Description
This paper examines the processes by which identity work influences accounting and
organisational practices. Analysing ethnographic material, we study how accountants
engage in a struggle for recognition in a context where tensions emerge from the confrontation
between idealised occupational aspirations and situated possibilities. To theorise
this struggle we draw on Everett Hughes’s conceptualisation of a moral division of labour.
Building on his concept of ‘‘dirty work’’, we differentiate between the ‘‘unclean’’ and the
‘‘polluted’’. Accountants have to perform tasks that are incompatible with the aspirational
identities they claim; more than ‘‘boring’’, these tasks become symbols of misrecognition.
We call these unclean tasks. Yet even tasks that, in a more favourable context, would be
associated with prestigious aspects of the job, can become degrading in specific situations.
We call them polluted work. We highlight how trying to comply with a positively-anticipated
role transition can help avoid unclean work yet generate more polluted work.
doc_415895937.pdf
This paper examines the processes by which identity work influences accounting and
organisational practices. Analysing ethnographic material, we study how accountants
engage in a struggle for recognition in a context where tensions emerge from the confrontation
between idealised occupational aspirations and situated possibilities. To theorise
this struggle we draw on Everett Hughes’s conceptualisation of a moral division of labour.
Building on his concept of ‘‘dirty work’’, we differentiate between the ‘‘unclean’’ and the
‘‘polluted’’. Accountants have to perform tasks that are incompatible with the aspirational
identities they claim; more than ‘‘boring’’, these tasks become symbols of misrecognition.
We call these unclean tasks. Yet even tasks that, in a more favourable context, would be
associated with prestigious aspects of the job, can become degrading in specific situations.
We call them polluted work. We highlight how trying to comply with a positively-anticipated
role transition can help avoid unclean work yet generate more polluted work.
doc_415895937.pdf