?cation in both ?rms for
such instruction to be provided to reinforce the
norms of presentation to clients.
Related, however, to the ?gure of the client is
the ‘everyday’ discourse within which organiza-
tional practices are justi?ed among sta?, subordi-
nates and peers. The ‘client’ is a discursive motif
that served to account, that is both describe and
justify, many dimensions of organizational pro-
cesses in audit ?rms. The rhetorical power of the
client is very signi?cant in the professions, since it
conjures up not just market pressures but also has
overtones of customer service. For example, the
expectations for overtime to which all trainees are
expected to submit is often rationalized in terms of
service to the client. While part-time working was
an initiative that both our ?rms had introduced
during the nineties there was also the general
perception that such practices failed to ?t in with
the norms of client service:
478 F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490
[T]hey need someone there to serve the client
and if you’re only working three days a week
that becomes quite di?cult. Well that’s how I
see it. (audit manager, female).
I think it was something that I did ask at a
couple of my interviews and I think I was told
because of the nature of our business it’s not,
you’re not providing a good service to a client
if they need to get in touch with you and you
were only working part time, they need to be
able to get in touch with you whatever time of
the week it might be. (audit trainee, second
year, female)
Similarly, many issues of professional conduct
such as dress codes, promptness and ‘keen-ness’
are rationalized ‘in the name of the client’.
This form of justi?cation we even found ex-
tended to accounts of the evident gender imbal-
ances at the level of Manager and Partner in the
?rms. For example, it was claimed that ‘Northern’
clients (both our o?ces were located in the North
of England) didn’t always respect or value a female
auditor:
I don’t know whether it’s the same in other
Firms. I also think it’s quite, especially later
on, it’s a lot harder for, having spoken to
women managers about this it’s a lot harder
for women to make it in accountancy because
you’re expected to build client contacts. It’s
just a lot harder especially not maybe if I
was in the London o?ce it wouldn’t be but
all our clients in [NorthernTown] are heavy
manufacturing clients and they are all like
male F.D.’s and F.C.’s and it’s just hard for
them to accept a woman especially in a man-
agerial role. Probably not so at my level but
having spoken to Managers who are women
I don’t know whether that’s going to change
in the near future, hopefully (audit trainee,
second year, female).
As Grey has also found (1998), whether this is a
stereotype or an accurate re?ection of Northern
attitudes, or instead a legitimating device used to
maintain the dominance of male accountants in
senior positions in the ?rms is open to question.
Both quali?ed and unquali?ed female sta? re-
marked upon how the relative scarcity of female
auditors was received by clients:
when I go to meetings with Martin [Senior
Manager], who could just about be old en-
ough to be my Dad, people think I’m the Sec-
retary. They don’t say it but just by their
manner you know that they think it.
1KARM610 (tax manager, female).
We also noted some examples of a gendering of
labour in dealing with particular tasks at clients.
One example, from a trainee auditor referred to
her experiences in Insolvency work:
I think they use me in certain circumstances to
their advantage because I’m a woman. When
we’re out on jobs and having to deal with say
employees for example, made redundant or
whatever, but I ?nd that I do notice it a lot.
(corporate ?nance, female)
The client was, however, more commonly a
linguistic device that displaced the matter of gen-
der imbalance onto the ‘client’ for whom the ?rms’
services are oriented and organized. Through the
discourse of the client managers and seniors assert
their authority over subordinates, and in so doing,
though not necessarily intentionally, aspects of
gendering within audit ?rms are reproduced as
client preferences are mobilized to legitimate
embedded gender relationships.
Formal performance appraisal: networking and
the team player
In both ?rms the in?uence of formal HRM
practices was experienced through requirements
for half-yearly performance appraisal meetings
and regular job reviews. The latter involved the
rating of a trainee’s e?ectiveness at a client on a
job survey form by the auditor in charge of the
client work. As we noted above, the team meta-
phor re?ected in both ?rms the calculated
emphasis of a competencies-type assessment of
F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490 479
the trainee. This sort of evaluative scheme
appeared to have been heavily in?uenced by
techniques introduced into the ?rm by Human
Resource Management practices. This in turn
re?ected the endeavour of the HRM/Personnel
sections in both ?rms to demonstrate their own
‘professionalism’ in the face of what they per-
ceived to be the ?rms’ partners traditional pref-
erence for their own ‘judgement’, and so-called
‘gut instinct’, on matters of sta? policy and per-
sonnel management. In this regard personnel
managers perceived themselves in a position of
struggle in order to professionalize the personnel
policies of the ?rms into line with HRM ideals of
good practice.
In Firm B in particular, the Personnel sta? were
keen to draw to our attention the competencies
emphasis as exhibited in other formal procedures,
such as Appraisal. The attainment of competencies
was designed to structure career progression. In
Firm A also, the appraisal document referenced
many aspects of ‘team’ and ‘leadership’ attributes
against which trainees and quali?ed sta? were to
be judged. In Firm A, for example, mentors were
expected to note in their report whether the ap-
praisee was a person who:
Develops all members of the team to be able
to take on the role at the next level. .. En-
sures e?ective and appropriate delegation of
work to team members. .. Engenders team
spirit, ensuring that all sta? are involved
and motivated to maximize team productiv-
ity. .. Viewed as an approachable leader
and acts as a positive role model for team
members.
Team attributes appeared to signify several
di?erent elements of organizational activities, both
social and technical. In similar ways to the client
discourse, team metaphors might serve the pur-
pose for the person in charge of legitimating the
requirement to work long hours and complete
work to, or, preferably, under, budget at the cli-
ents. In that sense the metaphor appeared to
operate evenly across male and female sta?s. Yet
‘being a team player’ also connoted particular so-
cial attributes and gestured towards the capacity of
an individual to ‘mix in’ and ‘network’ with col-
leagues. Of course given the gendering of most
departments, this networking takes place within a
largely male environment. The following quota-
tion comes from a male trainee working in the tax
department:
In the Tax Department there isn’t one woman
Manager....but if there were women they’d get
some of the sexual insults as well. Not insult-
ingly so, but they’d ?y anyway and I think
most people who want to succeed here would
accept that as being part and parcel of being
in a male environment because I think it is a
male environment. It’s a white, middle class
male dominated environment. There isn’t a
non-white in the Tax Department. (tax trai-
nee, third year, male)
In a less extreme instance, the following is a
quotation from a female trainee auditor who is
discussing the problem of social interaction in the
o?ce:
[It’s] just chaps in the o?ce you don’t go and
enter into a boyish laddy chat at half past
eight in the morning on a Friday, so you
end up going to speak to the Secretaries, I’m
not saying that’s bad, but you can’t be, I don’t
feel that I’ll ever be wholly a part of the team
to that extent. (corporate ?nance, female)
Aside from acknowledging the social fact of a
male domination of sta? in the o?ce, what is sig-
ni?cant is how she rationalizes this in terms of the
di?cultly of belonging, of being ‘‘part of the
team’’, which explicitly references the norms of
formal individual evaluation. The discourse of
formal evaluation serves to mediate the ‘experi-
ence’ of a kind of organizational isolation
(Crompton, 1997, p. 22; Pringle, 1989). In this
way, the homo-sociality of the predominantly
male trainees for whom social interests are com-
mon (and, indeed, who have been evaluated posi-
tively on such interests through the formal
recruitment process), is translated through the
formal appraisal process into an individual fail-
ing––a failing we suggest is premised upon the
480 F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490
evident gender imbalances that exist in the o?ce
environment of the ?rms.
The relationships that exist between appraiser
and appraisee are often represented as ‘mentoring’,
both by the ?rms’ HRM sta? and by researchers
who have studied this process (Covaleski, Dir-
smith, Heian, & Samuel, 1998; Dirsmith et al.,
1997). Through the mentor relationships, and
other means, trainees also learn the signi?cance
of mixing with colleagues and raising their
pro?le.
I know I had a rating with a Manager this
week and it was a good rating, ?ne, and he
was giving me pointers for the future one of
which was to ‘‘Increase your pro?le in the
Department and in the Firm’’ and I was say-
ing ‘‘How on earth do I go about increasing
my pro?le in the Firm, why would I want to
do that?’’ and he said ‘‘Well, once you get
to Manager you need to know other Manag-
ers in the di?erent Departments.’’ and I was
saying ‘‘How did you do that?’’ and he said
‘‘Well when I was a Senior I used to walk
the ?oors’’, (laughs) so every once or twice a
week he’d walk the ?oors of the various
Departments and meet up with various Se-
niors in his year who would inevitably be talk-
ing to other Managers and they’d say ‘‘Do
you know whoever’’ and you think ‘‘God,
do I really need to be thinking about some-
thing like that, is that a real big point’’ and
I also in terms of increasing my pro?le in
the Department I ?nd that very hard simply
because I’m the only professional woman.
(corporate ?nance, female)
Here the interviewee acknowledges what many
recognize as the di?erences that exist in social
conventions governing what is socially appropriate
behaviour for a woman as compared to a man.
How the sexes are ‘‘expected to behave’’ (Acker,
1992) di?ers, and, as the above quotation indi-
cates, there are very di?erent social norms involved
for a woman to walk the ?oor and socialize with
male colleagues. The notion of ‘walking the ?oor’
and the positive e?ects such behaviour will have on
a person’s pro?le in the o?ce may have a di?erent
practical connotation for a female than for a male
trainee or manager.
In ways that both male and female interviewees
acknowledged the idea of a ?rm type seemed to
encompass attributes that most considered gen-
dered. In the following quotation a quali?ed fe-
male auditor suggests that alongside this ‘?tting in’
or ‘networking’ behaviour a certain ‘outgoingness’
is expected of the ?rm type:
Researcher: So the appraisals are just all sort
of standard?
Tax manager: Fairly non committal. They
do green sheets, they’re called green sheets,
of your interviews and things. But again a
lot of women aren’t very good at blowing
their own trumpet and so, that’s very, very
typical of here. You can see the lads.. really
every opportunity and it’s ?agged up.
I’m being very stereotypical but this is how
it is. And the women just can’t be arsed, they
just get on with their job. (tax manager,
female)
Of course blowing one’s ‘own trumpet’ is but
one aspect of an organizational culture that values
a certain kind of pushiness or competitiveness, as
well as co-operation amongst sta?. Underlying
organizational assumptions of the value of blow-
ing one’s ‘own trumpet’, ‘walking the ?oor’ and
‘raising one’s pro?le’ is thus an apparently neutral
organizational context in which gender and orga-
nizational sexuality (Hearn et al., 1989) are not
relevant. In this way the formal norms of team
playing and networking, while signi?cant to both
technical work at clients and, as we explore below,
the social skills required from sta? in order to
‘develop business’, follow assumptions about male
rather than female conduct to disadvantage female
trainees.
Gendered interactions: correct socializing
In both audit ?rms many opportunities for
socializing exist, and one of the ?rst experiences of
trainees after joining the ?rm is the induc-
tion course. Trainees are taken to a residential
F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490 481
conference centre for two or three weeks to un-
dergo initial training and study for the ?rst com-
ponents of the professional examinations. Trainees
reported the induction courses to involve hard
work and long hours of socializing at the bar. The
?rms also arrange various social events. There are
?rm sports teams, and the ?rms plainly encourage
both sports and socializing at residential courses
(often providing generous allowances at the bar)
the net e?ect of which was to convey again to
trainees the importance of a ‘?rm type’ as a high
energy person. This organizational value was also
re?ected more formally in the concept of ‘away
days’, also reported to have the e?ect of ‘bringing
people together’, and physically intensive ‘out-
ward-bound’ courses in which the ‘leadership’ and
‘team-working’ skills were apparently revealed,
monitored and developed, within a socially unin-
hibited context:
The amount of alcohol that got consumed this
weekend by some people. Researcher: The
team building thing? Yes. Hard work, hard
play, hard drinking I think it is. 2RICM198
(audit trainee, second year, male).
The socializing at ?rm level is not unpopular:
most trainees had recently experienced student
life in which socializing formed an impor-
tant component. Moreover trainees plainly
enjoyed many social activities and mixing with a
group of roughly their own age. As one trainee
related:
It’s fairly classic I think. A little bit more ma-
ture than University but the lads are still ex-
pected to be lads and the girls are expected
to be girls and be quite discrete. (audit trainee,
third year, male)
The socializing norms, however, were generally
understood by some as having a quasi-compulsory
element in terms both of the importance of need-
ing to ‘stay in contact’ with events within the of-
?ce––the audit of large clients might involve
trainees in extended periods of time away from the
?rm’s o?ce––and also the understanding that
attendance at social events was a norm:
a lot of the culture with Firm A is about
socializing in the evenings, especially at the
weekend, you do need to go out every now
and again just to keep in touch (audit trainee,
?rst year, male).
One trainee remarked at the discussion that
ensued when two new (female) trainees failed to go
out for a drink after a departmental meeting:
...nothing would ever be said to them, but you
get the feeling, you know, a mental note’s
made, probably I would think so. So I mean
I’d, I’d make an e?ort to be there and I think
they probably would now as well. (audit trai-
nee, ?rst year, female).
As another trainee stated, the failure to attend
social events is also in part damaging to the indi-
vidual and his or her capacity to network––many
sta? were keen to stress the importance of not
‘‘miss[ing] out on things’’. (Audit Trainee, Second
Year, male).
Moreover, while in principle few would ever
object to the socializing as an activity, the speci?c
form of socializing, that is, organized events at
bars or restaurants in which ‘sociable’ drinking
was the norm, its clannish character was perceived
to be ‘masculine’ in tone in ways that are but an-
other aspect of the homo-sociality we noted in the
previous section:
It is very much a Firm that expects everybody
to be in with the lads, you know socializing,
loud, just generally involved in everything.
(tax trainee, third year, female)
Despite these tacit elements of compulsion,
trainees valued highly the requirements to socialize
with colleagues, often seeing it (erroneously in our
experience) as a feature of their particular ?rm
(‘‘they actually do chuck quite a lot of money at
you’’). The bonds developed between people at a
social level were intended to meld people together,
such that the experience of being ‘part of a team’
and team discourse referred to above, to some
degree, was increased in terms of daily work epi-
sodes.
482 F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490
This emphasis on the social life and activities
within the ?rm however served other as a training
ground for other organizational processes, once
trainees had quali?ed, and were perceived to be
‘‘on track’’ for a successful career within the ?rm.
As we have already noted both ?rms in their ap-
praisal procedures emphasized aspects of ‘business
awareness’ while dealing with clients (Hanlon,
1994). This in turn had implications for the
development of a social life and the honing of
social skills. Trainees grasped how the active ?rm-
based social life served to emphasize among them
the value of the ‘social’ in the development of cli-
ent business and maintenance of good business
relationships. Recognizing that cultivating a social
life was a further expression of their own net-
working constituted another important element of
the evolution of successful career skills. As one
manager, commenting on the activities of Partners
in her ?rm, remarked ‘‘you’ve got to do a lot of
entertaining’’ (tax manager, female).
Yet both in the form of socializing and the
assumptions made about the ‘private time’ that
should be given to such events outside of ‘normal’
working hours’, these social interactions are
experienced di?erently by male and female sta?.
One quali?ed manager described the di?culty of
bringing along her husband to sta?-client func-
tions:
You don’t do it [much] really until you’re a
Manager but as a Senior you might be asked
along to a couple of things with or without
your partner and I always ?nd it very di?-
cult when I have to take my [spouse] simply
because you know that all the other Partners
are women and you’re not going to put them
into speaking with a group of women who
aren’t speaking about work but at the same
time it doesn’t give you the chance to go
and speak to other people who you are sup-
posed to be mixing with because you are
conscious of your [spouse] being there, not
really ?tting in. And that’s only because the
sex is the opposite way round, and it’s some-
thing that’s crossing my mind more and
more as I get further up the Firm. How
I’m going to deal with that. Because I think
I’m respected within the Department and the
people I work with but it’s just now how to
branch out with them. (corporate ?nance, fe-
male)
Again the predominantly male character of the
?rm hierarchy, matched by the male hierarchy of
clients, structures situations in which a social life
oriented around developing the practice and
sharpening selling skills tends also to imply the
role of a supportive spouse. This in turn struc-
tures the way that female sta? project their vision
of what a successful career within the ?rm im-
plies:
We’ve still got ye olde traditional male,
whether he be 40 odd or 25 but it’s still
...the absolute same philosophies. They got
married just before they quali?ed or just after,
so they’ve got the woman there geared up for
the supporting role as they moved through the
system (!) (tax manager, female).
A lot of guys who make Manager they have
the support network of the wife to cope with
everything outside in their personal lives.
That is de?nitely something that would deter
me. (audit trainee, second year, female)
For female managers in audit ?rms this might
imply that their male partner may take on the role
of, in Grey’s terms a ‘‘well packaged’’ husband
ready to accompany his partner on social activities
and entertain sta? and clients for the ?rm. As the
above quotations indicate, many female sta? per-
ceive that this social arrangement in which leisure
time and ‘family life’ is also at the service of the
?rm works di?erently for female than male man-
agers:
I’m just not up for [the entertaining]. I don’t
want it. I think largely women and women
in business aren’t bothered about it either.
They don’t want to go out at night with the
Tax Advisor and, oh yes, they might have a
nice meal paid for or something but they’re
not bothered. Whereas men it’s a thing, they
want to go to the football they want to do
F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490 483
this, that and the other, and it’s all part of the
whole sketch. (tax manager, female)
As the above quotation indicates, social atti-
tudes and expectations of appropriate gender roles
(Collinson & Collinson, 1989) suggest that women
managers tend to exclude themselves and/or their
partners from such activities, and in so doing, their
‘value’ as future Senior Manager and Partner
material is then marked down.
Time management, temporal commitment and
‘the Family’
Many organizational norms follow assumptions
about men’s rather than women’s lives and situa-
tions (Sheppard, 1992, p. 152) and this is especially
pertinent to the temporal organizations and norms
of commitment that operate in audit ?rms. Audit
trainees are expected to commit overtime when
audit jobs demand, which is often, and ?rm-based
socializing is also a normal part of a sacri?ce of
leisure time. This also accompanies both the long
working hours and evenings of study for profes-
sional examinations that trainees endure during
their training contracts. As we have explored
elsewhere (Anderson-Gough, Grey, & Robson,
2000) the professional training process can be
thought of a ‘test of time’ as trainees develop the
appropriate time consciousness that emerges out
long hours, of work, overtime, evening and
weekend study, with perhaps ?rm-organized social
events some evenings. Yet on qualifying temporal
commitment is not expected to reduce and this
aspect of ?rm practices often comes to the fore in
decisions whether to stay with the ?rm or pursue
‘career’ elsewhere.
Indeed, it was partly an acknowledgement of
these issues that both our ?rms were exploring
various new initiatives in ?exible working. There
were various indications that the ?rms were both
considering and had implemented measures to
o?er more ?exible working practices to sta?. In
both of the ?rms we researched there were orga-
nizational initiatives, normally associated with the
?rms’ HRM or practice management departments,
concerned with the ‘recruitment’ of women and the
problem of retaining female sta?. And for some of
our interviewees these initiatives served as indica-
tors of a wider concern for their welfare and, in
some cases, had been exploited successfully by
some sta?:
My wife’s coming back, she works at Firm A
and she’s coming back in a months time and
they’ve been fantastic with her. This is an-
other thing that’s just changed over the years.
She’s been working a day a week for the last
month or two at home, with a modem and I
sorted all that out for her no problem, and
she’s coming back part time, three days a
week. And I think that’s great that you can
do that. (tax manager, male)
We’ve introduced a values charter, I don’t
know whether you’ve seen that. Researcher:
Yes, I’ve seen it on the wall. That’s supposed
to be about balancing your home life and
professional life, amongst other things, but
that’s one of the key themes coming out of
the charter it’s how to balance the two.
2ANDT72.
Yet many of our interviewees saw these initia-
tives as relatively super?cial and, while welcoming
the ?rms’ initiatives in this area, questioned the
extent to which the organizational culture of long
hours was amenable to new norms of time man-
agement.
In theory you can work part time, but I don’t
think it would work in Audit division because
having spoken to Managers who have chil-
dren or ex-Managers who’ve left because they
have children and they’ve worked and... their
idea of what part time would be would take a
pay cut, do the same amount of work as they
were previously doing for less money and
working nine months of the year and getting
the summer o?. That isn’t part time. Part time
to me is three days a week. And I know which
two days of the week I don’t need to be at
work. (audit manager, female)
As the above quotation suggests, the need for
‘?exible time’ was often taken to mean that the
484 F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490
?rms’ sta? had to be available for client service,
rather than ?exible working arrangements to suit
family life.
Before we explore this issue in more detail it is
worth pointing out that long working days were
commonly associated with the ‘work hard, play
hard’ ethic to which trainees are acculturated
during their qualifying phase (Anderson-Gough
et al., 1998a, 1998b). While many of our sample
of interviewees might comment upon the nega-
tive aspects of this in terms of leisure time,
often the culture of overtime etc. was seen posi-
tively as indicative of their organization or pro-
fession and as a central aspect of the judgement as
to whether someone was the ‘right stu?’ to be a
professional accountant, auditor etc. in Firm A or
Firm B. This as we noted above links also into the
importance give to the cultivation of commercial
skills.
And there is no doubt that for some people this
culture of work is a signi?cant attraction, as the
following manager relates in his experience of
moving to a client company and then back to the
?rm:
Why I came back [to the ?rm] is probably be-
cause I got frustrated in industry for di?erent
reasons. ... I looked at the type of environ-
ment in which I needed to work to excel and
I needed to be in an environment where I
was surrounded by high quality people who
challenge the ideas that I had. I needed to
be working under some sort of pressure to
meet deadlines and I needed to be working
with people who also recognized the existence
of things like that and I found in the environ-
ment I was working in the deadlines were
meaningless. (audit manager, male)
Quali?ed sta? made plain their dissatisfaction
with the temporal norms of their ?rms and
the point to which they might give an account of
their future departure from the ?rm as related to
the in?exibility of working arrangements. Most
interviewees acknowledged that the attractions
of the work included the generous pay, but a
sacri?ce of money for time was seen by some as
desirable:
What’s the money for? And so you do start
feel as though, I think that becomes more of
an issue as you get older when you’re working
more and not studying and things that you
look around at what everyone else is doing
in your peer group and say if they can go to
a wedding at the weekend or whatever and
they still earn a good living, am I doing the
right thing? (corporate ?nance manager, male)
Even if the Firm would say ‘‘No, it’s not that’s
not true, look at the policies, the procedures
are there’’ people don’t believe that. Not it’s
something that you’ve got to completely com-
mit to the job because of the fact that we can’t
really manage the workload that’s coming in
and people just expect at whatever level to
have to completely give yourself to the job.
(audit trainee, second year)
This might re?ect changing attitudes amongst
‘Generation X’ (an issue the HR departments of
both ?rms had raised with us) or quite possibly be
the outcome of a more gradual societal preference
to have ‘leisure time’, but the di?erence seemed to
us signi?cant.
The issue of temporal ?exibility and family
commitments in the ?rms was closely pursued by
many of the female sta? we interviewed:
I know that people have left because they can-
not see, they might not have children but they
would like a family and they cannot see them-
selves having a family and working for the
Firm so they go elsewhere... And whether it
works for them, again, I don’t know yet.
But my attitudes have changed. I’m not the
company woman that I perhaps was. Whilst
I still enjoy it and I still give 100% while I’m
here. They get their 8 and a half hours in a
day which is my hour and my lunch time is
my overtime and at 5.30 unless it’s very
important I’ve got a little girl to go and see.
(1CLAP410)
if you did have kids I think you either would
wait till your 40 odd or 35 or later on or you
have themwhen you’re an analyst or whatever.
F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490 485
If you decide to do it in between which is what
most people do you can really I think stunt
your career path. It’s a case of helping them
to forget that you’re actually a woman and
you’ve got kids so you don’t mention kids
around Partners. (tax manager, female)
As Crompton and Le Feuvre (1992) have at-
tested in professional ?rms the strategy for suc-
cessfully pursuing careers involves in part a denial
of female identity and/or adopting male charac-
teristics. The future for women managers is
seemingly framed in terms indicating that even in
the absence of family ‘intrusions’, the ?rm o?ers
less scope for career development than employ-
ment outside:
You read in newspapers that things are
becoming easier for women but the reality is
that I think there are two women Partners here
in the whole Firm and one of them was made a
Partner recently, so I was shocked when I
found out. (tax trainee, ?rst year, female)
Whilst male and female sta? appear to be
equally time pressured at work, and it is more than
likely that non-work or family responsibilities that
senior sta? have increased considerably since the
training phase (responsibilities that often demand
more of women), in these other ways (perceived
career possibilities; attitudes towards family;
availability for the client; chauvinism) male and
female managers do experience the ?rm di?erently.
As one female auditor commented on the work
ethic of Firm A:
[W]hilst the woman looks after the baby and
the man is the bread winner, which, whilst it’s
changing, is still the institutionalized view in
the UK then I would be the one that goes
home and picks the baby up, and that’s ?ne.
Except when two male Partners are jumping
up and down wanting something done because
their wife’s at home looking after the baby..
you’re like – I’ve got to go home. (1CLAP410)
Although we found a far greater proportion of
the male sta? now commented unfavourably on
the lack of ?exibility in working arrangements, as
Witz has argued (1992, pp. 43–50) the professional
regimes of organized time do contribute to the
gendering of occupational closure in and by pro-
fessions (cf. Atkinson & Delamont, 1990). And
although this gendering was recognized by the
trainees, for the quali?ed sta? it assumed far more
importance than previously and was perceived as
the main constraint on their career development.
Conclusion
Despite evidence of substantial growth in edu-
cational quali?cations gained by young women
(and that women in the UK now gain more edu-
cational quali?cations at school than men) and the
increasing employment of women, patriarchal
relations in the workplace appear resistant to
change (Walby, 1997, p. 41). We have now seen
many examples of studies in organizational anal-
ysis that detail the processes that contribute to this
process. Audit ?rms, no doubt because of access
di?culties and perhaps also because of methodo-
logical preferences in accounting research, have
probably received less attention than, say, Law
(Epstein, 1981), though surveys have revealed
fairly consistently the gendered population of the
accounting profession.
While countries other than the UK may operate
di?erent training structures and distinct organiza-
tional cultures the present paper, we hope, set
some kind of agenda on the gender domination
Big Four ?rms and contributes to what we believe
to be an under-researched area which we hope will
be explored in more detail by others––alongside
further studies of organizational and social mar-
ginalization, including ethnicity (Hammond &
Preston, 1992; Hammond & Streeter, 1994). As
Cooper and Taylor (2000) have argued the situa-
tion of women accountants in the lower status
‘technical’ functions of the profession would also
bear much closer examination.
This paper contributes to an understanding of
key organizational processes that contribute to the
reproduction of a gender predominance in large
audit ?rms. First, as others have suggested, the
fact of homo-sociality structures the processes of
486 F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490
recruitment, mentoring and performance evalua-
tion in routine and predictable ways (Kanter,
1977; Ragins, 1989a, 1989b; Ragins & Cotton,
1991). Male partners, senior managers, etc., will
recruit, promote people with the same back-
grounds and preferences as themselves, and hence
reproduce organizational gender relations. Of
course, we have noted in both ?rms deliberate
policies of gender balance in recruitment and the
use of seemingly neutral assessments, such as
psychometric testing, with some e?ect, but such
initiatives, necessarily, do not carry over to pro-
motion.
Second, we have noted how identi?cation of
future ‘partner material’ involves a complex eval-
uation of not simply technical and perceived
managerial skills of leadership, team-working, but
also an integration into norms of temporal com-
mitment and a ?rm-approved social life. These
social skills accompany an erosion of the bound-
aries between ?rm and private time that system-
atically disadvantages female auditors with family
commitments. For male partners the family is a
social support mechanism, for female auditors it is
a call upon their ‘useful’ time and, from con-
structions of the ?rm perspective, a career disad-
vantage.
Third, we see that embedded gender processes
are re?ected and reproduced through the interac-
tions between organizational actors in both formal
and informal situations and contexts. Indeed one
of the most striking aspects of our study was the
manner in which formal ideals of the capable
auditor interacted with the informal to support
and reproduce unequal gender outcomes. As Fer-
guson has argued:
The speech of the administrative disciplines,
which both expresses and re?ects a particular
structure of institutions and practices, oper-
ates as a kind of verbal performance placing
people and objects within a network of social,
political and administrative arrangements
(Ferguson, 1984).
Exploring the gendering processes in Big Five
?rms necessarily combines consideration of both
the formal mechanisms of organizational struc-
turation, such as recruitment, appraisal and
training, and the informal processes that in some
senses give an organizational site its culture in
terms of norms, values and beliefs that play
through how the formal processes are enacted and
reproduced. So that, for example, the emphasis of
formal performance appraisal ‘competencies’ and
recruitment priorities on concepts of leadership
and team activity is linked in practice with gen-
dered discourses of team sports (playing, watch-
ing, talking, socializing) in ways that, although
possibly unintentional, help re-a?rm the organi-
zational culture of male homo-sociality. In this
way performance appraisal mechanisms are capa-
ble of reproducing the ‘bias’ they were introduced
to combat (Tavris, 1992, p. 78). Similarly it is our
contention that the organizational imperatives for
selling skills and practice development are com-
monly translated into perceptions of sociability
that re?ect male discourses of good social skills
and correct socializing. In so doing the formal
process may support male gender domination in
ways.
Indeed the study indicates how informal and
formal processes appear to be intertwined in such
intricate and complex ways that that we believe
that our study o?ers some insight into the prob-
lems that policy initiatives and reforms introduced,
usually by HRM departments in the ?rms, face in
attempting to redress the organizational gender
imbalances. A good example of this would be the
shift in ?rm policies during the 1990s to allowing
?exible working and even part-time sta?. While
dominant discourses of the accounting ‘profes-
sional’ place emphasis upon temporal commitment
and associated ideals of client service the position
of individuals who attempt to take advantage of
part-time and ?exible working is likely to be
problematic in terms of norms of career advance-
ment. Although it would be over-stretching a point
to label such programmes as unambiguous fail-
ures, they often failed to in?uence the embedded
practices and beliefs that we noted operating in the
areas of norms of conduct and the professional
identity. Since the research upon which this study
was based was completed the landscape of the
multi-national audit ?rms has changed further
with the mergers of the Big Five to Big Four; we
F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490 487
might also suggest that it will be interesting to see
how those who opt for part-time work have fared
when ?rms merge and there may be organizational
imperatives for sta? redundancies.
Lastly, we note how wider social norms that
inform self-identity and the division of labour
(Loft, 1992) are also in play. While Walby (1997)
argues that the determination of female occupa-
tional roles runs from the workplace to the home
rather than vice-versa, it is clear that trainees also
enter the ?rm with conceptions of gender roles that
are in?uential. The attitudes that female sta? may
have to beliefs that it is, for example, important to
‘walk the ?oor’ and ‘network, or the disinclination
that a female manager may exhibit to asking her
spouse to accompany his partner to dinners with
clients or colleagues exemplify other ways in which
?rm life is experienced di?erently by mean and
women. Female auditors have to help their col-
leagues forget their sex in order to conform to
organizational expectations. As Thane (1992,
p. 302) suggests and the quotation heading this
paper a?rms, one outcome of such norms is to
make women both victims and agents of their
inequality.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the sup-
port of the Centre for Business Performance of
the ICAEW in funding the research upon which
this paper is based. Keith Robson would also like
to thank the School of Management of the Uni-
versity of Alberta for their hospitality during his
Visiting appointment through which time this
paper was drafted. Earlier versions of this paper
were presented to the Critical Perspectives on
Accounting conference, New York, April 2002
and the IX Workshop en Controlbilidad y Con-
trol de Gestion ‘‘Memorial Raymond Konopka’’,
Universidad de Burgos, May 2002. The authors
would like to acknowledge the helpful comments
of and conversations with David J. Cooper,
Mahmoud Ezzamel, Rihab Khalifa, Carlos Lar-
rinaga, Luis Fernandez-Ruuelta, Borbara Town-
ley, Dean Neu and the two anonymous AOS
reviewers.
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doc_812948138.pdf
As Giddens has observed ‘‘Nothing is clearer than that gender is a matter of learning and continuous work, rather
than a simple extension of biologically given sexual difference’’ (1991, p. 63). In this paper, we discuss the processes of
professional socialization implicated in the reproduction of gender relationships in UK offices of two multi-national
audit firms
‘‘Helping them to forget..’’: the organizational embedding
of gender relations in public audit ?rms
Fiona Anderson-Gough
a
, Christopher Grey
b
, Keith Robson
c,
*
a
University of Leicester, UK
b
University of Cambridge, UK
c
School of Management, UMIST, P.O. Box 88, Manchester M60 1QD, UK
Abstract
As Giddens has observed ‘‘Nothing is clearer than that gender is a matter of learning and continuous work, rather
than a simple extension of biologically given sexual di?erence’’ (1991, p. 63). In this paper, we discuss the processes of
professional socialization implicated in the reproduction of gender relationships in UK o?ces of two multi-national
audit ?rms. The gendering of audit ?rms is viewed as connected not simply to important elements of the formal
organizational structures, such as temporal organization and appraisal processes, but also to the tacit, informal
components, such as the correct form of socializing involved in ‘getting in and getting on’ [Sociology 28 (2) (1994) 479]
within Big Five audit ?rms. Our focus is upon practices, including the discursive practices trainees pick up and mobilize
during their everyday interactions. In our conclusion, we signal how informal and formal organizational processes are
intertwined so as to reproduce gender domination, and comment upon the problems that policy initiatives and reforms
face in attempting to redress organizational gender imbalances.
Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Gender; Audit ?rms; Socialization; Professions; Recruitment; Appraisal; Organizational embedding
Professional socialization and the gendering of audit
?rms
Whereas 15 years ago there was remarkably
limited study of audit ?rms and accountancy vis-a-
vis medicine (Atkinson, 1981; Becker, Geer,
Hughes, & Strauss, 1961; Freidson, 1970, 1986,
1994) or law (Abbott, 1988; Rueschemeyer, 1986),
the past decade has seen a comparative accumu-
lation of interpretative studies of auditors and
accountants socialization (Anderson-Gough,
Grey, & Robson, 1998a, 1998b; Co?ey, 1993,
1994; Dirsmith, Heian, & Covaleski, 1997; Harper,
1988). Such studies of accountancy have a?rmed
the importance of ‘conduct’ to the development of
a professional self. Many studies have noted
common emphases upon appropriate modes of
dress, time management, appropriate socializing,
discourses of the client and general enthusiasm for
the task.
Although a number of these studies indicate
gendering e?ects, few have taken directly as their
subject the character of gender relations inside
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +44-161-200-3455; fax: +44-
161-200-3505.
E-mail address: [email protected] (K. Robson).
0361-3682/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.aos.2004.05.003
Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490
www.elsevier.com/locate/aos
accountancy ?rms. Excellent studies now exist of
the history of accountancy, and accompanying
processes of female marginalization and occa-
sional inclusivity (Kirkham & Loft, 1993; Lehman,
1990, 1992; Lehman & Tinker, 1987; Matthews &
Pirie, 2001; Tinker & Neimark, 1987) have been
explored. Studies of the perceived e?ects of family
ties and sex-role stereotypes upon career progres-
sion in audit ?rms have con?rmed the in?uence of
gendered notions of ‘social appropriateness’ upon
career success (Anderson, Johnson, & Reckers,
1994; Maupin & Lehman, 1994). Empirical, often
survey, evidence has a?rmed consistently that the
representation of women among the professions in
general is increasing (Crompton & Sanderson,
1986; Seaward, 2001; Silverstone, 1980; Walby,
1997, p. 35), though many studies counting the
proportion of women in senior positions in audit
?rms have con?rmed that women appear under-
represented at the manager, senior manager and
partner levels in the Big Five professional service
?rms (Ciancanelli, Gallhofer, Humphrey, &
Kirkham, 1990; Roberts & Coutts, 1992; Jackson
& Heyday, 1997; Loft, 1992), and that salary levels
appear to di?er according to sex (Gri?ths, 2001),
in accord with many other domains of corporate
and commercial life.
Little, however has been written about the
micro-organizational processes that structure gen-
der domination in the modern Big Four audit ?rm
(Hooks, 1992). While Kirkham and Loft’s exami-
nation of the gendering of the accounting profes-
sion adopted an insightful macro-historical
approach, few, if any, studies in accountancy have
attempted to consider the ways in which modern
audit ?rms come to be gendered, the micro-prac-
tices through which gender relations in audit ?rms
are constructed and re-produced, and appear
resistant to change, or, in particular, to equality
initiatives (Cockburn, 1991). No doubt this has
much to do with the di?culties in conducting any
kinds of research in Big Five ?rms, and the prob-
lems of gaining access into institutions who see
their organizational practices as competitive
weapons, and appeal to client con?dentiality and
the partnership form in order to de?ect inquiries
into their practices. Nevertheless, the present paper
is based upon two intensive projects of socializa-
tion and professional identity in o?ces of two ‘Big
Five’ ?rms in the UK, studies which we believe to
be the largest of their kind in this country. In the
?rst study we interviewed around 80 British trainee
auditors, on three year professional accountancy
training contracts, concerning their experiences
qualifying to be accountants and in the second
study examined the processes on career develop-
ment among a sample of about 30 quali?ed sta?.
The interviews were conducted from 1995 to 2000.
In this paper, we attempt to address this ab-
sence and draw out the relationships between the
socialization of trainees into the organizational
practices of audit ?rms and the reproduction of
gender structures in audit ?rms. At the same time
we draw some attention to resistance amongst
trainees to speci?c organizational practices and the
gender e?ects these may be perceived to produce.
However, while we concur with the view that
where there are ‘power-e?ects’, there is also resis-
tance (Jermier, Knights, & Nord, 1994), the most
obvious evidence of ‘resistance’ in audit ?rms is
that trainees voluntarily leave the ?rm. While the
Big Five ?rms in the UK absorb a signi?cant
proportion of graduates from ‘old’ UK universi-
ties, a substantial proportion leave during the
training contract, or fail parts of the professional
examinations and are then asked to resign.
In this paper, we discuss the processes of pro-
fessional socialization implicated in the reproduc-
tion of gender relationships in Big Five audit ?rms.
The gendering of audit ?rms is viewed as con-
nected not simply to important elements of the
formal organizational structures, such as temporal
organization and appraisal processes, but also to
the tacit, informal components, such as the correct
form of socializing involved in ‘getting in and
getting on’ (Grey, 1994) within Big Five ?rms. Our
focus is upon practices, including the discursive
practices trainees pick up and mobilize during
their everyday interactions. Our concern is to see
gender relationships within organization as embed-
ded elements of organizational practices, rather
than the product of ‘gender di?erence’.
In conceptualizing the gender relationships in
audit ?rms we link organizational practices to the
reproduction of modes of gender domination. Our
paper develops a:
470 F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490
Perspective on gender and bureaucracy which
foregrounds gender relations as an embedded
property of organizations rather than valoriz-
ing gender di?erences as dichotomous sets of
attributes or distinctive orientations and
modes of action, which are simply ‘brought
to’ organizations (Savage & Witz, 1992,
Chapter 1).
By this it is meant that we did not see the
issues relevant to the gendering relationships in
audit ?rms as rooted in essentialist notions of
male and female characteristics. Rather the
structuration of audit ?rms is dependent upon
discursive and non-discursive practices into which
are embedded consequences and e?ects, often
unintentional, that have as their outcome various
forms of gender inequality. While it is undeniable
that essentialist discourses of male and female
characteristics and behaviours occupy the work-
place (Collinson & Collinson, 1989), audit
?rms are ensembles constructed of economic,
political and cultural processes into which, as an
integral part, gender processes are also sedi-
mented.
At one level, for example, many organizations
demonstrate a division of labour between the work
that men and women are expected or allowed to
perform (Jacobs, 1998). Certainly, it is a feature of
audit ?rms that secretaries, receptionists, and, in-
deed, personnel managers tend to be female and
while this is not untypical for industrial, com-
mercial, professional or, indeed, higher educa-
tional institutions, it is but one signi?cant aspect of
their gendering (Cooper & Taylor, 2000; Tancred-
Sheri?, 1989, p. 45). Thus while our focus is upon
the ‘professional’ trainees and quali?ed sta? it is
also the case that the ‘‘possibility of career pro-
gression from junior to senior jobs [is] premised on
the fact that large amounts of routine work [are]
carried out by women..not eligible for promotion’’
(Crompton, 1986; Delamont, 1989). Alongside the
gendered division of ?rm tasks, many concepts
and metaphors of the ?rm (or the ‘?rm type’) that
are embedded into culturally normalized organi-
zational discourses also express rooted notions of
‘masculinity’. And these discourses partly struc-
ture processes of thinking about the ‘self’ and the
identity of the ‘self’ with conceptions of appro-
priate male and female behaviour.
As Giddens has observed ‘‘Nothing is clearer
than that gender is a matter of learning and con-
tinuous work, rather than a simple extension of
biologically given sexual di?erence’’ (1991, p. 63).
This type of re?exivity helps to structure the sorts
of interactions that occur between sta? both
through formal mechanisms, such as audit work or
performance appraisals, and the informal ex-
changes of, for example, socializing. Of course, that
organizations are themselves embedded in a wider
context also means that certain norms and values
may re?ect received social norms concerning, for
example, ‘family roles’: as Mills has noted‘‘people
do not leave their cultural perceptions at the gates
of organizations, they enter with them’’ (Mills,
1992, p. 98; Sheppard, 1992). But organizational
processes are themselves media for the reproduc-
tion of such norms and values through the way in
which they may then follow assumptions about
men and women’s lives and (hetero-)sexuality
(Crompton & Jones, 1984; Hearn & Parkin, 1987,
1992; Hearn, Sheppard, & Burrell, 1989; Mills &
Tancred, 1992; Rich, 1983). In this way the ‘social’
may be thought of as passing through the ‘?rm’.
While our focus is upon organizational pro-
cesses rather than attitudes, that is not to say that
there are not views expressed in audit ?rms that
many might consider chauvinistic or even misog-
ynistic: for example, Grey (1994) noted a partner’s
remark on the subject of the importance to a ca-
reer of having a ‘‘well-packaged wife’’. Of course,
such an open expression of ‘wife-as-commodity’
would readily and ?ttingly attract scorn. However,
what is signi?cant about this quotation to our
study of gender processes, is the manner in which
it signals, albeit in an unusually vivid way, that
amongst partners and other audit ?rm sta? there is
a common understanding of the ?uidity (or ero-
sion) of the boundaries between private and public
time as a facet of professional self-identity. As we
shall note, the ‘correct form of socializing’ is crit-
ical to the career development of sta? in audit
?rms, not least where practice development issues,
(that is, selling skills, attracting new clients), are an
important, formal aspect of their organizational
appraisal.
F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490 471
Thus, a partner stating attitudes considered
‘sexist’ is doing so in a context where the ‘hostess’
attributes he appears to value in his spouse may
very well have served to promote his career within
the ?rm and is commonly understood by organi-
zational actors to have done so, probably at a level
of the taken-for-granted. Our point is that we do
not see necessarily see the practice development
emphases of the performance evaluation structure
as founded upon these generalized sexist attitudes,
but as consonant with a socialized sense of self that
understands career progression as a constitutive
element of identity and formal organizational
practices of evaluation and advancement that, in a
Foucauldian sense, help constitute the subject in
this manner.
Obviously over several years of research we
noted several instances of sentiments that we
might consider betray ‘sexist attitudes’ and which
possibly might be regarded as actionable in our
host institutions. Such accounts were rare,
though we also cannot discount the possibility
that sta? would not express such attitudes in
front of academic researchers. Yet such atti-
tudes as were expressed are intriguing as indica-
tive of a particular kind of organizational
practice wherein their articulation is linked to the
norms of ‘?tting in’ and the formal processes of
training into which professionals are accultur-
ated.
For example, one trainee suggested to us that
the ?rm was not a discriminatory workplace:
you hear all these stories about sex discrimi-
nation at work and it just doesn’t exist here..
Saying that it probably gets harder at later
levels, I think there is a handful of female
Partners in the ?rm out of several thousand
(audit trainee, third year, female).
On the one hand, female trainees or managers
might never experience outright discrimination or
misogyny in their everyday work, but at the same
time they recognize that there is a gendered hier-
archy and this is one condition in which they have
to operate. The character of the hierarchy also
makes visible the male-dominated experience of
trainees in the ?rm. Many trainees comment on
the lack of women at manager and, particularly,
partner level.
On the other hand, occasionally female trainees
remark on ‘stereotypical attitudes’ they experi-
enced from colleagues:
Things like we went out for a training lunchand
all the men started talking about football so I
was just playing with my salad and thinking
‘‘Oh God, this is really exciting’’ and then he
just turned to me and said ‘‘Oh are you bored,
well you can talk about shopping with Jessica’’
but he wasn’t really joking, that was the annoy-
ing thing. (tax trainee, ?rst year, female).
Nevertheless, while not seeking to deny that this
quotation conveys sexist stereotyping, it also sig-
nals the organizational and cultural practices
wherein which a comment about someone’s lack of
interest in sport provokes a response that falls little
short of hostility. As Sheppard (1992, p. 158) has
noted, the experience of ‘chatter’ or informal
organizational discourse as ‘‘like having a football
club at work’’ is but one expression of the di?er-
ential experience of organizational life commonly
noted by female managers.
1
Of course, there are many examples wherein
certain types of activity may be accounted as, for
example, ‘masculine’ by organizational actors.
Many kinds of organizational image connected to
competition, aggression, analytical powers, lead-
ership, for example are gendered in their cultural
meaning and application (Gutek, 1989, p. 60;
Sheppard, 1989). Yet again the instances that we
?nd are related to a form of ‘homo- sociality’
2
among male trainees that is not experienced in the
same way by female trainees, rather than to bio-
1
As we explore below, this is reinforced by a formal
organizational discourse in which team metaphors are domi-
nating ?gures in the formal appraisal, and to the role of sports-
talk which connects to an experience of homo-sociality in the
recruitment process––as we note below an active engagement in
team sports is a key signi?er of the appropriate ‘material’ to be
a member of Firm A or Firm B.
2
‘Homo-sociality’ here refers to the fact of same sex
organization acting as a condition for the reproduction of
gender domination.
472 F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490
logical imperatives. As such we see the gendering
of audit ?rms in terms of an embedding of orga-
nizational practices embracing both the formal
and the informal––indeed it is the speci?c articu-
lation between the formal and the informal that, in
our view, supports the organizational structur-
ation of gender relations.
In the next section, we outline the research
context to our research. This precedes our analysis
of gender relationships in audit ?rms.
Research context and methodology
The study employed a qualitative methodology
based principally upon a programme of semi-
structured interviews with audit trainees employed
by accountancy practices, and conducted face-
to-face in a private room on the premises of the
employing ?rm. Interviewees were all undertaking
their professional training contract (examinations)
with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in
England and Wales (ICAEW).
The training process within UK professional
bodies involves a three year contract during which
trainees are based at the ?rm’s o?ce (or, typically,
are out at the premises of audit clients), and study
for professional examinations at home, mainly
after o?ce hours. During much of the ?rm’s time,
trainees will be sent out ‘on jobs’, that is assisting
the audit of ‘client’ company on site. Much of the
work, particularly at the initial stages of the con-
tract, can be menial––photocopying, making co?ee
for the audit team, counting stock or following an
invoice trail, for example. Trainees are also ‘re-
leased’ from their ?rm o?ce for periods of six
weeks or longer at points during the three years to
attend formal examination tuition usually at the
premises of professional tutoring agencies. Profes-
sional examinations progress through three stages
during the training contract: Graduate Conversion
(foundation levels studies in accounting and core
business disciplines, such as law and economics),
Intermediate and Finals. If successful in their
examinations at the ?rst attempt, trainees would
normally take three years to qualify; failure to pass
an examination, not uncommon, would result in
the re-taking of part or all of the examinations at
that stage. Most trainees were graduates employed
on auditing work, although others worked in Tax
or Insolvency departments. Where the interviewee
was willing, interviews were tape-recorded.
The interviews emerged out of two studies.
First, 77 interviews were conducted with ICAEW
trainees in two provincial o?ces of two Big Six
?rms located in cities in the North of England for a
project on professional socialization were used this
study (see Grey, Robson, & Anderson, 1997).
Where appropriate we have identi?ed these ?rms
as Firm A and Firm B; otherwise they are identi-
?ed simply as LargeFirm. These interviews were
conducted between January 1996 and March 1997.
Second, around 30 interviews were conducted with
newly quali?ed seniors and managers as part of a
project concerned with socialization and career
progression in audit ?rms; these were conducted at
the same ?rms and included some interviewees
interviewed previously as trainees a few years
earlier, adding a longitudinal dimension to our
study. We also conducted some exit interviews
with sta? leaving or who had left our two large
?rms. The second set of interviews were conducted
during 1998 and 1999.
The basic pro?le of the ?rst interview pro-
gramme was as follows (Table 1):
In Firm A the pro?le of trainees interviewed
was as follows (Table 2):
Trainees in Firm B had the following pro?le
(Table 3):
For the second study the pro?le of interviewees
was as follows (Table 4):
Table 1
Pro?le of ?rms and interviews: Study 1
Type No. of ?rms No. of trainees No. of interviews
a
No. with all passes
a; b
Big Five 2 154 77 (50%) 70 (91%)
a
Figures in bracket show percentage of total trainees in the two o?ces.
b
Number with all passes is the number of trainees who have passed the professional examinations taken thus far in their contract the
?rst time around.
F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490 473
Recordings of interviews were transcribed and
coded for Ethnograph, a qualitative data analysis
programme (Dey, 1993; Weaver & Atkinson,
1994). Ethnograph allows interview material to be
coded line-by-line under categories determined by
the researchers. Codes can be drawn up from
three obvious sources: existing research questions,
theory, ‘data’, but also and more importantly the
interaction of these three elements during the
conduct of the research.
3
Whilst the idea of
‘data’ as a source may seem to contradict the
epistemological commitments of our methodo-
logical approach to the construction of organi-
zational culture and professional identity, this is
not so, since it is recognized that the researched
are actors in reality-construction. Therefore,
researchers cannot ignore persistent meanings and
interpretations and these can provide a source of
codes. In any case, even where the ‘data’ does not
yield codes directly, it is likely to in?uence the
extent to which codes are actually used. The
other sources of codes are more straightforward.
Clearly, concern with professional and organiza-
tional socialization yielded certain self-evident
codes which derived from the basic research
questions outlined at the outset of the study. Fi-
nally, theory, in that it is itself a way in which
data is structured and called into existence will be
relevant in coding: the main issue here, as already
indicated, is to recognize the theory-ladenness of
coding rather than to see it as a purely ‘technical’
activity.
4
Each line of interview can be assigned
up to twelve codes from the code set devised by
the researchers, although it would be possible to
assign twice that number simply by inputting the
same interview into the software twice. In prac-
tice it is often unnecessary to code every line
individually: rather, blocks of text can be coded
under as many codes as are appropriate subject
Table 2
Firm A interview programme
Audit Tax Insolvency Total
Year 1 8 (2) 5 (2) 1 (0) 14 (4)
Year 2 8 (2) 2 (2) 2 (0) 12 (4)
Year 3 6 (1) 3 (2) 2 (1) 11 (4)
Total 22 (5) 10 (6) 5 (1) 37 (12)
Numbers in ( ) indicate the number of trainees interviewed in that category that are female.
Table 3
Firm B interview programme
Audit Tax Total
Year 1 9 (2) 3 (1) 12 (3)
Year 2 13 (4) 2 (1) 15 (5)
Year 3 12 (5) 1 (0) 13 (5)
Total 34 (11) 6 (2) 40 (13)
Numbers in ( ) indicate the number of trainees interviewed in
that category that are female.
Table 4
Interview pro?les: Study 2
Firm A Firm B Total
Number 17 13 30
Male 13 10 23
Female 4 3 7
Previously
interviewed
7 4 11
Audit 6 7 13
Tax 3 4 7
Other 8 2 10
3
The identi?cation of appropriate codes was not attempted
until several interviews had been completed. The intention was
to identify from the issues emerging in the interview what the
categories for coding should be, rather than to conduct
interviews around the categories. This was a way of addressing
the issue of ‘dynamism’ in the research process.
4
Having drawn up an initial list of codes, each member of
the research team ?rst coded the same interview. Meetings were
held subsequently in which the categories were discussed,
re?ned, dropped or added according to the di?culties experi-
enced in operationalizing the categories or according to their
failure to yield adequate coding for interview material. Subse-
quently, changes were kept to a minimum, although new codes
were introduced afterwards but these were mainly made during
the early stages of coding in order to avoid substantial re-
coding of interviews already processed.
474 F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490
to the limitation that a maximum of seven over-
laps is possible between blocks of text. By the
same token, some lines or blocks of text may be
deemed as unworthy of coding if they supply
material which is unoriginal, irrelevant or unin-
teresting.
Having established a database of coded tran-
scripts, it is possible to commence analysis of the
material. Perhaps the major misconception that
persists around CAQDAS is the assumption that
the coding somehow constitutes analysis (Weaver
& Atkinson, 1994; Kelle, 1995). The crudest man-
ifestation of such a view would be simply to assign
signi?cance to a code based upon the number of its
usage, ignoring, for example, variations in these
usages. In this research, little analytical usage was
made of the Ethnograph codings on their own
terms. The package was used primarily as an
organizing and searching device to pull out mate-
rial relating to the main lines of analysis. Of course,
in searching out material, it is inevitable and
desirable that new lines of enquiry will be sug-
gested––that the researchers could compare ac-
counts given by interview subjects and think about
the material in new ways – but this represents only
a gently analytical approach to CAQDAS. The
database can the be searched by codeword (or by a
combination of codewords) and is thereby a pow-
erful data management tool. Moreover, details of
the age, position, gender, division, ?rm etc. of an
interviewee are input onto an initial ‘front sheet’
for each coded interview which allows the re-
searcher to target more speci?c searches of signi?-
cant sub-samples of the interviewee population in
relation to particular research issues, e.g. searches
by gender and position within an audit ?rm.
Although the interview programme was the
principal research instrument employed, the project
did utilize other sources of material. First, inevita-
bly, the background knowledge of the research
team was a natural source of understandings and
interpretations: our association through research
with the two ?rms has now lasted over nine years.
Second, in the course of the research a considerable
amount of time was spent on the premises of Firms
A and B, a form of research sometimes designated
‘hanging around and listening in’ (Strauss, 1987).
This can form a useful counterpart to more formal
methods for providing a richer sense of the research
site. Included in this category would be a range of
formal and informal contacts with members of each
?rm during the course of the research. Third, an-
other substantial source of research material came
in the form of documents and brochures supplied
by the ?rms. These helped to assemble a back-
ground for the interviews by helping to explain the
kinds of ‘messages’ which trainees might be ex-
pected to have received and which would therefore
be directly relevant to the socialization process. For
example, graduate recruitment material was one
kind of documentary source which seemed to be
vital in shaping trainees’ early perceptions of the
organization and of the type of work that they
would be undertaking. Similarly, documentary
material on appraisal and evaluation was vital to
the formulation of relevant and detailed question-
ing of trainees about their experience of these
matters. We also collected the time sheets used in
each of our ?rms. Clearly it would not be an e?ec-
tive use of interview time to require each trainee to
repeat the basic details of such procedures.
Gender relations and organizational practices in
two multi-national audit ?rms
In previous studies of professional socialization
the importance of conduct to the development of a
professional self has been a?rmed (Anderson-
Gough et al., 1998a, 1998b; Co?ey, 1993; Dirsmith
& Covaleski, 1985a, 1985b; Harper, 1988).
The dimensions of appropriate organizational
discourse, behaviour in front of clients, observance
of dress codes, demonstration of keen and enthu-
siastic demeanour, and indications of appropriate
time management and temporal commitments are
the key aspects of ‘being professional’ into which
trainees are normally socialized (Grey, 1998).
In this study we will of course touch upon some of
these elements of professional identity, but
with particular reference to their gendering
e?ects.
We begin our analysis by considering the pro-
cesses associated with recruitment and selection in
the two Big Five ?rms.
F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490 475
Pre-socialization and homo-sociality: formal
recruitment
I think it’s got something to do with my anat-
omy really (laughter). It’s di?cult to say but
that’s how it looks and that’s how it feels
really, but it is changing, but you get the same
number of women as men coming in at the
beginning and then by the top there aren’t
any there or there’s very, very few. Fair en-
ough, some leave and have a family, and some
of them leave and do whatever, but I ?nd it
di?cult to believe that there’s not more to it
than that. (audit trainee, third year, female)
As the above quote indicates, the process of
gender inequalities does not commence with an
obvious preference for employing male trainee
above female. Indeed, as we elaborate below, the
rise of HRM––inspired personnel management
policies within the ?rms has been re?ected in clear
and visible attention towards the monitoring and
adjustment of any practices considered to replicate
or enhance gender ‘biases’ in the recruitment
process. In both ?rms the human resources sec-
tions highlighted to us their concern with the
gender imbalance at senior levels of the ?rm––a
concern that is often visible in many of the
recruitment brochures and websites of the Big
Firms.
5
Many interview subjects stressed that at
the recruitment stage particular attention was
given to a balanced gender pro?le; indeed one year
in which this was not the case was regarded as
‘‘notorious’’ amongst sta? at Firm A. Yet within a
few years of qualifying the domination of the ?rm
hierarchy by men is overwhelming. This in turn
meant that it was normally male Managers, Senior
Managers and, later, Partners, who would take
responsibility for conducting interviews. It is this
organizational ‘reality’ that female trainees con-
front in their training contract.
In both ?rm sites, the processes of recruitment
were broadly similar. Approved applicants were
invited to a ?rst interview at which they would
normally be expected also to sit a numeracy test.
The ?rst interview was usually undertaken by
quali?ed sta? from various o?ces who had been
inducted into the in-house training procedures
regarding interview technique and monitoring of
behaviour in interviews. The interviewers at this
stage generally were not at Partner level in the
?rm.
At both ?rms candidates successful at the ?rst
interview stage were asked to return for a second
interview, perhaps with a Partner, and to complete
various other ‘assessment exercises’. At Firm A,
1993 saw the introduction of a written exercise and
a ‘productive thinking’ test of the type familiar to
practitioners of psychometric examining in occu-
pational psychology. These tests were introduced,
according to the rubric of the test paper, to test the
ability of candidates with regard to key skills
found to be important in successful performance
at senior levels of the ?rm. Despite this
encroachment of the in?uence of formalized means
of evaluating potential recruits, good ‘inter-per-
sonal skills’ were viewed as paramount and the
results of these tests seen as less important than
demonstration of these qualities in face-to-face
interaction.
At Firm B, candidates were usually asked to
perform an in-tray exercise and a group exercise.
A set of ‘competencies’ had been developed at
Firm B that were held to be crucial to the strategic
positioning of the ?rm. These competencies were
used as a framework to assess individual perfor-
mance during the recruitment stage and to evalu-
ate performance once trainees had been
5
Data on the precise proportion of female partners in Big
Firms is di?cult to access––not least in the UK where the Big
Firms appear reluctant to disclose much detail on almost any
aspects of their organization––though it is generally recognized
that the proportion of female partners is low. In 1999 KPMG
data showed that 7% of its partners were female (http://
www.vault.com/career/KPMG__1999_Edition.html). There has
been a recent trend in Big Firm recruitment brochures and
websites to emphasize the proportion of new partners each year
that are female and to emphasize any media awards for
‘‘Working Mother’’ friendliness (E.g.,http://athena.ucsd.edu/
2002_winners.htm;http://www.kpmgcampus.com/campus/news/
09_24_02.asp). For the ICAEW more widely the gender split
for partners who are active members of the ICAEW in both the
UK and Overseas are: UK: Male 19,792, Female 2238;
Overseas: Male 1659, Female 80. This in the UK the ICAEW
male–female percentage split is: 89.8% male, 10.2% female.
476 F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490
successfully employed by the ?rm. Yet despite the
apparent emphasis upon recruitment procedures
and ‘testing’, members of the personnel depart-
ment in Firm B occasionally found it di?cult to
persuade Partners that a candidate whom Partners
thought ‘‘was the best thing since sliced-bread’’
was not appropriate if he or she had performed
poorly on the assessment tests. As in Firm A,
tensions were apparent between the formal
mechanisms of administrative and personnel ap-
praisal, and the ‘hunches’ of experienced practis-
ing Partners or Managers. However, test scores
were generally seen as more important in Firm B
than in Firm A. Nevertheless, it was stressed that
if a candidate performed well on the tests but was
not liked by the Partner (in Firm B) it was highly
unlikely that they would be o?ered a training
contract––a clear distinction from the case in
Firm A.
The interviews permitted recruiters to assess the
social skills (manner and appearance etc.) of
applicants, and provided the opportunity to make
an assessment of the ‘type’ of person, with a view
to judging whether he or she would ‘?t into’ the
organization. At Firm A the applicant, at second
interview stage, was invited to meet other mem-
bers of the ?rm and taken to lunch by a trainee.
The idea of matching of ‘personalities’ was deemed
to be important both to the ?rm and the appli-
cant.
Despite the formal rhetoric of psychometric
pro?ling and testing, this ‘two-way’ selection
process assisted the process whereby the people
joining the ?rm were similar in several respects to
their peers and their superiors. In this way, the
‘?rm’ would be relatively assured that its new
trainees (at least within a work context) would (in
accordance with their interviewers): dress appro-
priately (that is, in conservative versions of con-
temporary business attire, such as, for male
trainees, a dark suit and shirt and tie that is stylish
rather than garish); be ambitious; work hard; be
intellectually competent; be socially skilled and
claim an interest in the ‘business world’.
In both recruitment brochures and the interview
act itself key concepts were understood to denote
an idea of the social skills required of applicants.
Of these possibly the most in?uential was the no-
tion of ‘team’ and being a team player. Recruit-
ment brochures of both ?rms listed team-working
as a key skill. For example, in Firm B the brochure
stated the importance of:
Team Spirit: Departments have a strong team
spirit. Although most sta? spend more time at
other people’s businesses than they do in our
own, the bond which exists between you and
your department means that you feel that
you belong.
However, while the formal processes or
recruitment, selection and evaluation of sta? pro-
vided the language and structure of an elaborate
team discourse (team player, team building, team
work, team leader, team spirit, etc.), the team
metaphor was also referenced in ways that con-
nected it to a in?uential informal discourse of
sports talk within the ?rms (we discuss this below);
activities which contributed to an apparent gen-
dering of the administrative discourse of team
organization. For example, interviewers accounted
the importance of active, and predominantly, if
not exclusively, male, team sports (rugby, football,
hockey) on the CV as an indication of the ‘team’
attributes desirable from an individual applicant.
6
Despite these sorts of normalizing processes
there were, of course, always exceptions, not least
because such attributes as ‘team player’ can be
always be assumed by the interviewee for the
purposes of the interview.
if you read them for all the Big Six they are
really the same documents slightly re-written.
The words they use in all the recruiting
brochures will, ‘challenge’ will be in there
sometime, ‘team-work’ will be in there some-
where. You know, the ‘dealing with people’
angle. You know, they all use the same termi-
nology so you know you’ve got to get ‘team-
work’ in there somewhere ‘‘I have been in a
6
This often had the unintended consequence later of
provoking resentment amongst trainees who later found they
had little time for such activities.
F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490 477
team’’ (laughter) - ‘‘Yes but I can work
equally well by myself’’ (laughter).You know,
‘‘I’m self-disciplined enough to monitor my-
self, structure my own workload’’ - you do
know what they want. (rachel, auditor, ?rm
A).
Therefore in certain cases the applicants may
adopt seemingly desirable qualities in an interview
context, but they are at the same time, even while
‘gaming’, acknowledging the importance of those
attributes.
However, as informal notions of being a team
player in?uenced how interviewees were judged,
the recruitment process, by focussing not merely
upon academic ability but also the match between
the social norms of recruiters and applicants,
shaped the conduct of the trainees as a group by
ensuring that, on the whole, those people who ?t
the social ‘model’ of ‘successful employee’ that
currently existed within the organization joined the
?rm. The prevalence of a male-dominated hierar-
chy and a recruitment process that is predisposed
towards shared languages and experiences as
characteristics of ‘‘?tting in’’ (Pringle, 1989) results
in a closed circle of male homo-sociality (Kanter,
1977). While this model of the ideal social type was
not explicitly gendered to the extent of favouring
more male applicants at the recruitment stage, it is
signi?cant to the organizational or career ‘life
chances’ of male and female trainees employed by
the ?rm, and in turn shapes both current and fu-
ture organizational membership (Halford, Savage,
& Witz, 1997, p. 18).
Organizational behaviour: clients and client service
As we and others have explored elsewhere, one
of the key lessons of professional socialization is
the importance of behaviour in front of clients
(Anderson-Gough, Grey, & Robson, 2001; Go?-
man, 1959). Harper (1988, 1989) observed that
trainees soon become acculturated into the
importance and norms of ‘impression manage-
ment’ while in the presence of clients (and saving
‘larking around’ for when the client is not about).
Training courses also make explicit the attempt to
ensure that the relevant behaviour displayed in
front of clients is reinforced and developed.
Trainees in both ?rms referred to sessions in their
introductory courses which ‘teach’ them how to
dress professionally––in gender divided classes––
and in one ?rm, how to answer the telephone. The
reactions of trainees to the formalized instruction
in dress codes were usually adverse, trainees that
commented on such courses tended to regard them
as insulting and/or amusing (cf. Co?ey, 1993):
On the ?rst day we did have a day like that of
being told what to wear which I thought was
rather stupid really (audit trainee, ?rst year,
female).
I know on my ?rst course we had sort of how
to answer the telephone...really it gets a bit
patronizing at times (audit trainee, ?rst year,
female).
The resentment of trainees towards this for-
malized instruction in dress codes seemed to re?ect
their views that either such points were obvious,
and therefore insulting, or that indications of
appropriate dress were readily gathered from those
peers with whom they worked. Yet the possibility
that a new trainee might be sent to a client very
soon after starting work at the ?rm seemed to
operate as su?cient justi?cation in both ?rms for
such instruction to be provided to reinforce the
norms of presentation to clients.
Related, however, to the ?gure of the client is
the ‘everyday’ discourse within which organiza-
tional practices are justi?ed among sta?, subordi-
nates and peers. The ‘client’ is a discursive motif
that served to account, that is both describe and
justify, many dimensions of organizational pro-
cesses in audit ?rms. The rhetorical power of the
client is very signi?cant in the professions, since it
conjures up not just market pressures but also has
overtones of customer service. For example, the
expectations for overtime to which all trainees are
expected to submit is often rationalized in terms of
service to the client. While part-time working was
an initiative that both our ?rms had introduced
during the nineties there was also the general
perception that such practices failed to ?t in with
the norms of client service:
478 F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490
[T]hey need someone there to serve the client
and if you’re only working three days a week
that becomes quite di?cult. Well that’s how I
see it. (audit manager, female).
I think it was something that I did ask at a
couple of my interviews and I think I was told
because of the nature of our business it’s not,
you’re not providing a good service to a client
if they need to get in touch with you and you
were only working part time, they need to be
able to get in touch with you whatever time of
the week it might be. (audit trainee, second
year, female)
Similarly, many issues of professional conduct
such as dress codes, promptness and ‘keen-ness’
are rationalized ‘in the name of the client’.
This form of justi?cation we even found ex-
tended to accounts of the evident gender imbal-
ances at the level of Manager and Partner in the
?rms. For example, it was claimed that ‘Northern’
clients (both our o?ces were located in the North
of England) didn’t always respect or value a female
auditor:
I don’t know whether it’s the same in other
Firms. I also think it’s quite, especially later
on, it’s a lot harder for, having spoken to
women managers about this it’s a lot harder
for women to make it in accountancy because
you’re expected to build client contacts. It’s
just a lot harder especially not maybe if I
was in the London o?ce it wouldn’t be but
all our clients in [NorthernTown] are heavy
manufacturing clients and they are all like
male F.D.’s and F.C.’s and it’s just hard for
them to accept a woman especially in a man-
agerial role. Probably not so at my level but
having spoken to Managers who are women
I don’t know whether that’s going to change
in the near future, hopefully (audit trainee,
second year, female).
As Grey has also found (1998), whether this is a
stereotype or an accurate re?ection of Northern
attitudes, or instead a legitimating device used to
maintain the dominance of male accountants in
senior positions in the ?rms is open to question.
Both quali?ed and unquali?ed female sta? re-
marked upon how the relative scarcity of female
auditors was received by clients:
when I go to meetings with Martin [Senior
Manager], who could just about be old en-
ough to be my Dad, people think I’m the Sec-
retary. They don’t say it but just by their
manner you know that they think it.
1KARM610 (tax manager, female).
We also noted some examples of a gendering of
labour in dealing with particular tasks at clients.
One example, from a trainee auditor referred to
her experiences in Insolvency work:
I think they use me in certain circumstances to
their advantage because I’m a woman. When
we’re out on jobs and having to deal with say
employees for example, made redundant or
whatever, but I ?nd that I do notice it a lot.
(corporate ?nance, female)
The client was, however, more commonly a
linguistic device that displaced the matter of gen-
der imbalance onto the ‘client’ for whom the ?rms’
services are oriented and organized. Through the
discourse of the client managers and seniors assert
their authority over subordinates, and in so doing,
though not necessarily intentionally, aspects of
gendering within audit ?rms are reproduced as
client preferences are mobilized to legitimate
embedded gender relationships.
Formal performance appraisal: networking and
the team player
In both ?rms the in?uence of formal HRM
practices was experienced through requirements
for half-yearly performance appraisal meetings
and regular job reviews. The latter involved the
rating of a trainee’s e?ectiveness at a client on a
job survey form by the auditor in charge of the
client work. As we noted above, the team meta-
phor re?ected in both ?rms the calculated
emphasis of a competencies-type assessment of
F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490 479
the trainee. This sort of evaluative scheme
appeared to have been heavily in?uenced by
techniques introduced into the ?rm by Human
Resource Management practices. This in turn
re?ected the endeavour of the HRM/Personnel
sections in both ?rms to demonstrate their own
‘professionalism’ in the face of what they per-
ceived to be the ?rms’ partners traditional pref-
erence for their own ‘judgement’, and so-called
‘gut instinct’, on matters of sta? policy and per-
sonnel management. In this regard personnel
managers perceived themselves in a position of
struggle in order to professionalize the personnel
policies of the ?rms into line with HRM ideals of
good practice.
In Firm B in particular, the Personnel sta? were
keen to draw to our attention the competencies
emphasis as exhibited in other formal procedures,
such as Appraisal. The attainment of competencies
was designed to structure career progression. In
Firm A also, the appraisal document referenced
many aspects of ‘team’ and ‘leadership’ attributes
against which trainees and quali?ed sta? were to
be judged. In Firm A, for example, mentors were
expected to note in their report whether the ap-
praisee was a person who:
Develops all members of the team to be able
to take on the role at the next level. .. En-
sures e?ective and appropriate delegation of
work to team members. .. Engenders team
spirit, ensuring that all sta? are involved
and motivated to maximize team productiv-
ity. .. Viewed as an approachable leader
and acts as a positive role model for team
members.
Team attributes appeared to signify several
di?erent elements of organizational activities, both
social and technical. In similar ways to the client
discourse, team metaphors might serve the pur-
pose for the person in charge of legitimating the
requirement to work long hours and complete
work to, or, preferably, under, budget at the cli-
ents. In that sense the metaphor appeared to
operate evenly across male and female sta?s. Yet
‘being a team player’ also connoted particular so-
cial attributes and gestured towards the capacity of
an individual to ‘mix in’ and ‘network’ with col-
leagues. Of course given the gendering of most
departments, this networking takes place within a
largely male environment. The following quota-
tion comes from a male trainee working in the tax
department:
In the Tax Department there isn’t one woman
Manager....but if there were women they’d get
some of the sexual insults as well. Not insult-
ingly so, but they’d ?y anyway and I think
most people who want to succeed here would
accept that as being part and parcel of being
in a male environment because I think it is a
male environment. It’s a white, middle class
male dominated environment. There isn’t a
non-white in the Tax Department. (tax trai-
nee, third year, male)
In a less extreme instance, the following is a
quotation from a female trainee auditor who is
discussing the problem of social interaction in the
o?ce:
[It’s] just chaps in the o?ce you don’t go and
enter into a boyish laddy chat at half past
eight in the morning on a Friday, so you
end up going to speak to the Secretaries, I’m
not saying that’s bad, but you can’t be, I don’t
feel that I’ll ever be wholly a part of the team
to that extent. (corporate ?nance, female)
Aside from acknowledging the social fact of a
male domination of sta? in the o?ce, what is sig-
ni?cant is how she rationalizes this in terms of the
di?cultly of belonging, of being ‘‘part of the
team’’, which explicitly references the norms of
formal individual evaluation. The discourse of
formal evaluation serves to mediate the ‘experi-
ence’ of a kind of organizational isolation
(Crompton, 1997, p. 22; Pringle, 1989). In this
way, the homo-sociality of the predominantly
male trainees for whom social interests are com-
mon (and, indeed, who have been evaluated posi-
tively on such interests through the formal
recruitment process), is translated through the
formal appraisal process into an individual fail-
ing––a failing we suggest is premised upon the
480 F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490
evident gender imbalances that exist in the o?ce
environment of the ?rms.
The relationships that exist between appraiser
and appraisee are often represented as ‘mentoring’,
both by the ?rms’ HRM sta? and by researchers
who have studied this process (Covaleski, Dir-
smith, Heian, & Samuel, 1998; Dirsmith et al.,
1997). Through the mentor relationships, and
other means, trainees also learn the signi?cance
of mixing with colleagues and raising their
pro?le.
I know I had a rating with a Manager this
week and it was a good rating, ?ne, and he
was giving me pointers for the future one of
which was to ‘‘Increase your pro?le in the
Department and in the Firm’’ and I was say-
ing ‘‘How on earth do I go about increasing
my pro?le in the Firm, why would I want to
do that?’’ and he said ‘‘Well, once you get
to Manager you need to know other Manag-
ers in the di?erent Departments.’’ and I was
saying ‘‘How did you do that?’’ and he said
‘‘Well when I was a Senior I used to walk
the ?oors’’, (laughs) so every once or twice a
week he’d walk the ?oors of the various
Departments and meet up with various Se-
niors in his year who would inevitably be talk-
ing to other Managers and they’d say ‘‘Do
you know whoever’’ and you think ‘‘God,
do I really need to be thinking about some-
thing like that, is that a real big point’’ and
I also in terms of increasing my pro?le in
the Department I ?nd that very hard simply
because I’m the only professional woman.
(corporate ?nance, female)
Here the interviewee acknowledges what many
recognize as the di?erences that exist in social
conventions governing what is socially appropriate
behaviour for a woman as compared to a man.
How the sexes are ‘‘expected to behave’’ (Acker,
1992) di?ers, and, as the above quotation indi-
cates, there are very di?erent social norms involved
for a woman to walk the ?oor and socialize with
male colleagues. The notion of ‘walking the ?oor’
and the positive e?ects such behaviour will have on
a person’s pro?le in the o?ce may have a di?erent
practical connotation for a female than for a male
trainee or manager.
In ways that both male and female interviewees
acknowledged the idea of a ?rm type seemed to
encompass attributes that most considered gen-
dered. In the following quotation a quali?ed fe-
male auditor suggests that alongside this ‘?tting in’
or ‘networking’ behaviour a certain ‘outgoingness’
is expected of the ?rm type:
Researcher: So the appraisals are just all sort
of standard?
Tax manager: Fairly non committal. They
do green sheets, they’re called green sheets,
of your interviews and things. But again a
lot of women aren’t very good at blowing
their own trumpet and so, that’s very, very
typical of here. You can see the lads.. really
every opportunity and it’s ?agged up.
I’m being very stereotypical but this is how
it is. And the women just can’t be arsed, they
just get on with their job. (tax manager,
female)
Of course blowing one’s ‘own trumpet’ is but
one aspect of an organizational culture that values
a certain kind of pushiness or competitiveness, as
well as co-operation amongst sta?. Underlying
organizational assumptions of the value of blow-
ing one’s ‘own trumpet’, ‘walking the ?oor’ and
‘raising one’s pro?le’ is thus an apparently neutral
organizational context in which gender and orga-
nizational sexuality (Hearn et al., 1989) are not
relevant. In this way the formal norms of team
playing and networking, while signi?cant to both
technical work at clients and, as we explore below,
the social skills required from sta? in order to
‘develop business’, follow assumptions about male
rather than female conduct to disadvantage female
trainees.
Gendered interactions: correct socializing
In both audit ?rms many opportunities for
socializing exist, and one of the ?rst experiences of
trainees after joining the ?rm is the induc-
tion course. Trainees are taken to a residential
F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490 481
conference centre for two or three weeks to un-
dergo initial training and study for the ?rst com-
ponents of the professional examinations. Trainees
reported the induction courses to involve hard
work and long hours of socializing at the bar. The
?rms also arrange various social events. There are
?rm sports teams, and the ?rms plainly encourage
both sports and socializing at residential courses
(often providing generous allowances at the bar)
the net e?ect of which was to convey again to
trainees the importance of a ‘?rm type’ as a high
energy person. This organizational value was also
re?ected more formally in the concept of ‘away
days’, also reported to have the e?ect of ‘bringing
people together’, and physically intensive ‘out-
ward-bound’ courses in which the ‘leadership’ and
‘team-working’ skills were apparently revealed,
monitored and developed, within a socially unin-
hibited context:
The amount of alcohol that got consumed this
weekend by some people. Researcher: The
team building thing? Yes. Hard work, hard
play, hard drinking I think it is. 2RICM198
(audit trainee, second year, male).
The socializing at ?rm level is not unpopular:
most trainees had recently experienced student
life in which socializing formed an impor-
tant component. Moreover trainees plainly
enjoyed many social activities and mixing with a
group of roughly their own age. As one trainee
related:
It’s fairly classic I think. A little bit more ma-
ture than University but the lads are still ex-
pected to be lads and the girls are expected
to be girls and be quite discrete. (audit trainee,
third year, male)
The socializing norms, however, were generally
understood by some as having a quasi-compulsory
element in terms both of the importance of need-
ing to ‘stay in contact’ with events within the of-
?ce––the audit of large clients might involve
trainees in extended periods of time away from the
?rm’s o?ce––and also the understanding that
attendance at social events was a norm:
a lot of the culture with Firm A is about
socializing in the evenings, especially at the
weekend, you do need to go out every now
and again just to keep in touch (audit trainee,
?rst year, male).
One trainee remarked at the discussion that
ensued when two new (female) trainees failed to go
out for a drink after a departmental meeting:
...nothing would ever be said to them, but you
get the feeling, you know, a mental note’s
made, probably I would think so. So I mean
I’d, I’d make an e?ort to be there and I think
they probably would now as well. (audit trai-
nee, ?rst year, female).
As another trainee stated, the failure to attend
social events is also in part damaging to the indi-
vidual and his or her capacity to network––many
sta? were keen to stress the importance of not
‘‘miss[ing] out on things’’. (Audit Trainee, Second
Year, male).
Moreover, while in principle few would ever
object to the socializing as an activity, the speci?c
form of socializing, that is, organized events at
bars or restaurants in which ‘sociable’ drinking
was the norm, its clannish character was perceived
to be ‘masculine’ in tone in ways that are but an-
other aspect of the homo-sociality we noted in the
previous section:
It is very much a Firm that expects everybody
to be in with the lads, you know socializing,
loud, just generally involved in everything.
(tax trainee, third year, female)
Despite these tacit elements of compulsion,
trainees valued highly the requirements to socialize
with colleagues, often seeing it (erroneously in our
experience) as a feature of their particular ?rm
(‘‘they actually do chuck quite a lot of money at
you’’). The bonds developed between people at a
social level were intended to meld people together,
such that the experience of being ‘part of a team’
and team discourse referred to above, to some
degree, was increased in terms of daily work epi-
sodes.
482 F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490
This emphasis on the social life and activities
within the ?rm however served other as a training
ground for other organizational processes, once
trainees had quali?ed, and were perceived to be
‘‘on track’’ for a successful career within the ?rm.
As we have already noted both ?rms in their ap-
praisal procedures emphasized aspects of ‘business
awareness’ while dealing with clients (Hanlon,
1994). This in turn had implications for the
development of a social life and the honing of
social skills. Trainees grasped how the active ?rm-
based social life served to emphasize among them
the value of the ‘social’ in the development of cli-
ent business and maintenance of good business
relationships. Recognizing that cultivating a social
life was a further expression of their own net-
working constituted another important element of
the evolution of successful career skills. As one
manager, commenting on the activities of Partners
in her ?rm, remarked ‘‘you’ve got to do a lot of
entertaining’’ (tax manager, female).
Yet both in the form of socializing and the
assumptions made about the ‘private time’ that
should be given to such events outside of ‘normal’
working hours’, these social interactions are
experienced di?erently by male and female sta?.
One quali?ed manager described the di?culty of
bringing along her husband to sta?-client func-
tions:
You don’t do it [much] really until you’re a
Manager but as a Senior you might be asked
along to a couple of things with or without
your partner and I always ?nd it very di?-
cult when I have to take my [spouse] simply
because you know that all the other Partners
are women and you’re not going to put them
into speaking with a group of women who
aren’t speaking about work but at the same
time it doesn’t give you the chance to go
and speak to other people who you are sup-
posed to be mixing with because you are
conscious of your [spouse] being there, not
really ?tting in. And that’s only because the
sex is the opposite way round, and it’s some-
thing that’s crossing my mind more and
more as I get further up the Firm. How
I’m going to deal with that. Because I think
I’m respected within the Department and the
people I work with but it’s just now how to
branch out with them. (corporate ?nance, fe-
male)
Again the predominantly male character of the
?rm hierarchy, matched by the male hierarchy of
clients, structures situations in which a social life
oriented around developing the practice and
sharpening selling skills tends also to imply the
role of a supportive spouse. This in turn struc-
tures the way that female sta? project their vision
of what a successful career within the ?rm im-
plies:
We’ve still got ye olde traditional male,
whether he be 40 odd or 25 but it’s still
...the absolute same philosophies. They got
married just before they quali?ed or just after,
so they’ve got the woman there geared up for
the supporting role as they moved through the
system (!) (tax manager, female).
A lot of guys who make Manager they have
the support network of the wife to cope with
everything outside in their personal lives.
That is de?nitely something that would deter
me. (audit trainee, second year, female)
For female managers in audit ?rms this might
imply that their male partner may take on the role
of, in Grey’s terms a ‘‘well packaged’’ husband
ready to accompany his partner on social activities
and entertain sta? and clients for the ?rm. As the
above quotations indicate, many female sta? per-
ceive that this social arrangement in which leisure
time and ‘family life’ is also at the service of the
?rm works di?erently for female than male man-
agers:
I’m just not up for [the entertaining]. I don’t
want it. I think largely women and women
in business aren’t bothered about it either.
They don’t want to go out at night with the
Tax Advisor and, oh yes, they might have a
nice meal paid for or something but they’re
not bothered. Whereas men it’s a thing, they
want to go to the football they want to do
F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490 483
this, that and the other, and it’s all part of the
whole sketch. (tax manager, female)
As the above quotation indicates, social atti-
tudes and expectations of appropriate gender roles
(Collinson & Collinson, 1989) suggest that women
managers tend to exclude themselves and/or their
partners from such activities, and in so doing, their
‘value’ as future Senior Manager and Partner
material is then marked down.
Time management, temporal commitment and
‘the Family’
Many organizational norms follow assumptions
about men’s rather than women’s lives and situa-
tions (Sheppard, 1992, p. 152) and this is especially
pertinent to the temporal organizations and norms
of commitment that operate in audit ?rms. Audit
trainees are expected to commit overtime when
audit jobs demand, which is often, and ?rm-based
socializing is also a normal part of a sacri?ce of
leisure time. This also accompanies both the long
working hours and evenings of study for profes-
sional examinations that trainees endure during
their training contracts. As we have explored
elsewhere (Anderson-Gough, Grey, & Robson,
2000) the professional training process can be
thought of a ‘test of time’ as trainees develop the
appropriate time consciousness that emerges out
long hours, of work, overtime, evening and
weekend study, with perhaps ?rm-organized social
events some evenings. Yet on qualifying temporal
commitment is not expected to reduce and this
aspect of ?rm practices often comes to the fore in
decisions whether to stay with the ?rm or pursue
‘career’ elsewhere.
Indeed, it was partly an acknowledgement of
these issues that both our ?rms were exploring
various new initiatives in ?exible working. There
were various indications that the ?rms were both
considering and had implemented measures to
o?er more ?exible working practices to sta?. In
both of the ?rms we researched there were orga-
nizational initiatives, normally associated with the
?rms’ HRM or practice management departments,
concerned with the ‘recruitment’ of women and the
problem of retaining female sta?. And for some of
our interviewees these initiatives served as indica-
tors of a wider concern for their welfare and, in
some cases, had been exploited successfully by
some sta?:
My wife’s coming back, she works at Firm A
and she’s coming back in a months time and
they’ve been fantastic with her. This is an-
other thing that’s just changed over the years.
She’s been working a day a week for the last
month or two at home, with a modem and I
sorted all that out for her no problem, and
she’s coming back part time, three days a
week. And I think that’s great that you can
do that. (tax manager, male)
We’ve introduced a values charter, I don’t
know whether you’ve seen that. Researcher:
Yes, I’ve seen it on the wall. That’s supposed
to be about balancing your home life and
professional life, amongst other things, but
that’s one of the key themes coming out of
the charter it’s how to balance the two.
2ANDT72.
Yet many of our interviewees saw these initia-
tives as relatively super?cial and, while welcoming
the ?rms’ initiatives in this area, questioned the
extent to which the organizational culture of long
hours was amenable to new norms of time man-
agement.
In theory you can work part time, but I don’t
think it would work in Audit division because
having spoken to Managers who have chil-
dren or ex-Managers who’ve left because they
have children and they’ve worked and... their
idea of what part time would be would take a
pay cut, do the same amount of work as they
were previously doing for less money and
working nine months of the year and getting
the summer o?. That isn’t part time. Part time
to me is three days a week. And I know which
two days of the week I don’t need to be at
work. (audit manager, female)
As the above quotation suggests, the need for
‘?exible time’ was often taken to mean that the
484 F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490
?rms’ sta? had to be available for client service,
rather than ?exible working arrangements to suit
family life.
Before we explore this issue in more detail it is
worth pointing out that long working days were
commonly associated with the ‘work hard, play
hard’ ethic to which trainees are acculturated
during their qualifying phase (Anderson-Gough
et al., 1998a, 1998b). While many of our sample
of interviewees might comment upon the nega-
tive aspects of this in terms of leisure time,
often the culture of overtime etc. was seen posi-
tively as indicative of their organization or pro-
fession and as a central aspect of the judgement as
to whether someone was the ‘right stu?’ to be a
professional accountant, auditor etc. in Firm A or
Firm B. This as we noted above links also into the
importance give to the cultivation of commercial
skills.
And there is no doubt that for some people this
culture of work is a signi?cant attraction, as the
following manager relates in his experience of
moving to a client company and then back to the
?rm:
Why I came back [to the ?rm] is probably be-
cause I got frustrated in industry for di?erent
reasons. ... I looked at the type of environ-
ment in which I needed to work to excel and
I needed to be in an environment where I
was surrounded by high quality people who
challenge the ideas that I had. I needed to
be working under some sort of pressure to
meet deadlines and I needed to be working
with people who also recognized the existence
of things like that and I found in the environ-
ment I was working in the deadlines were
meaningless. (audit manager, male)
Quali?ed sta? made plain their dissatisfaction
with the temporal norms of their ?rms and
the point to which they might give an account of
their future departure from the ?rm as related to
the in?exibility of working arrangements. Most
interviewees acknowledged that the attractions
of the work included the generous pay, but a
sacri?ce of money for time was seen by some as
desirable:
What’s the money for? And so you do start
feel as though, I think that becomes more of
an issue as you get older when you’re working
more and not studying and things that you
look around at what everyone else is doing
in your peer group and say if they can go to
a wedding at the weekend or whatever and
they still earn a good living, am I doing the
right thing? (corporate ?nance manager, male)
Even if the Firm would say ‘‘No, it’s not that’s
not true, look at the policies, the procedures
are there’’ people don’t believe that. Not it’s
something that you’ve got to completely com-
mit to the job because of the fact that we can’t
really manage the workload that’s coming in
and people just expect at whatever level to
have to completely give yourself to the job.
(audit trainee, second year)
This might re?ect changing attitudes amongst
‘Generation X’ (an issue the HR departments of
both ?rms had raised with us) or quite possibly be
the outcome of a more gradual societal preference
to have ‘leisure time’, but the di?erence seemed to
us signi?cant.
The issue of temporal ?exibility and family
commitments in the ?rms was closely pursued by
many of the female sta? we interviewed:
I know that people have left because they can-
not see, they might not have children but they
would like a family and they cannot see them-
selves having a family and working for the
Firm so they go elsewhere... And whether it
works for them, again, I don’t know yet.
But my attitudes have changed. I’m not the
company woman that I perhaps was. Whilst
I still enjoy it and I still give 100% while I’m
here. They get their 8 and a half hours in a
day which is my hour and my lunch time is
my overtime and at 5.30 unless it’s very
important I’ve got a little girl to go and see.
(1CLAP410)
if you did have kids I think you either would
wait till your 40 odd or 35 or later on or you
have themwhen you’re an analyst or whatever.
F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490 485
If you decide to do it in between which is what
most people do you can really I think stunt
your career path. It’s a case of helping them
to forget that you’re actually a woman and
you’ve got kids so you don’t mention kids
around Partners. (tax manager, female)
As Crompton and Le Feuvre (1992) have at-
tested in professional ?rms the strategy for suc-
cessfully pursuing careers involves in part a denial
of female identity and/or adopting male charac-
teristics. The future for women managers is
seemingly framed in terms indicating that even in
the absence of family ‘intrusions’, the ?rm o?ers
less scope for career development than employ-
ment outside:
You read in newspapers that things are
becoming easier for women but the reality is
that I think there are two women Partners here
in the whole Firm and one of them was made a
Partner recently, so I was shocked when I
found out. (tax trainee, ?rst year, female)
Whilst male and female sta? appear to be
equally time pressured at work, and it is more than
likely that non-work or family responsibilities that
senior sta? have increased considerably since the
training phase (responsibilities that often demand
more of women), in these other ways (perceived
career possibilities; attitudes towards family;
availability for the client; chauvinism) male and
female managers do experience the ?rm di?erently.
As one female auditor commented on the work
ethic of Firm A:
[W]hilst the woman looks after the baby and
the man is the bread winner, which, whilst it’s
changing, is still the institutionalized view in
the UK then I would be the one that goes
home and picks the baby up, and that’s ?ne.
Except when two male Partners are jumping
up and down wanting something done because
their wife’s at home looking after the baby..
you’re like – I’ve got to go home. (1CLAP410)
Although we found a far greater proportion of
the male sta? now commented unfavourably on
the lack of ?exibility in working arrangements, as
Witz has argued (1992, pp. 43–50) the professional
regimes of organized time do contribute to the
gendering of occupational closure in and by pro-
fessions (cf. Atkinson & Delamont, 1990). And
although this gendering was recognized by the
trainees, for the quali?ed sta? it assumed far more
importance than previously and was perceived as
the main constraint on their career development.
Conclusion
Despite evidence of substantial growth in edu-
cational quali?cations gained by young women
(and that women in the UK now gain more edu-
cational quali?cations at school than men) and the
increasing employment of women, patriarchal
relations in the workplace appear resistant to
change (Walby, 1997, p. 41). We have now seen
many examples of studies in organizational anal-
ysis that detail the processes that contribute to this
process. Audit ?rms, no doubt because of access
di?culties and perhaps also because of methodo-
logical preferences in accounting research, have
probably received less attention than, say, Law
(Epstein, 1981), though surveys have revealed
fairly consistently the gendered population of the
accounting profession.
While countries other than the UK may operate
di?erent training structures and distinct organiza-
tional cultures the present paper, we hope, set
some kind of agenda on the gender domination
Big Four ?rms and contributes to what we believe
to be an under-researched area which we hope will
be explored in more detail by others––alongside
further studies of organizational and social mar-
ginalization, including ethnicity (Hammond &
Preston, 1992; Hammond & Streeter, 1994). As
Cooper and Taylor (2000) have argued the situa-
tion of women accountants in the lower status
‘technical’ functions of the profession would also
bear much closer examination.
This paper contributes to an understanding of
key organizational processes that contribute to the
reproduction of a gender predominance in large
audit ?rms. First, as others have suggested, the
fact of homo-sociality structures the processes of
486 F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490
recruitment, mentoring and performance evalua-
tion in routine and predictable ways (Kanter,
1977; Ragins, 1989a, 1989b; Ragins & Cotton,
1991). Male partners, senior managers, etc., will
recruit, promote people with the same back-
grounds and preferences as themselves, and hence
reproduce organizational gender relations. Of
course, we have noted in both ?rms deliberate
policies of gender balance in recruitment and the
use of seemingly neutral assessments, such as
psychometric testing, with some e?ect, but such
initiatives, necessarily, do not carry over to pro-
motion.
Second, we have noted how identi?cation of
future ‘partner material’ involves a complex eval-
uation of not simply technical and perceived
managerial skills of leadership, team-working, but
also an integration into norms of temporal com-
mitment and a ?rm-approved social life. These
social skills accompany an erosion of the bound-
aries between ?rm and private time that system-
atically disadvantages female auditors with family
commitments. For male partners the family is a
social support mechanism, for female auditors it is
a call upon their ‘useful’ time and, from con-
structions of the ?rm perspective, a career disad-
vantage.
Third, we see that embedded gender processes
are re?ected and reproduced through the interac-
tions between organizational actors in both formal
and informal situations and contexts. Indeed one
of the most striking aspects of our study was the
manner in which formal ideals of the capable
auditor interacted with the informal to support
and reproduce unequal gender outcomes. As Fer-
guson has argued:
The speech of the administrative disciplines,
which both expresses and re?ects a particular
structure of institutions and practices, oper-
ates as a kind of verbal performance placing
people and objects within a network of social,
political and administrative arrangements
(Ferguson, 1984).
Exploring the gendering processes in Big Five
?rms necessarily combines consideration of both
the formal mechanisms of organizational struc-
turation, such as recruitment, appraisal and
training, and the informal processes that in some
senses give an organizational site its culture in
terms of norms, values and beliefs that play
through how the formal processes are enacted and
reproduced. So that, for example, the emphasis of
formal performance appraisal ‘competencies’ and
recruitment priorities on concepts of leadership
and team activity is linked in practice with gen-
dered discourses of team sports (playing, watch-
ing, talking, socializing) in ways that, although
possibly unintentional, help re-a?rm the organi-
zational culture of male homo-sociality. In this
way performance appraisal mechanisms are capa-
ble of reproducing the ‘bias’ they were introduced
to combat (Tavris, 1992, p. 78). Similarly it is our
contention that the organizational imperatives for
selling skills and practice development are com-
monly translated into perceptions of sociability
that re?ect male discourses of good social skills
and correct socializing. In so doing the formal
process may support male gender domination in
ways.
Indeed the study indicates how informal and
formal processes appear to be intertwined in such
intricate and complex ways that that we believe
that our study o?ers some insight into the prob-
lems that policy initiatives and reforms introduced,
usually by HRM departments in the ?rms, face in
attempting to redress the organizational gender
imbalances. A good example of this would be the
shift in ?rm policies during the 1990s to allowing
?exible working and even part-time sta?. While
dominant discourses of the accounting ‘profes-
sional’ place emphasis upon temporal commitment
and associated ideals of client service the position
of individuals who attempt to take advantage of
part-time and ?exible working is likely to be
problematic in terms of norms of career advance-
ment. Although it would be over-stretching a point
to label such programmes as unambiguous fail-
ures, they often failed to in?uence the embedded
practices and beliefs that we noted operating in the
areas of norms of conduct and the professional
identity. Since the research upon which this study
was based was completed the landscape of the
multi-national audit ?rms has changed further
with the mergers of the Big Five to Big Four; we
F. Anderson-Gough et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 30 (2005) 469–490 487
might also suggest that it will be interesting to see
how those who opt for part-time work have fared
when ?rms merge and there may be organizational
imperatives for sta? redundancies.
Lastly, we note how wider social norms that
inform self-identity and the division of labour
(Loft, 1992) are also in play. While Walby (1997)
argues that the determination of female occupa-
tional roles runs from the workplace to the home
rather than vice-versa, it is clear that trainees also
enter the ?rm with conceptions of gender roles that
are in?uential. The attitudes that female sta? may
have to beliefs that it is, for example, important to
‘walk the ?oor’ and ‘network, or the disinclination
that a female manager may exhibit to asking her
spouse to accompany his partner to dinners with
clients or colleagues exemplify other ways in which
?rm life is experienced di?erently by mean and
women. Female auditors have to help their col-
leagues forget their sex in order to conform to
organizational expectations. As Thane (1992,
p. 302) suggests and the quotation heading this
paper a?rms, one outcome of such norms is to
make women both victims and agents of their
inequality.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the sup-
port of the Centre for Business Performance of
the ICAEW in funding the research upon which
this paper is based. Keith Robson would also like
to thank the School of Management of the Uni-
versity of Alberta for their hospitality during his
Visiting appointment through which time this
paper was drafted. Earlier versions of this paper
were presented to the Critical Perspectives on
Accounting conference, New York, April 2002
and the IX Workshop en Controlbilidad y Con-
trol de Gestion ‘‘Memorial Raymond Konopka’’,
Universidad de Burgos, May 2002. The authors
would like to acknowledge the helpful comments
of and conversations with David J. Cooper,
Mahmoud Ezzamel, Rihab Khalifa, Carlos Lar-
rinaga, Luis Fernandez-Ruuelta, Borbara Town-
ley, Dean Neu and the two anonymous AOS
reviewers.
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