Description
This study analyses the degree to which change in the organizational context, content and
location (both of the individual within the organization and the organization within the field) of
professional work has contributed to variation in attitudes toward professional ideology
and institutions. Through an online survey of Canadian chartered accountants we observe
that, contrary to current accusations, a majority of accounting professionals remain committed
to their profession, despite profound changes in the context, content and location
of their work. We do find, however, that the strongest espoused deviation from core professional
values and logics has occurred in traditional work contexts (i.e. public accounting
firms), and for the distinctive value of commitment to independence enforcement, the
deviation is most pronounced in the elite core of the profession – the Big Four professional
service firms. Accountants in higher ranks also tend to identify more with commercialistic
values. We speculate on the implications these findings hold for the professional project of
accountancy.
The organizational context of professionalism in accounting
Roy Suddaby
a,
*
, Yves Gendron
b,1
, Helen Lam
c
a
Faculty of Business, University of Alberta, School of Business, Department of Strategic Management and Organization, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2R6
b
Faculté des sciences de l’administration, Pavillon Palasis-Prince, Bureau 6224, Université Laval, Québec City, Canada G1K 7P4
c
Centre for Innovative Management, Athabasca University, Edmonton, Canada
a b s t r a c t
This study analyses the degree to which change in the organizational context, content and
location (both of the individual within the organization and the organization within the ?eld) of
professional work has contributed to variation in attitudes toward professional ideology
and institutions. Through an online survey of Canadian chartered accountants we observe
that, contrary to current accusations, a majority of accounting professionals remain com-
mitted to their profession, despite profound changes in the context, content and location
of their work. We do ?nd, however, that the strongest espoused deviation from core pro-
fessional values and logics has occurred in traditional work contexts (i.e. public accounting
?rms), and for the distinctive value of commitment to independence enforcement, the
deviation is most pronounced in the elite core of the profession – the Big Four professional
service ?rms. Accountants in higher ranks also tend to identify more with commercialistic
values. We speculate on the implications these ?ndings hold for the professional project of
accountancy.
Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction
The collapse of Arthur Andersen amid reports of the
venerable accounting ?rm’s role in misrepresenting the ?-
nances of Enron, WorldCom and other clients has raised
questions about the ethical integrity of the accounting pro-
fession (Wyatt, 2004). In addition to the dramatic personal
and ?nancial tragedies represented by the demise of
Andersen, the ?rm’s fall also represents a serious failure
in the professional project of accountancy. For many dec-
ades the accounting profession has claimed to espouse
independence as a core professional value. Independence
is also seen as a central and founding value of Arthur
Andersen (Squires, Smith, MacDougall, & Yeack, 2003).
The dubious relationship between Arthur Andersen and
Enron, as well as the apparent inability of even elite mem-
bers of the profession to self-regulate, made evident in the
events surrounding Enron have initiated an era of critical
self-appraisal among accountants. How widespread are
ethical lapses in the profession? Which practice categories
have deviated most strongly from core professional val-
ues? How can we prevent recurrence?
Sociologists point to the organizational context and con-
tent of professional work as a possible explanation for the
erosion of professional values (Leicht & Fennell, 1997,
2001). Professional work is increasingly mediated by orga-
nizations; many professionals now work in corporations or
government of?ces; most professional services are deliv-
ered to organizations rather than individuals; and profes-
sional service ?rms have become complex, diversi?ed
organizations that are often larger than their Fortune 500
corporate clients (Suddaby, Cooper, & Greenwood, 2007).
Professional careers ‘‘are increasingly conditioned by
opportunities within organizations” (Leicht & Fennell,
1997, p. 216). Further, professional ?rms have adopted
managerial structures of control and accountability (Fried-
son, 1984) that have resulted in a fragmentation of work
contexts, professional interests and value commitments
among professionals (Brint, 1994). While these changes
0361-3682/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.aos.2009.01.007
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +780 492 2386; fax: +780 492 3325.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (R. Suddaby), yves.
[email protected] (Y. Gendron), [email protected] (H. Lam).
1
Tel.: +418 656 2131x2431; fax: +418 656 7746.
Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
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have been documented in theoretical (Brint, 1994; Fried-
son, 1984; Friedson, 2001; Leicht & Fennell, 2001) and
empirical (Goode, 1957; Scott, 1987; Wallace, 1995) ac-
counts, they were still largely based on the assumption
that ‘‘professionals control professionals, even in bureau-
cratic settings” (Leicht & Fennell, 1997, p. 217).
Beginning in the 1980s, however, the professions have
been subject to profound changes in the nature of their
work, largely because professional work has become
increasingly embedded in large and oftentimes heteroge-
neous organizations. This is particularly the case in
accounting where critics have suggested that organizations
have usurped traditional professional institutions, such as
professional societies and associations, as the core sites
of professionalization and regulation (Cooper & Robson,
2006; Grey, 1998). As a result, we have little empirical
knowledge about the extent of in?uence – in contempo-
rary professional ?elds – of organizational structures and
controls on professional values and commitments.
2
How
do value commitments change when professionals work as
salaried employees? Do the relative commitments change
when they work in conditions where professionals no longer
control professionals? And how do value commitments
change when professionals engage in the delivery of non-
professional services?
The empirical questions that arise out of the dynamic
interaction of organizations and professions also re?ect
important theoretical questions about the nature and
determinants of institutional change. There is a growing
awareness that institutional change is facilitated by dra-
matic shifts in core values (Greenwood & Hinings, 1996).
Large scale movements in core values, in turn, re?ect dee-
per changes in the central organizing principles of society,
or what Friedland and Alford (1991) term ‘‘institutional
logics”. Logics, reciprocally, are based upon rationalized
myths (Meyer & Rowan, 1977) or semi-autonomous value
structures that are taken for granted as manifestations of
powerful assumptions of appropriateness. Professionalism
is one such logic that is based on long standing mytholo-
gies of independence and autonomy which, over time,
has become a central discursive force in the ?eld (Larson,
1977).
The ethical lapses exhibited by accounting ?rms in the
events surrounding Enron, WorldCom, Sunbeam and re-
lated corporate scandals suggest a profound change has oc-
curred in the institutional logic of professionalism, which
has traditionally been characterized as a logic designed
to counterbalance the logics of both the market and the
state (Friedson, 2001). While the core logic of the market
is ‘‘accumulation and the commodi?cation of human activ-
ity” (Friedland & Alford, 1991, p. 248) and that of the state
is ‘‘rationalization and the regulation of human activity by
legal and bureaucratic hierarchies” (Friedland & Alford,
1991, p. 248), the central logic of professionalism is the
creation of a social space that is independent and autono-
mous from both the state and the market (Friedson, 2001;
Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005). Accounting ?rms’ promi-
nent ethical lapses suggest a fundamental breakdown in
the institutional logic of professionalism (Hanlon, 1994)
and raise important theoretical questions about why
changes in institutional logics occur, and where they ?rst
appear within an institutionalized ?eld.
This paper takes some preliminary steps toward
answering these questions. Speci?cally, we track variation
in professional values and attitudes across different meth-
ods of organizing professional work. The study extends a
prior qualitative study that examined the strength of char-
tered accountants’ ties to professional institutions (Gen-
dron & Suddaby, 2004). Speci?cally, we map the relative
degree of commitment to core and ideal professional val-
ues across the broad spectrum of practice areas and work
contexts of professional accountants in Canada. The
accounting profession provides an ideal context to address
these questions because, more than any other profession,
accountants have become embedded in organizational set-
tings. Accountants have the largest professional service
?rms, have diversi?ed into non-professional work contexts
and have more of their members working under non-pro-
fessional control than either medicine or law.
Using data collected from over 1200 Canadian chartered
accountants in public practice, government and private
industry, we measure the espoused attitudes of these pro-
fessionals to their employing organization, their profession
and, most critically, their clients in order to assess varied
explanations for recently observed shifts away from pro-
fessional logics. First, we test the argument that changes
in the context of work, i.e. the migration of accountants
away from public practice into non-traditional work set-
tings such as industry and government, has contributed
to changes in core professional values. Second, we analyze
the degree to which changes in the content of work con-
tribute to shifts in expressed attitudes toward professional
ideology and institutions. That is, do professional values
change when accountants work outside the core practice
areas of accounting and auditing? Third, we assess
whether one’s career position within the organization con-
tributes to the adoption of a more commercial logic by pro-
fessionals who progress to higher ranks in their employing
organizations. Finally, we address the contention that
changes in logics occur as a result of the location of the
employing organization within the organizational ?eld,
i.e. that as ?rms move to peripheral positions in the profes-
sion, individual professionals within them adopt a less pro-
fessional orientation.
Theoretical background
There is a long history of interest in the potential prob-
lems that arise when professionals work in non-traditional
work settings (Aranya & Ferris, 1984; Benson, 1977; Blau &
Scott, 1962; Gunz & Gunz, 1994; Sorensen & Sorensen,
1974; Wallace, 1995). Wallace (1995) summarizes this re-
search in two competing theories. The ‘‘proletarianization”
thesis argues that professionals and bureaucracies exem-
plify two contradictory models of work (Scott, 1966). The
idealized professional model is one in which individuals
are assumed to have the necessary knowledge and skills
2
Exceptions mainly consist of qualitative inquiries such as Anderson-
Gough, Grey, and Robson (2001, 2005), Covaleski, Dirsmith, Heian, and
Samuel (1998), and Gendron (2002).
410 R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427
to perform their work and are afforded considerable dis-
cretion in determining how and when the work will be
accomplished. The bureaucratic model, by contrast, holds
ef?ciency as the primary goal and individual discretion is
compromised by organizational controls that seek to make
work routine, by partitioning work into component parts
and through highly specialized and formalized role struc-
tures. Placing professionals in bureaucratic work settings,
according to the ‘‘proletarianization” thesis, will necessar-
ily erode professional values over time.
The ‘‘adaptation” view, by contrast, argues that profes-
sionals have been able to adjust to work in large organiza-
tions by erecting barriers around professional departments
that protect them from organizational controls. So, for
example, corporate law departments can create organiza-
tional boundaries, such as Chinese Walls, that effectively
structure mini-professional service ?rms inside organiza-
tions, thereby preserving professional norms and values
while simultaneously encouraging strong commitment by
professionals to their employing organization. In this view
there is no inherent con?ict between profession and
bureaucracy.
Most quantitative research seems to support the adap-
tation thesis. That is, there does not appear to be an inher-
ent con?ict between maintaining commitment to both
one’s profession and employing organization. Without
attempting to be exhaustive, Table 1 provides a compara-
tive overview of quantitative studies of organizational
and professional commitment for accountants over the last
thirty years. The clear conclusion fromthese studies is that,
while some factors moderate the relationship, profession-
als seem to have adapted well to large bureaucratic organi-
zations while retaining their commitment to their
profession.
The proletarianization thesis, however, continues to
?nd support, primarily in ethnographic research. Qualita-
tive studies of the largest accounting ?rms (the ‘‘Big
Four”)
3
have shown that individual professionals are sub-
ject to a series of socialization practices or ‘‘disciplinary
techniques” designed to align professional and organiza-
tional goals and which constrain professional judgment
– in a variety of more or less subtle ways (Covaleski
et al., 1998; Dirsmith, Heian, & Covaleski, 1997). Such
research offers an obvious explanation for the absence of
organizational professional con?ict in survey-based
research; if organizations have replaced professional
schools and institutes as the primary means of profes-
sional socialization, individual professionals may not even
be aware of con?icts between professional and organiza-
tional norms and values.
Perhaps the strongest support for the proletarianization
thesis comes from the inside accounts of Enron and Arthur
Andersen. Evidence from the ongoing stream of post mor-
tem inquiries indicate that the professional judgment and
independence of Andersen auditors was compromised by
a variety of structural pressures that arose from changes
in the nature and organization of accounting work. These
structural pressures included, among others, the increas-
ingly intimate relationship between the audit team and
their client (Macey & Sale, 2003; Tof?er & Reingold,
2003), the co-production of audit and consulting work (Le-
vitt, 2002) and cultural changes within accounting ?rm
organizations (especially the largest ?rms) that empha-
sized pro?t and commercial gain at the expense of profes-
sional independence and objectivity (Wyatt, 2004; Zeff,
2003a; Zeff, 2003b).
4
The internal accounts from Arthur Andersen and the
ethnographies that support the proletarianization argu-
ment are consistent with broader theoretical descriptions
of how changes in the nature and context of professional
work have changed professional values. Brint (1994) ar-
gues that while the number of professionals in society is
rapidly increasing, the assumed gap in value preferences
between professionals and commercial businesspersons
is decreasing. He observes that the historical value set of
professionals as ‘‘social trustees” is being replaced by a va-
lue set of ‘‘professional expertise”. While the former value
set characterizes professional work as a ‘calling’ imbued
with obligations of public duty, the more current value
set views professional work in technocratic terms based
on the market value of their knowledge and expertise.
Modern professionals, Brint (1994, p. xx) observes, ‘‘only
rarely remark on the ‘social importance’ of their work.” A
similar shift in professional values has been observed by
Leicht and Fennell (2001) who add to the argument the
observation that the narrowing gap between ‘‘profession-
alism” and ‘‘managerialism” has been triggered by pro-
found changes in the institutional structure of
professional work.
Collectively, these accounts suggest the need to revisit
the underlying premises of organizational/professional
commitment (OPC) research. One of the more signi?cant
problems of such research is that it has been imported
into studies of professionals and professional service
?rms in toto from its origins in industrial and organiza-
tional psychology. Because of this history, OPC research
has tended to overemphasize organizational outcomes
that may arise from the tension between the organization
and the profession such as turnover and job satisfaction.
Too little attention has been paid to issues of interest that
are unique to professions, such as changes in core profes-
sional values. This oversight is best re?ected in the ways
in which professional commitment is measured. Typical
questions focus attention on an individual professional’s
participation in, and attitude toward, professional institu-
tions (i.e. professional associations, continuing education,
professional trade journals). Largely absent from these
3
The ‘‘Big Four” refers to the four largest international accounting ?rms
and consist of Deloitte and Touche, Ernst and Young, KPMG and Pricewa-
terhouseCoopers. In 1970 there were eight such ?rms but a series of
mergers in 1989 created the ‘‘Big Six”, the 1997 merger of Price Waterhouse
and Coopers & Lybrand reduced this to the ‘‘Big Five” and the recent
collapse of Arthur Andersen has left the ‘‘Big Four”. To be consistent, we
refer to this elite group of ?rms as the ‘‘Big Four” (as that was the status of
the ?rms at the time this research was conducted) except where context
suggests otherwise.
4
A few discordant voices (e.g., Tinker, 2002) have argued that accounting
professionalism and the related idea of a ‘‘golden age” have always been
?ctional. However, most studies on the matter point towards the idea of a
general reduction – but by no means homogeneous – in professional
accountants’ adherence to professional values.
R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427 411
Table 1
Prior studies of organizational professional commitment of accounting professionals.
Paper Subjects Professional commitment Organizational commitment
Construct Measurement Mean
(scale
of 5)
Construct Measurement Mean
(scale
of 5)
Aranya, Pollock,
and Amernic
(1981)
607 Canadian CAs in public practice Professional
commitment
15-item scale adapted from Porter, Steers, Mowday,
and Boulian’s (1974) organizational commitment
questionnaire
3.90 Organizational
commitment
15-item scale adopted
from Porter et al. (1974)
3.91
Aranya and
Ferris (1984)
1206 Canadian CAs and 810 California CPAs Professional
commitment
15-item scale employed in Aranya et al. (1981) 3.79 Organizational
commitment
15-item scale employed
in Aranya et al. (1981)
3.85
Lachman and
Aranya
(1986)
810 California CPAs Professional
commitment
15-item scale employed in Aranya et al. (1981) 3.84 Organizational
commitment
15-item scale employed
in Aranya et al. (1981)
4.00
Jeffrey and
Weatherholt
(1996)
102 US accountants (employed in Big Six ?rms) and
85 accountants employed at three Fortune 500
corporations
Professional
commitment
15-item scale employed in Aranya et al. (1981) 3.68 N/A N/A N/A
Lord and
DeZoort
(2001)
171 audit staff members from one international
accounting ?rm
Professional
commitment
15-item scale employed in Aranya et al. (1981) 3.62 Organizational
commitment
15-item scale employed
in Aranya et al. (1981)
3.71
Bamber and Iyer
(2002)
257 US CPAs, employed in Big Five ?rms Professional
identi?cation
Five-item scale adapted from Mael and Ashforth
(1992)
3.71 Organizational
identi?cation
Five-item scale adapted
from Mael and Ashforth
(1992)
4.26
Shafer, Lowe,
and Fogarty
(2002)
319 US CMAs Dedication to
the
profession
Four-item scale adapted from Hall’s (1968)
professionalism scale
3.64 N/A N/A N/A
The data reported in Table 1 is not exhaustive. It aims to provide a temporal template to assess the variability of professional and organizational commitment. Although the scales used by authors vary somewhat,
they nonetheless overlap signi?cantly – being related to the relationship between the individual and her/his profession/employing organization.
4
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measures is any indication of the degree to which profes-
sionals accept and acknowledge core professional values
of independence, and autonomy in controlling the context
of work.
A second shortcoming of past research is that it has
not paid suf?cient attention to changes in the context of
professional work. Previous studies tend to assume, for
example, that professionals who work in corporations as
in-house counsel or internal auditors are subject to signif-
icant bureaucratic pressures, but those who work in tradi-
tional professional service ?rms are not. In fact, Big Four
accounting ?rms are larger organizations than most For-
tune 500 corporations.
5
Moreover, work within large law
and accounting ?rms is increasingly fragmented and spe-
cialized, making work within professional service ?rms
much more similar to that of large bureaucracies (Leicht
& Fennell, 2001). It is also known that partner autonomy
in large accounting ?rms is now signi?cantly constrained,
as a result of a strengthening of professional control in
the aftermath of the collapse of Enron (Gibbins & Jamal,
2006).
A third shortcoming of prior research is that it fails to
adequately account for the ?ow of professional workers
into non-professional settings. Most prior literature was
based on the assumption that when professionals worked
in non-professional ?rms, they would be few in number
and, as a result, professionals would retain supervisory
control over other professionals (i.e. Scott, 1987). That is,
it was assumed that professionals would be able to recon-
struct the basic elements of a professional ?rm inside a
large bureaucratic organization. This is clearly no longer
the case. More contemporary studies demonstrate that
professionals in both corporations and professional part-
nerships are often subject to decisions about compensa-
tion and promotion made by non-professionals (Hafferty
& Light, 1995; Leicht & Fennell, 2001; Tolbert & Stern,
1991).
A fourth shortcoming of prior research is that while it
has focused attention on the migration of professionals
into bureaucratic work settings, it has failed to examine
the migration of non-professional work and non-profes-
sional workers into professional settings. Over the past
two decades, professional service ?rms have become mul-
tidisciplinary (Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005; Wyatt, 2004).
Big Four accounting ?rms offer traditional professional ser-
vices, such as audit and accounting work, in conjunction
with non-traditional services, like management consulting
and the provision of information technology services,
where professionals are asked to provide advice outside
their conventional professional training and jurisdiction.
Increasingly, large law and accounting ?rms are hiring
non-professionals, or professionals whose career has been
based in industry and government and who lack the social-
ization and training of a traditional professional service
?rm. As professionals engage in non-professional projects,
and work alongside employees who do not share profes-
sional norms and values, we might expect that professional
practice will, increasingly, be driven by logics and assump-
tions drawn from a managerial rather than a professional
perspective.
We seek to correct these de?ciencies by re-examining
the relative strength of ?ve competing value commit-
ments of individual accounting professionals across four
distinct variations in the context, content and location
of professional work. The ?ve competing value commit-
ments are to one’s profession, to the employing organiza-
tion, to clients, to the rigor and enforcement of
independence requirements, and to attitudes about the
value of the CA designation. We categorize these commit-
ments into two distinct logics. Following Friedson (2001),
Leicht and Fennell (2001), and Suddaby and Greenwood
(2005), we conceive of commitment to one’s profession,
and acceptance of the rigor and enforcement of indepen-
dence requirements as consistent with an ideal logic of
professionalism. Conversely, we categorize commitment
to one’s employing organization, a strong identi?cation
with clients and the espousal of the commercial value
of the CA designation as consistent with logic of manage-
rialism. We measure the relative strength of these com-
mitments across four distinct changes in the context of
professional work, each of which has been attributed as
a source for the erosion of ethics in the accounting profes-
sion: employment in non-traditional organizations;
engaging in non-traditional kinds of accounting work
(particularly management consulting); rank in organiza-
tional hierarchies; and the position of the employing ?rm
within the organizational ?eld. A brief description of
these changes, along with explicit hypotheses, is elabo-
rated in the following section.
Hypotheses: The increasing diversity of professional
work
Work context
Until relatively recently, most accounting professionals
in Canada worked in traditional professional partnerships.
That is, they worked in organizations controlled by other
professionals and in contexts where decisions about perfor-
mance and compensation were made by peers. The growth
of large organizations during the second half of the twenti-
eth century, however, created a new work context for
accountants, lawyers and related professionals who,
increasingly, were hired as ‘‘in-house” salaried employees
of corporations, government and related organizations (Ab-
bott, 1988; Derber & Schwartz, 1991). By the latter part of
the 1980s, in-house corporate law was the fastest growing
component of the labor market for lawyers (Curran, 1986;
Halliday, 1987), a trend which continued into the next dec-
ade (Leicht & Fennell, 1997).
The accounting profession has a long history, arguably
longer than the legal profession, of embedding individual
professionals in organizational settings. In North America
railroads were among the earliest private ?rms to hire
‘in-house’ accountants. By 1941 a formal professional
5
In 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers, the largest of the, now, Big Four
employed over 140,000 people. Its 2006 revenues of $22 billion US, were it
a publicly traded corporation, would have placed it 96th in the Fortune 500
list and it had more international of?ces than either Coca Cola or General
Motors (PwC, 2007).
R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427 413
association of internal auditors was incorporated in the US.
Over the next four decades an increasing proportion of
accounting professionals found work in large organiza-
tions, government and education, rather than the more
traditional work context of a public accounting partner-
ship. However, in the last two decades the migration of
accountants to non-traditional work settings appears to
have stabilized with about 40% of American Institute of
Certi?ed Public Accountants (‘‘AICPA”) members employed
in public accounting ?rms and the remaining 60% em-
ployed in industry, government, education and other work
contexts (AICPA, 2006). In Canada, the proportion of
accountants in public practice is quite similar (CICA,
2000); like the US, this ratio appears to have stabilized over
the past twenty years.
Critics have pointed to the shift away from public prac-
tice accounting as one of the primary sources of changes
in professional values in accounting. These arguments
take a variety of forms, each offering a variation of the
proletarianization argument described above. Some, for
example, suggest that because internal auditors and man-
agerial accountants are employees of, and subject to the
power structure of, an organization they are not able to
develop professional values of objectivity and indepen-
dence (Ziegenfuss, Singhapadki, & Martinson, 1994). Oth-
ers suggest that accountants working in industry
become highly specialized and, as a result, are not ex-
posed to the broad range of practical and ethical issues
available in public practice that are necessary to develop
sound professional judgment and values (Wyatt, 2004).
Most share the concern that, while formal accounting
education provides substantive skills and knowledge, it
is only through long exposure to the socialization prac-
tices of a traditional public accounting ?rm that individual
professionals can inculcate the idealistic norms, goals and
culture of the accounting profession. This was the conclu-
sion of Hastings and Hinings (1970), who found that char-
tered accountants in industry exhibited lower
commitment to professional values than did their coun-
terparts in public practice.
A key assumption in this debate is that the traditional
professional partnership offers an institutionalized mecha-
nism for the reproduction of core professional norms and
values. The historical ideal organizational form for profes-
sional work has been the sole practitioner (Seron, 1996).
In sole practice, organizational controls and pressures are
largely absent. Even as professional ?rms have grown in
size, researchers have observed that large professional
partnerships exhibit several key distinctions from corpora-
tions. In professional ?rms, the bulk of employees are pro-
fessionals who share the same training. Similarly the norms
and goals of the employing organization are aligned with
those of the rest of the profession (Scott, 1965; Wallace,
1995). Professional ?rms are, generally, less demanding in
terms of ?nancial accountability than are corporations
(Greenwood, Hinings, & Brown, 1990). In sum, professional
?rms, historically, have more strongly reinforced tradi-
tional professional norms and values than do corporate
forms of organization. At this point, it is useful to review
and clarify the notions of professional values and
professionalism.
Professionalism has long been recognized to encompass
two contradictory value clusters.
6
One component of pro-
fessionalism emphasizes the ideology of service in which
the professional is described as a guardian of the public
interest (Friedson, 2001, p. 123). In this discourse, profes-
sional values are thought to transcend commercial interests
and professionals construct identities that are independent
from both the state and consumers. Professional careers
are considered a ‘calling’ and professional associations pro-
mulgate rules and regulations that suppress commercial
activities such as advertising and overt intra-professional
competition. Professionals present themselves as being
above petty commercial interests because they serve a high-
er social function and espouse values of autonomy and
independence.
A competing value cluster, however, arises from the
reality that not only do professionals need to generate rev-
enue, like any other business, but they are placed in an ex-
tremely advantageous position to do so. Traditional
professions, for example, are granted some degree of eco-
nomic monopoly (Abbott, 1988; Larson, 1977). Until quite
recently, most professionals in North America were consid-
ered exempt from antitrust regulation and were free to ?x
prices for their services and discipline members who devi-
ated from established tariffs (Arthurs & Stager, 1990).
Commercialism, therefore, exists as an inherently contra-
dictory, and often suppressed, element of the institutional
logic of professionalism (Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005). In
sum, the two competing value clusters represent different
ways in which discourse constructs professionalism. Fur-
ther, the two clusters may affect one another. For example,
historically professionals have used the discourse of ideal-
type professionalism to legitimate projects that have con-
structed concrete social barriers around an economic and
occupational category (Gidney & Millar, 1994).
It is important to acknowledge that not only do these
competing logics become embedded in the routines and
mechanisms that reproduce professions, but that the de-
gree to which they are articulated will vary across different
work and organizational contexts. That is, the more
embedded an individual is in organizational structures that
are consistent with ideal-type professionalism, the more
likely they are to espouse values about the importance of
independence and autonomy in professional behavior
(Gendron, 2002). Or, as Larson (1977, p. 215) observes,
‘‘the farther one moves from the classic market situation
of the ‘‘free” personal professions, the more purely
6
We recognize that the notion of professionalism is used in distinct
ways in literature. Professionalism is sometimes conceived of as a very
instable notion which encompasses contradictory value clusters (for
instance, one which celebrates the ideology of public service and another
which emphasizes commercial interests). From this perspective, the
broader logic of professionalism is continuously subject to change as a
result of ongoing contests between value clusters. From a different
perspective, however, professionalism is seen as a more stable notion,
consisting of the ideal discourse of public service and disinterest in
commercial matters. While in this paper we often represent professional-
ism from the ?rst perspective (i.e., as an encompassing notion), our ?ndings
and conclusions would not be signi?cantly altered if we had instead relied
on the second perspective. Whether or not the two perspectives are
reconcilable is beyond the objective of this paper.
414 R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427
ideological do the professional claims of disinterestedness
and universality of service become.”
Drawing on the above, it can be hypothesized that as
individual professionals migrate to non-traditional work
contexts, they will be less likely to espouse the core logic
and values of ideal-type professionalism and more likely
to adopt a managerial logic.
Hypothesis 1. Professionals who work in non-traditional
contexts are more likely to adopt a managerial logic than
professionals who work in traditional contexts.
Speci?cally, we predict that accountants working in tra-
ditional public practice ?rms will be more likely to espouse
commitment to their profession than to their employing
organization than accountants working in government,
private corporations and other contexts outside the profes-
sional partnership. Similarly, accountants working in tradi-
tional public practice ?rms will be more likely to
acknowledge the importance of core professional institu-
tions enforcing the rigor of professional independence than
accountants working in government and industry. Con-
versely, we expect that accountants who work outside
the traditional professional partnership will be more likely
to espouse the logic and values of commercialism. That is,
we expect that in contrast to their counterparts in public
practice they will be less likely to express commitment
to their profession and more likely to express commitment
to their employing organization. Similarly we expect they
will be more likely to identify with their clients and to
acknowledge the commercial signi?cance of their CA
designation.
Work content
One of the most signi?cant changes in the context of
accounting work over the previous four decades is the dra-
matic expansion in the scope of activities performed by
accountants. Core activities of accountants, since the
1930s, have been the provision of audit and accounting
services. Increasingly, however, and particularly since the
1970s, a broad array of non-core expertise and services,
all of which fall under the broad category of ‘‘management
consulting”, were added to the portfolio of large audit
?rms (Suddaby et al., 2007). These services were consid-
ered natural extensions of the audit function and were jus-
ti?ed on the basis that the provision of such services
actually improved the audit (Berardino, 2000). Consulting
services, particularly the provision of information technol-
ogy services to large corporations, were very pro?table and
by 2000 more than half of the revenue of Big Five ?rms was
derived from non-core services. More signi?cant, perhaps,
is the observation that, by the same year, 96% of publicly
traded companies received non-audit services from their
auditors (Abbott, Parker, Peters, & Raghunadan, 2003).
Critics, including the US Securities and Exchange Com-
mission, argued that the simultaneous provision of audit
and consulting services could seriously impair the profes-
sional judgment and independence of the auditor. Such
impairment could occur directly, by clients threatening to
reduce lucrative consulting contracts if certain question-
able accounting practices were not overlooked in their
audit. However, it is recognized that the threat to profes-
sional judgment created by consulting services has also
been oftentimes more subtle – in that consulting intro-
duced a new logic into audit ?rms that gradually rein-
forced the in?uence of managerialism and progressively
undermined ideal professional values and judgment.
Wyatt (2004, pp. 47–48), a former Andersen partner, de-
scribes the cultural shift that occurred inside accounting
?rms as a result of the migration away from core audit
services:
‘‘Increasing numbers of new hires joined the organiza-
tion without any accounting background in their col-
lege education. They progressed within the ?rm
without any accounting training and likely with little
or no understanding or appreciation of the level of pro-
fessionalism that accounting ?rm personnel were
expected to meet in the conduct of their engagements.
Likewise, these individuals progressed without neces-
sarily having been exposed to the accounting rules of
professional conduct, although they did have to abide
by the internal rules on restricted investments, a neces-
sity that became increasingly distasteful for consulting
personnel in the ‘‘go–go” markets of the 1990s. As the
consulting practices grew, the numbers of nonaccount-
ing-trained personnel likewise grew. These people were
not paraprofessionals, but rather they were relatively
high-paid personnel with strong skill sets in areas with
little or no relation to accounting or auditing. Their
numbers grew rapidly, and their success in generating
high-margin fees gave them an increasing voice in ?rm
management. [...] The relative success of the consul-
tants created enormous pressure on the auditing and
tax practice, both to grow revenues and increase mar-
gins. The successes in the consulting practice increas-
ingly in?uenced behavior by auditing and tax leaders
and the impact of these behavioral changes gradually
affected the behavior patterns of audit and tax person-
nel as well. Improved pro?tability became the key
focus.”
Wyatt reports that the introduction of new practices
changed promotional criteria within ?rms; the ability to
cross-sell consulting services as part of audit arrangements
was a key issue when professionals were evaluated for
partnership.
We argue that the shift away from core audit and
accounting services is a key factor in shaping the mindset
of the individual professional. Most particularly, we be-
lieve that professionals who work primarily in the provi-
sion of non-core services are more likely to display
characteristics, attitudes and values consistent with a com-
mercial rather than an ‘‘ideal professional” orientation. In
sum, we predict that professionals whose work content
falls outside the traditional areas of audit and accounting
will be more embedded in a managerial logic than their
counterparts whose work content falls in these traditional
areas.
Hypothesis 2. Professionals who deliver work content in
non-traditional professional services are more likely to
R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427 415
adopt a managerial logic than professionals who deliver
work content in traditional professional services.
Speci?cally, we expect that professionals whose work
content is in non-traditional areas will be more likely to
express commitment to their employing organization and
to identify with their clients, and less likely to express
commitment to their profession or to the need to enforce
the rigor of professional independence than their counter-
parts whose work falls into traditional content areas. Sim-
ilarly, we expect that professionals whose work content is
in non-traditional areas will be less likely to describe their
career as a ‘calling’ and are more apt to justify their career
choice in utilitarian terms.
Location within the organization
A third potential source of erosion of professional val-
ues arises from an individual’s hierarchical position within
an organization. Previous research has determined that the
con?ict between organizational and professional commit-
ment decreases as one rises to the level of partner within
professional ?rms (Sorensen, 1967; Sorensen & Sorensen,
1974). Aranya and Ferris (1984) also found that the level
of organizational and professional con?ict varied inversely
with hierarchical position and further observed that the
con?ict measures were higher in non-professional (i.e.
non-traditional work contexts) organizations than in pub-
lic practice ?rms. Several explanations have been offered
to account for these results. One is that as professionals
get more experience, they are better able to reconcile con-
?icting values between organization and profession. An-
other is that senior partners have more at risk in their
employment relationship and thus are more likely to com-
mit to their employing organization (Aranya & Ferris,
1984). Both explanations are consistent with the adapta-
tion thesis; that is, as professionals become more en-
trenched in organizations they devise mechanisms to
resolve con?icts that arise in norms and values between
profession and organization.
Leicht and Fennell (1997) argue that this early re-
search actually understates the in?uence of organizational
rank on professionals because it was conducted during a
time when, even in bureaucratic settings, professional
autonomy and controls were still intact. That is, through
the creation of Chinese walls and related bureaucratic de-
vices, professionals were able to maintain norms of peer
review even in corporate settings. In contemporary corpo-
rate settings, however, competitive pressures to generate
revenue and reduce costs have drastically reduced the
ability of in-house professionals to resist bureaucratic
pressures. Traditional public practice ?rms, such as the
Big Four, are no exception as the dramatic growth in
the scale and scope of their operations along with
increasing competitive pressures to generate revenue
have made these organizations appear more like bureau-
cratic or corporate organizational forms than ideal-type
professional partnerships. For both in-house professionals
and those employed in large professional partnerships,
career progress and mobility appears to have become
more strati?ed and more subject to isomorphic pressure
from organizations (Abbott, 1988). An important conse-
quence of this is that professional norms become more
subordinated to managerial concerns (Kunda, 1992), par-
ticularly as one’s career progresses up the organizational
hierarchy (Leicht & Fennell, 2001).
Based on these prior ?ndings, therefore, we predict that
professionals of higher rank in an organization are more
likely to adopt a managerial logic than those professionals
of lower rank in the organization.
Hypothesis 3. Professionals of higher rank in an organi-
zation are more likely to adopt a managerial logic than
professionals of lower rank.
Speci?cally, we expect high ranking organizational pro-
fessionals to express stronger commitment to their organi-
zation and their clients, and are less likely to accept the
espoused logic of the need of professional institutions to
enforce independence than professionals of lower or inter-
mediate rank. Professionals of higher rank will be more
likely to view their career in utilitarian terms.
Location in an organizational ?eld
Institutional theory offers a slightly different way of
interpreting the profound contextual changes in the nature
of accounting work with different predictions about where,
across the spectrum of accounting practice, we will ?rst
observe the erosion of norms and practices that underpin
the idealistic logic of professionalism. A prominent way
of understanding institutional change is to focus on the
role of central and peripheral organizations within an orga-
nizational ?eld. Peripheral actors are usually thought to be
more likely to initiate institutional change because they
are less embedded within their ?eld and are more able to
resist coercive, normative and cognitive pressures (Garud,
Jain, & Kumaraswamy, 2002; Ingram, 1998; Kraatz & Zajac,
1996; Lawrence, Hardy, & Phillips, 2002; Leblebici, Sala-
ncik, Copay, & King, 1991).
While there is considerable evidence that peripheral ac-
tors are more likely to initiate institutional change, there
are some prominent examples where actors centrally posi-
tioned in the ?eld act as change agents. This is particularly
the case in the professions where, both in law (Sherer &
Lee, 2002) and accounting (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006;
Greenwood, Suddaby, & Hinings, 2002), prominent and
large partnerships were the ?rst to adopt organizational
reforms. The largest accounting ?rms were the ?rst to
adopt multidisciplinary practices because their powerful
position within the ?eld exposed them to new ideas and
gave them the capacity to resist institutional pressures
and norms (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006). By embracing
multidiciplinarity, however, the largest accounting ?rms
moved away from the jurisdictional and normative centre
of their ?eld. Anecdotal accounts of the evolution of bigger
accounting ?rms also emphasize that, between 1980 and
2000, these ?rms moved from being the cornerstone of
the accounting profession to more like their Fortune 500
clients (Wyatt, 2004). It is reasonable to argue that over
this time period, the biggest ?rms evolved away from
being a central component of the accounting ?eld to be-
come a peripheral member of Fortune 500.
416 R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427
The shifting position of large accounting ?rms between
professional and corporate ?elds is re?ected in changes
over time in studies of the relationship between ?rm size
and attitudes of individual accountants to ethics and pro-
fessionalism. In an early study, Loeb (1971) found that
accountants in large public accounting ?rms held stronger
ethical values than did accountants in smaller public
accounting ?rms. In contrast, a more recent study by Goe-
tz, Morrow, and McElroy (1991) found that accountants in
the smallest public accounting ?rms expressed stronger
identi?cation with core professional values than accoun-
tants in the largest ?rms. An obvious explanation for the
difference in outcomes is that, in the twenty years that
separate these two studies, the large accounting ?rms have
become dramatically larger and have shifted in their ?eld
position to identify more closely with corporate bureaucra-
cies than traditional professional partnerships.
Based on these prior theoretical and empirical observa-
tions, we predict that deviation from commitment norms
among individual accounting professionals will be most
profound among those accounting professionals employed
by the Big Four accounting ?rms. That is, we think that the
very largest accounting ?rms have, over the course of the
past 25 years, migrated away from the accounting profes-
sion and now occupy a position in the organizational ?eld
of the world’s largest commercial organizations. As a result
of this migration, the Big Four ?rms have lost the motiva-
tion and means by which traditional professional values
are reproduced. We expect, therefore, that employees of
Big Four accounting ?rms will be the most likely loci with-
in which we will observe an erosion of commitment to the
profession and to core professional values.
Hypothesis 4. Professionals employed in ?rms on the
periphery of the organizational ?eld are more likely to
adopt a managerial logic than professionals employed in
?rms that occupy the centre of the ?eld.
Speci?cally, Big Four accountants will express stronger
commitment to their organization and stronger identi?ca-
tion with their clients, and be less likely to accept the role
of traditional professional institutions in enforcing the rig-
ors of independence than professionals employed in med-
ium or small accounting ?rms. Similarly, Big Four
accountants will be more likely to view their CA designa-
tion in instrumental terms and less likely to see their pro-
fessional career as a ‘calling’ than professionals employed
in medium or small ?rms.
Measures
Dependent variables
Organizational commitment
Organizational commitment is typically characterized
by three factors: a strong belief in and acceptance of the
goals and values of an organization; expressed willingness
to exert effort on behalf of the organization; and a strong
identi?cation with the organization and an expressed de-
sire to maintain organizational membership (Price, 1997).
These factors were captured with six questions drawn
from Mowaday, Porter, and Steers (1979) organizational
commitment questionnaire instrument. The questions that
comprise these measures, and the measures that are de-
scribed below, are reproduced in Table 2. All questions
were measured on a ?ve-point Likert Scale ranging from
1 = ‘‘strongly disagree” to 5 = ‘‘strongly agree”; one ques-
tion is reverse coded. Cronbach’s a for organizational com-
mitment is 0.79.
Professional commitment
Measures of professional commitment assess the ‘‘rela-
tive strength of identi?cation with and involvement in
one’s profession” (Morrow & Wirth, 1989, p. 41) and cap-
ture the degree to which members care about, are dedi-
cated to and express pride in being a member of a
profession (Wallace, 1995). We used seven items for this
measure. The Cronbach’s a for the professional commit-
ment items is 0.82.
Also, relying on insights gained from qualitative inter-
views we developed three new variables: client commit-
ment; commitment to the core professional value of
independence; and a utilitarian/commercial view of one’s
professional designation.
7
Each measure is described in
turn.
Client commitment
Client commitment is a measure designed to assess the
degree to which a public accountant identi?es with and is
motivated by the demands and goals of his or her clients.
The three questions, shown in Table 2, are adapted from
measures of organizational and professional commitment
and were pre-tested with three practitioners, three direc-
tors of accounting professional associations in Canada
and three academic accountants. The items produced a
Cronbach’s a of 0.78, indicating a high degree of reliability
of the items.
The rigor and enforcement of professional independence
This measure is designed to assess the degree to which
respondents accept the historical norm of independence as
a core professional value (Abbott, 1988; Friedson, 2001).
Independence is de?ned here as a ?rm commitment to
professional standards rather than the demands of clients.
We identi?ed four items to measure the degree to which
respondents accept the importance of the rigor and
enforcement of independence requirement by professional
institutions (shown in Table 2). The items were also pre-
tested with our panel of accounting professionals and
7
The qualitative interviews were aimed at developing a better under-
standing of the ties between individual accountants and their profession.
Fifteen experienced Canadian CAs were interviewed in late 2000 and early
2001, several months before the collapse of Enron: seven public accoun-
tants; three practitioners in industry; and ?ve directors of the Canadian
Institute of Chartered Accountants or provincial institutes of CAs. We
restrained our interviews to CAs occupying high hierarchical functions
because these individuals went through and were able to observe
signi?cant changes in the accounting profession, such as the emergence
of multidisciplinary ?rms and the commodi?cation of ?nancial auditing. All
interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed, and were conducted by
one, or two of the authors.
R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427 417
academics. The Cronbach’s a for these items is 0.75, again,
indicating a high degree of reliability between the items.
Attitude to the value of the CA designation
This ?nal measure is designed to assess the degree to
which respondents view their designation as a chartered
accountant in instrumental terms. An interesting ?nding
from our initial qualitative inquiry is the emerging percep-
tion that a professional designation means different things
for individual professionals depending on their work con-
text. For some, the CA designation represents a measure
of intellectual achievement and standing in a professional
community. For others, the designation is simply a means
to an end. The former group indicated that they display,
with pride, their designation on business cards and letter-
heads, even when their day-to-day work did not require a
professional designation. The latter group, by contrast, was
strategic about the use and display of their designation and
in many cases, particularly when working primarily in con-
sulting, strategically omitted their designation from busi-
ness cards and letterhead.
We conclude, from this preliminary study, that some
accountants identify with their accounting designation in
purely instrumental or careerist terms – i.e. as a means
of enhancing earnings, while others view their accounting
designation in ‘ideal-professional’ terms – i.e. as a measure
of status and integrity. Based on our initial qualitative
study, and the responses of our pre-test group, we identi-
?ed four items designed to tap into respondents’ feeling
that being a chartered accountant served utilitarian pur-
poses of career and ?nancial reward, rather than a public
duty or calling. The Cronbach’s a for the items in this mea-
sure is 0.73.
Independent variables
Respondents were categorized in their work setting by
indicating the type of ?rm they were employed in (public
accounting ?rm, corporation, government, not for pro?t,
education or other). Information on organizational rank
was gathered in two ways. Respondents in public account-
ing were asked to indicate if they were a partner, manager,
senior, junior or ‘other’ rank. All others selected their rank
from the categories of top, middle, junior manager or
‘other’ rank. In analyzing the rank data, partners (public
practice) and top managers (non-public practice) are in-
cluded as ‘‘top level managers” (see note 2 in Table 3 for
further details).
Respondents were categorized as working primarily in
core accounting work if more than half their time was
spent working in the areas of accounting and auditing.
While tax is often considered a core area of accounting
along with auditing (Abbott, 1988), the profession’s inde-
pendence requirements are generally not binding for tax
work, nor are accountants granted an exclusive monopoly
over tax advice, making it somewhat removed from the
core activities of the profession. Our decision to include
tax as a non-core activity, thus, was based on two observa-
tions. First, our qualitative interviews with senior accoun-
tants indicated that tax was professionally distinct from
Table 2
Measurement of variables: questions.
Organizational commitment
1. I am proud to tell my friends that I am part of my current employer/?rm
2. When someone criticizes my current employer/?rm, it feels like a personal insult
3. I hope to be working for my current employer/?rm until I retire
4. My current job gives me considerable opportunity for freedom in how I do the work
5. I seriously intend to look for a job at another employer/?rm within the next year. (Reversely coded)
6. My own sense of who I am (i.e. my personal identity) overlaps to a great extent with my own sense of what my current employer/?rm represents
Professional commitment
1. My CA is a signi?cant part of my working life
2. I am extremely glad that I chose this profession over others I was considering at the time I joined
3. I consider the CA designation as a signi?cant accomplishment in my career
4. I am proud to tell my friends that I am a CA
5. I identify myself as a CA in my working environment
6. I feel pride when I see other CAs being recognized
7. I deeply care about the future of the CA profession
Client commitment
1. When someone praises my largest client, it feels like a personal compliment
2. When I talk about my largest client, I usually say ‘‘we” rather than ‘‘they”
3. The successes of my largest client are my successes
Rigor and enforcement of independence requirements
1. I believe that independence is one of the main foundations of the CA profession
2. I believe that the profession’s independence requirements need to be strictly enforced in every sphere of activities in which public accounting ?rms
are involved
3. I think the profession would be better off if the profession’s independence requirements for CAs in public practice were more rigorous
4. I think that the business community in general would be better off if the profession’s independence requirements for CAs in public practice were
more rigorous
Value of the CA designation
1. The CA designation is a very good foundation to start a career in business
2. The CA designation has contributed to a large extent to my career
3. The CA designation provides the opportunity to earn suf?cient ?nancial rewards
4. The CA designation provides a lot of ?exibility in employment opportunities
418 R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427
audit because auditing contained a higher objective ‘third-
party’ duty to the shareholders. Tax, by contrast, invites an
accountant to become more closely aligned with the client,
much like the subjective alignment between a lawyer and
her client. Second, this categorization is borne out by pro-
fessional legislation in North America which gives accoun-
tants a closed professional jurisdiction with respect to
audit work but not with respect to tax. Respondents who
indicated less than half their time is spent in audit and
accounting were categorized as ‘‘non-core”.
8
Finally, respondents in public accounting ?rms were
categorized as being employed in one of four size group-
ings of ?rms: Big Four; medium (see Table 3), small (all
others except sole practitioners) and sole practitioners.
This categorization scheme follows that commonly ac-
cepted in the Canadian accounting industry and is identical
to the categorizations used in the trade publication The
Bottom Line.
Analysis
Because the intent of this study is to offer a preliminary
exploration of shifts in value and logic orientation within
the accounting profession across different contexts of
work, we focus analytic attention on measuring the degree
of difference in attitudes and commitment of individual
accountants in different work arrangements. We use anal-
ysis of variance (ANOVA) to measure these differences. AN-
OVA is particularly suitable for analysis involving
independent categorical variables with continuous depen-
dent variables and has a wider application than the two-
sample t-test as it can simultaneously test for differences
in means across more than two categorical groups.
9
Post
hoc analyses in ANOVA also allow us to identify precisely
where signi?cant differences between categories have
occurred.
Method
Data was collected with a bilingual, online survey that
sampled more than 7000 Canadian chartered accountants
in four provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia,
and Québec).
10
The membership of these four provinces in
Table 3
Demographic data of respondents.
Dimension Alberta British Columbia Nova Scotia Québec Total
c
No. % No. % No. % No. % No. %
Gender
Female 90 31 150 31 88 33 92 33 420 32
Male 197 69 341 69 175 67 186 67 899 68
287 100 491 100 263 100 278 100 1319 100
Organizational type
Big Four ?rm 29 10 72 15 20 7 20 7 141 11
Medium accounting ?rm
a
12 4 28 6 25 9 20 7 85 6
Smaller accounting ?rm 55 19 102 21 44 15 38 14 239 18
Sole practitioner 32 11 44 9 17 6 20 7 113 8
Total in public accounting 128 45 246 51 106 37 98 36 578 43
Industry 113 40 151 31 119 41 103 38 486 37
Government 20 7 43 9 30 10 49 18 142 11
Other 25 9 44 9 34 12 22 8 125 9
286 100 484 100 289 100 272 100 1331 100
Hierarchical position
b
Higher 135 48 221 46 148 52 129 47 633 48
Middle 117 42 228 47 107 37 118 43 570 43
Lower 15 5 22 5 16 6 11 4 64 5
Other 12 4 13 3 16 6 16 6 57 4
279 100 484 100 287 100 274 100 1324 100
a
Respondents were speci?ed that medium accounting ?rms include the following: BDO Dunwoody; BHD Canada; Collins Barrow/Mintz and Partners;
Grant Thornton; HLB/Schwartz Levitsky Feldman; Mallette Maheu; Meyers Norris and Penny; and Richer, Usher and Vineberg. These ?rms employ a
professional staff that varies from 228 to 1610 individuals (The Bottom Line, 2002).
b
The higher hierarchical position comprises partners (public accounting) and top managers (non-public accounting settings). The middle position
comprises managers and seniors (public accounting) and middle managers (non-public accounting settings). The lower position includes juniors (public
accounting) and junior managers (non-public accounting settings).
c
The numbers do not add up to the total response number because of missing information. A number of respondents did not clearly indicate their
af?liated provincial institute.
8
While tax has been considered a non-core activity in this paper, we
understand that this categorization may be subject to challenge. Accord-
ingly, we re-ran the statistics with tax included as a core activity. Although
there are some differences in the two sets of analyses, the major ?ndings as
indicated in the ‘Discussion’ section are not affected.
9
As one of the fundamental assumptions of ANOVA is homogeneity of
the variance a ‘homogeneity of variance’ test was conducted with every
analysis. Where this assumption was violated, the Browne Forsythe test
was used to determine if the results are comparable to the ANOVA F-
statistics and p-values and whether any adjustments to the interpretation
of the results would be needed. The results of the two tests were found to
be comparable.
10
The second author, who is ?uent in both French and English, translated
all of the questions (originally formulated in English) in French. The French
questionnaire was subsequently checked for clarity by four individuals: one
director of the Ordre des comptables agréés du Québec; one retired CGA
and his wife; and one academic in sociology. Only minor modi?cations
resulted from their comments.
R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427 419
2001 represented 48% of the total number of CAs in Can-
ada.
11
The questionnaire gathered information on the
respondents’ current job, their articling experience, mea-
sures of professional and organizational commitment, and
the degree to which they characterized their career in utili-
tarianism terms. Most questions were randomized
– although the order of the sections was not.
12
Data collection started several months after the collapse
of Arthur Andersen, in the last quarter of 2002, and ended
mid-January, 2003. Table 3 summarizes descriptive data on
the sample.
A request to participate in the survey was sent by each
of the four provincial institutes to a randomized sample of
7169 active members. Prospective participants were in-
formed of: the purpose of the survey; an estimate of com-
pletion time (about 20 m); brief biographies of the
researchers; details about con?dentiality; a hyperlink or
address to the appropriate website as well as the required
username and password to log in. Two reminders, approx-
imately 10 and 20 days after the initial request, were sent
to individuals included in the original sample.
13
A total of 1606 members responded to the question-
naire. Of these, over 1200 respondents on average were
usable for each full set of analyses. The response rates by
province are as follows: British Columbia 20.5%, Nova Sco-
tia 20.1%, and Québec 11.7%.
14
To assess howwell our sample represents the population
we compared the gender, organizational type andhierarchi-
cal position of our respondents with provincial data on
membership. The gender split of our sample is nearly iden-
tical to that of the underlying population. Similarly, the
organizational type proportions in Alberta, Nova Scotia
and Québec closely approximate that of the population.
Our sample from British Columbia, however, appears to
over-represent members in public practice (51% of our
respondents, versus 36% of the underlying population). We
also seem to have a disproportionate number of high rank-
ing respondents (46–52%, depending upon the province)
as compared to the underlying population (29–35%).
15
While we do not know the exact reason for this difference,
we suspect that respondents might have in?ated their rank
status inthesurveydue toegocentrismor social desirability.
These differences between sample and population need to
be taken into account when interpreting the results.
We also assessed the validity of our sample by compar-
ing early and late responses, based on the assumption that
late responses offer good proxies for non-respondents
(Roberts, 1999). A comparison of sample means of these
two groups using t-tests indicate there were no signi?cant
differences between the two groups on most variables of
interest in this study.
16
Results
Work context
Table 4 presents the results of the ANOVA analysis of
the comparison of commitments between professionals
employed in traditional (i.e. public practice) and non-tradi-
tional (government, corporations and other) work settings.
The results demonstrate statistically signi?cant differences
between professionals employed in public practice organi-
zations and non-traditional work settings across each of
the dependant variables.
Public practice accountants are more committed to
their profession than are those who migrated to non-tradi-
tional work settings (F = 40.21, p < .001), thus offering sup-
port for the argument that public practice accountants
have a stronger connection to the institutional logic of pro-
fessionalism. This result is consistent with the prediction
of Hypothesis 1, that accountants who work in the tradi-
tional ideal of a public practice partnership are more clo-
sely aligned with traditional professional values.
The results, however, do not uniformly support our
assumptions of public practice as the repository of ideal-
type professionalism. Accountants in public practice also
report higher degrees of organizational commitment
(F = 35.57, p < .001). Public practice accountants also ap-
pear to be more likely to view their accounting designation
in commercial terms (F = 4.05, p < .05). Moreover, mem-
bers of public accounting ?rms are less likely than mem-
bers practicing in-house in private industry or
government to support the rigor and enforcement of pro-
fessional independence (F = 132.94, p < .001).
11
We asked the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario to
participate but were unable to obtain permission to contact their
membership. Despite this we have no reason to believe the absence of
respondents from Ontario biased our results.
12
A copy of the survey instrument is available from the ?rst author.
13
A temporary cookie was placed on the respondent’s computer once s/he
initially answered the survey to ensure that people would only complete
the survey once. We were unable to send speci?c reminders in Alberta due
to changes in the institute’s information technology system. As a result, we
were unable to calculate a response rate for Alberta comparable with the
rate for the other provinces.
14
Although somewhat low, these response rates compare favorably to
contemporary large scale surveys of accountants – See Bamber and Iyer
(2002) (22.8%); Elias (2002) (15.2%) and Valentine and Fleischman (2003)
(9.5%). The lower response rate in Québec may be due to various reasons –
including doubt as to whether researchers from English-speaking univer-
sities were able to conceive a meaningful questionnaire in French. One
French-speaking respondent indeed sent an e-mail to us after having
completed the survey, highlighting that he almost decided not to answer
the survey for this reason, and how surprised he was about the high quality
of the French questionnaire.
15
In three institutes members voluntarily provide information on their
hierarchical position. In two institutes, data on hierarchical position was
available for about 30% of the membership. In the third institute the
corresponding proportion is 82%.
16
In accordance with Roberts (1999), we assessed non-response bias, for
each of the provincial institutes, by comparing early (i.e. the earliest 25%
responding in each province) and late respondents (i.e. the latest 25%
responding in each province). A comparison of the means of all dependent
and independent variables of interest (as speci?ed in Tables 4–7), as well as
the general demographic variables of age and gender, found little difference
between early and late respondents. In general, independent-sample t-tests
did not reveal signs of signi?cant non-response bias, except that late
respondents were slightly older, they occupied more senior ranks within
their employing organizations, and there were fewer late respondents from
mid-size ?rms. However, two of such differences disappeared with a
different method of comparing early and late respondents (using the cut-off
point of 20 days from the survey start date in the province, i.e., around the
second reminder time). These results suggest that there is unlikely to be a
systematic bias due to differences between those who responded and those
who did not.
420 R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427
These results paint an interesting, if somewhat confus-
ing, picture. Clearly there are statistically signi?cant differ-
ences in attitudes and commitments to various elements of
professionalism between those practitioners who migrated
to more bureaucratic forms of practice and those who re-
mained in traditional professional partnerships. The results
regarding commitment to one’s profession and one’s orga-
nization are consistent with prior research on organiza-
tional professional con?ict. That is, there does not appear
to be inherent contradiction between commitment to one’s
profession and commitment to the person’s employing
organization, at least in public practice ?rms. Professionals
in traditional professional service ?rms have higher mean
scores on both forms of commitment. Indeed, the results
seem to demonstrate that accountants in public practice
are more engaged in both their organizational and profes-
sional environments than are those who work in govern-
ment and industry.
More surprising, however, is the observation that
accountants in public practice are more likely to view their
professional designation in utilitarian terms than are
accountants in industry and government. While this result
is consistent with common interpretations of recent scan-
dals in the audit profession, it offers a somewhat unsettling
view of professionalism in public accounting ?rms as
devaluing the intrinsic value of professional work. It is sim-
ilarly surprising that accountants in public practice are less
supportive of the rigorous enforcement of professional
independence. While this, again, is consistent with wide-
spread understandings of the events surrounding Enron,
it suggests that the traditional professional partnership
has failed to reproduce core values of the coercive role of
professional institutions. The results also reinforce the
important point made earlier regarding the limitations of
classic attitudinal instruments (such as the professional
commitment instrument) imported from other ?elds into
studies of professionals without careful adaptation to con-
text. As a result of this methodological oversight, the study
of accounting (predicated on such instruments) may have
developed in a void, within a world grounded on myths
(Hopwood, 1979).
In sum, we can conclude that the hypothesis that the lo-
gic of ideal-type professionalism is better preserved in tra-
ditional professional partnerships is, on balance, not
supported. While accountants in traditional work contexts
retain high commitment to their profession, they tend to
see their professional designation more in utilitarian or
commercial terms, and are less committed to traditional
notions of the enforcement of independence by profes-
sional institutions than accountants who work in non-tra-
ditional contexts.
Work content
Table 5 shows how attitudes and commitments of
accountants differ when comparing professionals who
work primarily in traditional or core services of accounting
and auditing versus those whose work involves less tradi-
tional services. There is no statistically signi?cant differ-
ence between the two groups in terms of their
commitment to the profession or with respect to their util-
itarian attitudes about a professional career. As predicted
in Hypothesis 2, however, accountants working outside
of core accounting are more committed to their employing
organization (F = 10.77, p < .001). Also, in support of
Hypothesis 2, accountants in non-traditional types of work
identify more closely with their clients (F = 5.74, p = .017).
Somewhat surprisingly, accountants working in less
Table 4
Context of work: means, standard deviations and analysis of variance – public practice versus industry, government and other.
Work setting Organizational
commitment
Professional
commitment
Independence
enforcement
Utilitarian view of CA
designation
Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D.
Public practice 23.17 4.93 30.26 3.56 14.49 3.11 17.33 2.09
Industry, government and other 21.53 4.55 28.90 4.19 16.26 2.55 17.09 2.28
F 35.57
***
40.21
***
132.94
***
4.05
*
*
p < .05.
***
p < .001.
Table 5
Content of work: means, standard deviations and analysis of variance: core versus non-core work.
Type of work Organizational
commitment
Professional
commitment
Client
commitment
Independence
enforcement
Utilitarian view of CA
designation
Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D.
Core 21.59 4.65 29.6 3.82 9.05 2.79 15.15 2.99 17.14 2.10
Non-core 22.55 4.82 29.4 4.10 9.65 3.10 15.65 2.91 17.20 2.28
F 10.77
***
.989 5.74
*
8.71
**
.195
*
p < .05.
**
p < .01.
***
p < .001.
R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427 421
traditional areas report higher commitment to the core
professional role of independence enforcement (F = 8.71,
p < .01) than do their counterparts in core accounting.
In general, the results support the notion that as
accountants migrate to different forms of work, their com-
mitment to their employing organization and their clients
increases. The results, therefore, offer support for the argu-
ment that professional norms are compromised when pro-
fessionals engage in, or are exposed to, non-professional
work. The ?ndings are tempered, however, by the signi?-
cantly lower commitment toward independence enforce-
ment by those accountants working in the core areas of
accounting.
Position in organization
In conducting this analysis we chose to focus on differ-
ences between two categories of professionals: top level
professionals (i.e. partners and senior managers) and all
others. We do so for two reasons. First, professional service
?rms are relatively ?at hierarchical structures with essen-
tially two ranks, partners and associates (Galanter & Palay,
1991; Greenwood et al., 1990). This simple division is lar-
gely replicated in corporations, government organizations
and other ‘in-house’ positions where professionals adopt
one of two identities; an in-house professional or a top
manager (Gunz & Gunz, 2006). Second, there is substantial
evidence that, as a result of socialization processes, top le-
vel managers inculcate unique value orientations and atti-
tudes (Buchanan, 1974). By dividing the professionals into
these two distinct categories of rank (top level and other)
we seek to assess the degree to which professional atti-
tudes and values may have been eroded as a consequence
of assuming a superior management position within an
organization.
Table 6 shows the results for how commitments and
attitudes vary between top level professionals and all other
professionals on each of the variables. The results indicate
statistically signi?cant differences exist between profes-
sionals who occupy the top positions in their employing
organizations and lower ranking professionals in all areas
except for attitudes regarding the rigorous enforcement
of independence by professional institutes. Top managers
are more committed to their organization (F = 308.83,
p < .001), their profession (F = 22.89, p < .001), their clients
(F = 31.63, p < .001), and are more likely to describe their
professional accounting designation in utilitarian terms
(F = 32.36, p < .001) than are professionals in lower levels
of an organization.
Broadly interpreted, the results offer support for the
argument that migration up the ranks of an organization
dampens some elements of professionalism, particularly
the notion that a professional designation acquires more
instrumental value as one rises in rank in an organization.
Similarly, the results offer strong support for the notion
that professionals of high-rank in an organization are more
likely to adopt a ‘managerial’ logic of identi?cation with
their clients. The support is not uniform, however, in that
top managers exhibit higher degrees of commitment to
both their employing organization and their profession.
Although this result is inconsistent with the broader argu-
ment that organizational rank erodes professionalism, it
may be explained in part by Leicht and Fennell’s (2001)
theory of role reversal in which elite managers appear to
be adopting select attributes of professionalism. Alterna-
tively, the results are also consistent with the argument
made earlier regarding the limitations of attitudinal instru-
ments imported in toto from other ?elds.
Position in the organizational ?eld
Table 7 demonstrates how attitudes toward profession-
alism and commitment differ between public practice
accountants who work in organizations of different size.
We hypothesized that, because the Big Four ?rms now oc-
cupy a peripheral position in the organizational ?eld of
public accounting (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006), the pro-
fessionals within the ?rm will espouse values very differ-
ent from professionals working in more traditional, less
peripheral organizations.
The results offer general support for the notion that
public accountants’ values and attitudes about profession-
alism vary across the type of public accounting organiza-
tion where they practice. While there are no signi?cant
differences across public accounting organization types in
the mean scores of the professional commitment and util-
itarianism variables, there are statistically signi?cant be-
tween-group differences regarding all of the other three
variables. Importantly, Big Four professionals exhibit the
lowest level of commitment to the organization and the
client as well as to the rigorous enforcement of indepen-
dence. Sole practitioners, who exemplify the traditional
organizational form for professions (Galanter & Palay,
1991), by contrast exhibit the highest levels of commit-
ment to organization and clients.
While the results seem to support the notion that atti-
tudes about the rigor and enforcement of independence
have experienced the strongest erosion in the Big Four
Table 6
Position in organization: means, standard deviations and analysis of variance: rank.
Rank Organizational
commitment
Professional
commitment
Client
commitment
Independence
enforcement
Utilitarian view of CA
designation
Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D.
Top level 24.48 4.14 30.05 4.03 10.03 2.98 15.57 3.00 17.57 2.09
Lower levels 20.09 4.32 29.01 3.84 8.63 2.80 15.34 2.89 16.90 2.19
F 308.83
***
22.89
***
31.63
***
2.01 32.36
***
***
p < .001.
422 R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427
accounting ?rms, it should be noted that the Big Four pro-
fessionals’ mean score on this measure is still higher than
the scale mid-point score (12). Further, it cannot be in-
ferred from the results that professionals in Big Four ?rms
have adopted a ‘managerial’ logic across all of the variables
investigated in this study. Rather, the results seem to indi-
cate that Big Four professionals are characterized by con-
tradictory attitudes regarding professionalism, being
simultaneously lower on client commitment, organiza-
tional commitment and independence enforcement. This
observation is perhaps not surprising given that historical
accounts indicate a growing disengagement of then the
Big Five ?rms from their historically close relationship
with accounting professional associations (Suddaby &
Greenwood, 2005). In comparison with other public
accountants, accountants who work in the largest ?rms
would be exposed in their daily life to different and contra-
dictory discourses regarding the nature of professionalism,
translating into a paradoxical set of professional attitudes.
At the very least, our results suggest that the cluster of val-
ues and attitudes represented by traditional professional-
ism is not consistently re?ected in the mindset of Big
Four accountants.
Discussion
The results sketch a useful picture of how four distinct
changes in the organizational context of work correlate
with variation in attitudes of chartered accountants to-
ward professional values and institutions. The changes
are depicted schematically in Fig. 1, which charts four dis-
tinct moments or variation from traditional contexts, con-
tent and position of professional work to new and
emerging contexts, content and position of professional
work. Fig. 1 also identi?es where commitments to organi-
zation, profession, client, independence enforcement and
utilitarian view of the CA designation are high and where
there are statistically signi?cant differences.
Table 7
Location of organization in organizational ?eld-core versus periphery: means, standard deviations and analysis of variance.
Size of organization Organizational
commitment
Professional
commitment
Client
commitment
Independence
enforcement
Utilitarian view of CA
designation
Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D.
Sole practice 25.90 3.14 30.41 3.21 9.80 3.34 15.22 3.29 17.48 2.03
Small size 24.26 4.67 30.24 3.87 9.43 2.92 14.27 3.19 17.30 2.15
Mid tier 22.05 4.68 30.19 3.32 9.60 2.77 15.33 2.78 17.32 1.93
Big Four 20.00 4.78 30.18 3.51 8.78 2.77 13.82 2.85 17.25 2.14
F 39.23
***
0.108 2.70
*
7.20
***
0.31
*
p < .05.
***
p < .001.
Fig. 1. Commitment clusters in four types of change in the context of accounting work (only variables with signi?cant differences found between categories
are included).
R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427 423
First, the results con?rm prior research which indicates
there is no inherent con?ict between commitment to both
one’s profession and one’s employing organization. In par-
ticular, the results extend this observation to suggest that
high-rank professionals can also be committed to clients
while maintaining high levels of commitment to an organi-
zation and the profession. The results, thus, support our
contention that prior research on organizational profes-
sional commitment ought to be reoriented to new and
more theoretically relevant variables.
Second, the results offer considerable reassurance that
the majority of accounting professionals are relatively
highly committed to their profession. For instance, the
maximum and scale mid-point scores pertaining to the
measure of professional commitment are, respectively, 35
and 21; our results indicate that public and non-public
accountants have average commitments of 30.3 and 28.9
(Table 4). Further, Tables 4 and 5 demonstrate results that
consistently support the observation that accountants in
traditional work contexts are more committed, or are no
different from professionals in non-traditional work
arrangements, in their commitment to the accounting
profession.
We also note that, while the differences in value com-
mitments across work contexts may be statistically signif-
icant, they are not substantively different in practical
terms. That is, even when espoused commitments to pro-
fessional values are low relative to other groups, their
mean scores still indicate a strong commitment to profes-
sional ideals. So, for example, we observe that accountants
in public practice are lower in their commitment to the rig-
orous enforcement of independence requirements, than
accountants in industry, government and education. Not-
withstanding this observed difference, the mean score of
this group is still relatively high (i.e. a mean score of 14.5
out of a possible 20 for this group versus a mean score of
16.3 out of a possible 20 for those outside of public prac-
tice). This is a relatively high indication of commitment
and should offer some reassurance that the bulk of Cana-
dian chartered accountants are still relatively highly com-
mitted to professional ideals.
However, the results also con?rm our general argument
that, as the conditions of work change so do the patterns of
value commitments. When we extend our analysis to in-
clude variables which we developed to better capture key
elements of the speci?c work context or environment sur-
rounding accountants, then we observe a growing in?u-
ence of the logic of managerialism in the profession. This
is, perhaps, most evident when tracking the level of com-
mitment to the core professional ideal of rigorous enforce-
ment of independence across the four types of change in
professional work. Table 4 demonstrates that accountants
in traditional public practice are less committed to inde-
pendence enforcement than are accountants who work in
government, education and industry. Similarly, Table 5
shows that attitudes toward coercive enforcement of inde-
pendence is lower for accountants working in traditional
content areas and higher for accountants employed as con-
sultants and information technology experts. And Table 7,
most strikingly, demonstrates that attitudes about com-
mitment to independence enforcement are weakest in
the most elite representatives of the accounting profession,
accountants employed by the Big Four accounting ?rms.
The results also suggest ?rst, that the assumption that
professionals homogeneously share attitudes and values
about the appropriateness of institutional structures is
incorrect. In fact, attitudes vary as a function of conditions
of work. Moreover, fragmentation of values within the pro-
fession can best be understood by attending to the condi-
tions of work. Second, the results suggest that
accountants working in Big Four ?rms hold different atti-
tudes about professional institutions and ideology than
accountants in other types of ?rms. This group of accoun-
tants demonstrated the lowest commitment to their
employing organization, to their clients and to the rigor
of enforcement of independence requirements. Third, the
distinctive values we most commonly attribute to ideal-
type professionalism in accounting, such as commitment
to independence enforcement, is most strongly re?ected
in surprising contexts – i.e. among accountants working
outside of both professional partnerships and core
accounting work. In particular, the in?uence of manageri-
alism in undermining accountancy’s distinctive value of
independence enforcement tends to be more pervasive
among Big Four accountants.
Collectively, these ?ndings reinforce the observation
that the locus of professionalization is becoming defocal-
ized and that the organizational context of professional
work is important in shaping attitudes, norms and opin-
ions about professional ideology (Cooper & Robson, 2006;
Grey, 1998). Where accountants work, both in terms of
their position as individuals within an organization as well
as the position of their organization in the organizational
?eld, holds implications for how they interpret and under-
stand the need for enforcement of independence stan-
dards, the meaning they attribute to their professional
designation and their degree of commitment to their
employing organization, their clients and their profession.
A similar trend is observed when examining the respon-
dents’ hierarchical rank within their employing organiza-
tion. Table 6 demonstrates that as accountants rise in rank
in an organization, regardless of whether that organization
is a traditional professional partnership or anorganizational
bureaucracy, they tend to identify their professional desig-
nation more in utilitarian terms and are more likely to
acknowledge a stronger commitment to their clients. How-
ever, it is critical to observe that high ranking employees do
not differ from low level employees in their attitudes about
the importance of the core value of professional indepen-
dence. One possible interpretation of these results, thus, is
a type of ‘creeping’ careerism that erodes professionalism
(but not necessarily the core value of independence) as
one progresses through the ranks of an organization.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the results also
con?rm that the accounting professionals employed by
the elite members of the profession, the Big Four, operate
under different value assumptions and patterns of commit-
ment than all other accounting professionals. Members of
the Big Four are remarkable by their lower commitment
to any of the variables studied. Their attitudes are particu-
larly contradictory regarding their commitment to the cli-
ent and to the core value of independence. The results
424 R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427
indeed suggest that while they are the least committed to
their clients, Big Four accountants are the least engaged to-
wards the notion of independence enforcement.
It is important to note here that we are not claiming to
measure substantive value outcomes nor are we claiming
that the observed differences in attitudes toward profes-
sional institutions and values translate directly into ethical
outcomes. Rather the intent is to capture the variation in
attitudes and commitments to basic value structures across
different work contexts which we have theorized as con-
tributing to distinct institutional logics. The assumption is
that, while differences in values and attitudes may not
immediately translate into behavioral differences, over
time they may contribute to such changes by making the
adoption of what Brint (1994) and others (Friedson, 2001;
Leicht & Fennell, 2001; Hanlon, 1994) have identi?ed as
the adoption of value clusters that ‘naturalize’ the overtly
commercial elements of professional behavior. Prior re-
search has shown that attitudes are precursors of behavior
(Summers, 1970). That is, not only are attitudes persistent
over time but they are related to ‘‘action tendencies” in
individuals (Campbell, 1963). While this paper has demon-
strated the link between differences in the organization of
professional work and professionals’ attitudes, the logical
next step is to investigate the relationship between differ-
ent attitudes of professionalism and professional behavior.
That linkage is beyond the scope of this paper but would be
a fruitful line of inquiry for future research.
Similarly, we acknowledge the concerns of critical the-
orists who decry the call by Wyatt (2004) and others (Mac-
intosh & Shearer, 2000) for a return to tradition as a futile
attempt to recapture a mythology of a golden age of pro-
fessionalism that, likely, never existed. While this may well
be true, we argue that the logic of professionalism, like
other rationalized myths are important not only because
of their impact on ethical outcomes, but also because they
re?ect and promote widespread understandings of how
professionals ought to act, how professions should be orga-
nized and how professional norms are best enforced. As
such, logics are powerful reinforcing mechanisms by which
professional values and attitudes are reproduced and, ulti-
mately, determine the legitimacy of professional practices
and institutional structures. Even though rational myths of
professionalism may re?ect a golden age that never actu-
ally existed (Tinker, 2005), we cannot simply dismiss them
as irrelevant. Whether or not they re?ect historical reality,
rational myths hold serious consequences in the present as
they become converted into rules, standards and laws of
professional conduct that constrain and enable future
behavior (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Suchman & Edelman,
1996). That changes in work context introduce variation
in professional myths as adhered and enacted in work set-
tings is an important and, we think, understudied insight,
irrespective of how soundly those myths might be based
in historical reality.
Conclusion
This study is a preliminary attempt to map the variation
in professional attitudes and values as the conditions of
professional work change. As with most such efforts to
map variations of so large a scale there are some limita-
tions. Foremost, our study is limited by self-reported atti-
tudes and values. We have not attempted to connect the
expressed values and opinions to overt behavior. Nor do
we think this is necessarily required. The intent is not to
map behavior, but rather to capture changes in attitudes
and logics. In effect our study brings to light the sites and
locations of variation in ideal-type attitudes of profession-
alism across a broad range of work arrangement for
accounting professionals. While there is some expectation
that, over time, shifts in values and opinions will produce
shifts in behavior, there is no assumption that this will oc-
cur in the short term.
Our study is also limited by its timing. That the ques-
tionnaire was administered so closely to the fall of Enron
suggests that the opinions captured might re?ect a short
term reaction to a crisis. However, the timing may also
be considered an asset of this research. That is, it might
be considered a strength that we are able to capture the
variation of attitudes and values about professionalism
held while members of the profession are actively engaged
in a period of critical self re?ection. In fact, it is possible
that some of the between-group differences that we bring
to light in this study are stronger in normal times, when
the external legitimacy of the audit function is not on the
radar screen of public accountants. Further studies that
replicate this one can establish the temporary or enduring
nature of the trends we identify.
This study identi?es several other directions for poten-
tial future research. We are intrigued by the possibility that
accounting ?rms vary in the manner in which they incul-
cate different professional values. It is not clear if this oc-
curs as a result of selection practices (either self or
organizational) or is the result of certain socialization prac-
tices that occur inside public accounting ?rms. Qualitative
work, particularly of an ethnographic nature, would allow
us to better understand how these different value and
commitment patterns are created and reproduced. The
study also identi?es a distinct gap in our understanding
of how professional core values are maintained and repro-
duced among in-house professionals, or those employed in
large organizations where non-professionals control pro-
fessional work and careers. Interestingly, our ?ndings sug-
gest that ‘‘adaptation” characterizes non-traditional
accounting settings while a degree of ‘‘proletarianization”
is re?ected in the world of public accounting. Also, our
study identi?es a possible linkage between shifts in values,
logics and institutional change. There is considerable
opportunity to trace and document this connection in the
context of the accounting profession. Content analysis of
institutionally produced texts (i.e. the annual reports and
publications of the Canadian Institute of Chartered
Accountants or AICPA) could further illuminate this
process.
Perhaps most importantly, our study also points to the
important in?uence that organizations have had on alter-
ing the work arrangements of professionals and, as a result,
in in?uencing logics within the ?eld. Foremost, this study
should raise the level of analysis for researchers interested
in understanding ethical lapses in the professions. Much of
R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427 425
the critique of professional ethics has focused on the indi-
vidual professional. Our results suggest this is somewhat
misguided, that ethicists must also attend to the way in
which professional work is organized if they want to seri-
ously address ethical issues in professional service ?rms.
The role of large organizations in structuring the condi-
tions by which professional work is produced, and its con-
comitant effect on professional projects, is a subject also
overlooked in the sociology of professions. Accountants
(and, arguably, engineers) are more organizationally
embedded than other professions and offer a unique
opportunity to extend our understanding of how the grow-
ing importance of large organizations will alter our taken
for granted assumptions about professionalism and profes-
sional work.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the ?nancial support of the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Can-
ada, the Deloitte & Touche/Canadian Academic Accounting
Association Research Grant Program, and the H.E. Pearson
endowment.
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R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427 427
doc_541392126.pdf
This study analyses the degree to which change in the organizational context, content and
location (both of the individual within the organization and the organization within the field) of
professional work has contributed to variation in attitudes toward professional ideology
and institutions. Through an online survey of Canadian chartered accountants we observe
that, contrary to current accusations, a majority of accounting professionals remain committed
to their profession, despite profound changes in the context, content and location
of their work. We do find, however, that the strongest espoused deviation from core professional
values and logics has occurred in traditional work contexts (i.e. public accounting
firms), and for the distinctive value of commitment to independence enforcement, the
deviation is most pronounced in the elite core of the profession – the Big Four professional
service firms. Accountants in higher ranks also tend to identify more with commercialistic
values. We speculate on the implications these findings hold for the professional project of
accountancy.
The organizational context of professionalism in accounting
Roy Suddaby
a,
*
, Yves Gendron
b,1
, Helen Lam
c
a
Faculty of Business, University of Alberta, School of Business, Department of Strategic Management and Organization, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2R6
b
Faculté des sciences de l’administration, Pavillon Palasis-Prince, Bureau 6224, Université Laval, Québec City, Canada G1K 7P4
c
Centre for Innovative Management, Athabasca University, Edmonton, Canada
a b s t r a c t
This study analyses the degree to which change in the organizational context, content and
location (both of the individual within the organization and the organization within the ?eld) of
professional work has contributed to variation in attitudes toward professional ideology
and institutions. Through an online survey of Canadian chartered accountants we observe
that, contrary to current accusations, a majority of accounting professionals remain com-
mitted to their profession, despite profound changes in the context, content and location
of their work. We do ?nd, however, that the strongest espoused deviation from core pro-
fessional values and logics has occurred in traditional work contexts (i.e. public accounting
?rms), and for the distinctive value of commitment to independence enforcement, the
deviation is most pronounced in the elite core of the profession – the Big Four professional
service ?rms. Accountants in higher ranks also tend to identify more with commercialistic
values. We speculate on the implications these ?ndings hold for the professional project of
accountancy.
Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction
The collapse of Arthur Andersen amid reports of the
venerable accounting ?rm’s role in misrepresenting the ?-
nances of Enron, WorldCom and other clients has raised
questions about the ethical integrity of the accounting pro-
fession (Wyatt, 2004). In addition to the dramatic personal
and ?nancial tragedies represented by the demise of
Andersen, the ?rm’s fall also represents a serious failure
in the professional project of accountancy. For many dec-
ades the accounting profession has claimed to espouse
independence as a core professional value. Independence
is also seen as a central and founding value of Arthur
Andersen (Squires, Smith, MacDougall, & Yeack, 2003).
The dubious relationship between Arthur Andersen and
Enron, as well as the apparent inability of even elite mem-
bers of the profession to self-regulate, made evident in the
events surrounding Enron have initiated an era of critical
self-appraisal among accountants. How widespread are
ethical lapses in the profession? Which practice categories
have deviated most strongly from core professional val-
ues? How can we prevent recurrence?
Sociologists point to the organizational context and con-
tent of professional work as a possible explanation for the
erosion of professional values (Leicht & Fennell, 1997,
2001). Professional work is increasingly mediated by orga-
nizations; many professionals now work in corporations or
government of?ces; most professional services are deliv-
ered to organizations rather than individuals; and profes-
sional service ?rms have become complex, diversi?ed
organizations that are often larger than their Fortune 500
corporate clients (Suddaby, Cooper, & Greenwood, 2007).
Professional careers ‘‘are increasingly conditioned by
opportunities within organizations” (Leicht & Fennell,
1997, p. 216). Further, professional ?rms have adopted
managerial structures of control and accountability (Fried-
son, 1984) that have resulted in a fragmentation of work
contexts, professional interests and value commitments
among professionals (Brint, 1994). While these changes
0361-3682/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.aos.2009.01.007
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +780 492 2386; fax: +780 492 3325.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (R. Suddaby), yves.
[email protected] (Y. Gendron), [email protected] (H. Lam).
1
Tel.: +418 656 2131x2431; fax: +418 656 7746.
Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Accounting, Organizations and Society
j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ aos
have been documented in theoretical (Brint, 1994; Fried-
son, 1984; Friedson, 2001; Leicht & Fennell, 2001) and
empirical (Goode, 1957; Scott, 1987; Wallace, 1995) ac-
counts, they were still largely based on the assumption
that ‘‘professionals control professionals, even in bureau-
cratic settings” (Leicht & Fennell, 1997, p. 217).
Beginning in the 1980s, however, the professions have
been subject to profound changes in the nature of their
work, largely because professional work has become
increasingly embedded in large and oftentimes heteroge-
neous organizations. This is particularly the case in
accounting where critics have suggested that organizations
have usurped traditional professional institutions, such as
professional societies and associations, as the core sites
of professionalization and regulation (Cooper & Robson,
2006; Grey, 1998). As a result, we have little empirical
knowledge about the extent of in?uence – in contempo-
rary professional ?elds – of organizational structures and
controls on professional values and commitments.
2
How
do value commitments change when professionals work as
salaried employees? Do the relative commitments change
when they work in conditions where professionals no longer
control professionals? And how do value commitments
change when professionals engage in the delivery of non-
professional services?
The empirical questions that arise out of the dynamic
interaction of organizations and professions also re?ect
important theoretical questions about the nature and
determinants of institutional change. There is a growing
awareness that institutional change is facilitated by dra-
matic shifts in core values (Greenwood & Hinings, 1996).
Large scale movements in core values, in turn, re?ect dee-
per changes in the central organizing principles of society,
or what Friedland and Alford (1991) term ‘‘institutional
logics”. Logics, reciprocally, are based upon rationalized
myths (Meyer & Rowan, 1977) or semi-autonomous value
structures that are taken for granted as manifestations of
powerful assumptions of appropriateness. Professionalism
is one such logic that is based on long standing mytholo-
gies of independence and autonomy which, over time,
has become a central discursive force in the ?eld (Larson,
1977).
The ethical lapses exhibited by accounting ?rms in the
events surrounding Enron, WorldCom, Sunbeam and re-
lated corporate scandals suggest a profound change has oc-
curred in the institutional logic of professionalism, which
has traditionally been characterized as a logic designed
to counterbalance the logics of both the market and the
state (Friedson, 2001). While the core logic of the market
is ‘‘accumulation and the commodi?cation of human activ-
ity” (Friedland & Alford, 1991, p. 248) and that of the state
is ‘‘rationalization and the regulation of human activity by
legal and bureaucratic hierarchies” (Friedland & Alford,
1991, p. 248), the central logic of professionalism is the
creation of a social space that is independent and autono-
mous from both the state and the market (Friedson, 2001;
Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005). Accounting ?rms’ promi-
nent ethical lapses suggest a fundamental breakdown in
the institutional logic of professionalism (Hanlon, 1994)
and raise important theoretical questions about why
changes in institutional logics occur, and where they ?rst
appear within an institutionalized ?eld.
This paper takes some preliminary steps toward
answering these questions. Speci?cally, we track variation
in professional values and attitudes across different meth-
ods of organizing professional work. The study extends a
prior qualitative study that examined the strength of char-
tered accountants’ ties to professional institutions (Gen-
dron & Suddaby, 2004). Speci?cally, we map the relative
degree of commitment to core and ideal professional val-
ues across the broad spectrum of practice areas and work
contexts of professional accountants in Canada. The
accounting profession provides an ideal context to address
these questions because, more than any other profession,
accountants have become embedded in organizational set-
tings. Accountants have the largest professional service
?rms, have diversi?ed into non-professional work contexts
and have more of their members working under non-pro-
fessional control than either medicine or law.
Using data collected from over 1200 Canadian chartered
accountants in public practice, government and private
industry, we measure the espoused attitudes of these pro-
fessionals to their employing organization, their profession
and, most critically, their clients in order to assess varied
explanations for recently observed shifts away from pro-
fessional logics. First, we test the argument that changes
in the context of work, i.e. the migration of accountants
away from public practice into non-traditional work set-
tings such as industry and government, has contributed
to changes in core professional values. Second, we analyze
the degree to which changes in the content of work con-
tribute to shifts in expressed attitudes toward professional
ideology and institutions. That is, do professional values
change when accountants work outside the core practice
areas of accounting and auditing? Third, we assess
whether one’s career position within the organization con-
tributes to the adoption of a more commercial logic by pro-
fessionals who progress to higher ranks in their employing
organizations. Finally, we address the contention that
changes in logics occur as a result of the location of the
employing organization within the organizational ?eld,
i.e. that as ?rms move to peripheral positions in the profes-
sion, individual professionals within them adopt a less pro-
fessional orientation.
Theoretical background
There is a long history of interest in the potential prob-
lems that arise when professionals work in non-traditional
work settings (Aranya & Ferris, 1984; Benson, 1977; Blau &
Scott, 1962; Gunz & Gunz, 1994; Sorensen & Sorensen,
1974; Wallace, 1995). Wallace (1995) summarizes this re-
search in two competing theories. The ‘‘proletarianization”
thesis argues that professionals and bureaucracies exem-
plify two contradictory models of work (Scott, 1966). The
idealized professional model is one in which individuals
are assumed to have the necessary knowledge and skills
2
Exceptions mainly consist of qualitative inquiries such as Anderson-
Gough, Grey, and Robson (2001, 2005), Covaleski, Dirsmith, Heian, and
Samuel (1998), and Gendron (2002).
410 R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427
to perform their work and are afforded considerable dis-
cretion in determining how and when the work will be
accomplished. The bureaucratic model, by contrast, holds
ef?ciency as the primary goal and individual discretion is
compromised by organizational controls that seek to make
work routine, by partitioning work into component parts
and through highly specialized and formalized role struc-
tures. Placing professionals in bureaucratic work settings,
according to the ‘‘proletarianization” thesis, will necessar-
ily erode professional values over time.
The ‘‘adaptation” view, by contrast, argues that profes-
sionals have been able to adjust to work in large organiza-
tions by erecting barriers around professional departments
that protect them from organizational controls. So, for
example, corporate law departments can create organiza-
tional boundaries, such as Chinese Walls, that effectively
structure mini-professional service ?rms inside organiza-
tions, thereby preserving professional norms and values
while simultaneously encouraging strong commitment by
professionals to their employing organization. In this view
there is no inherent con?ict between profession and
bureaucracy.
Most quantitative research seems to support the adap-
tation thesis. That is, there does not appear to be an inher-
ent con?ict between maintaining commitment to both
one’s profession and employing organization. Without
attempting to be exhaustive, Table 1 provides a compara-
tive overview of quantitative studies of organizational
and professional commitment for accountants over the last
thirty years. The clear conclusion fromthese studies is that,
while some factors moderate the relationship, profession-
als seem to have adapted well to large bureaucratic organi-
zations while retaining their commitment to their
profession.
The proletarianization thesis, however, continues to
?nd support, primarily in ethnographic research. Qualita-
tive studies of the largest accounting ?rms (the ‘‘Big
Four”)
3
have shown that individual professionals are sub-
ject to a series of socialization practices or ‘‘disciplinary
techniques” designed to align professional and organiza-
tional goals and which constrain professional judgment
– in a variety of more or less subtle ways (Covaleski
et al., 1998; Dirsmith, Heian, & Covaleski, 1997). Such
research offers an obvious explanation for the absence of
organizational professional con?ict in survey-based
research; if organizations have replaced professional
schools and institutes as the primary means of profes-
sional socialization, individual professionals may not even
be aware of con?icts between professional and organiza-
tional norms and values.
Perhaps the strongest support for the proletarianization
thesis comes from the inside accounts of Enron and Arthur
Andersen. Evidence from the ongoing stream of post mor-
tem inquiries indicate that the professional judgment and
independence of Andersen auditors was compromised by
a variety of structural pressures that arose from changes
in the nature and organization of accounting work. These
structural pressures included, among others, the increas-
ingly intimate relationship between the audit team and
their client (Macey & Sale, 2003; Tof?er & Reingold,
2003), the co-production of audit and consulting work (Le-
vitt, 2002) and cultural changes within accounting ?rm
organizations (especially the largest ?rms) that empha-
sized pro?t and commercial gain at the expense of profes-
sional independence and objectivity (Wyatt, 2004; Zeff,
2003a; Zeff, 2003b).
4
The internal accounts from Arthur Andersen and the
ethnographies that support the proletarianization argu-
ment are consistent with broader theoretical descriptions
of how changes in the nature and context of professional
work have changed professional values. Brint (1994) ar-
gues that while the number of professionals in society is
rapidly increasing, the assumed gap in value preferences
between professionals and commercial businesspersons
is decreasing. He observes that the historical value set of
professionals as ‘‘social trustees” is being replaced by a va-
lue set of ‘‘professional expertise”. While the former value
set characterizes professional work as a ‘calling’ imbued
with obligations of public duty, the more current value
set views professional work in technocratic terms based
on the market value of their knowledge and expertise.
Modern professionals, Brint (1994, p. xx) observes, ‘‘only
rarely remark on the ‘social importance’ of their work.” A
similar shift in professional values has been observed by
Leicht and Fennell (2001) who add to the argument the
observation that the narrowing gap between ‘‘profession-
alism” and ‘‘managerialism” has been triggered by pro-
found changes in the institutional structure of
professional work.
Collectively, these accounts suggest the need to revisit
the underlying premises of organizational/professional
commitment (OPC) research. One of the more signi?cant
problems of such research is that it has been imported
into studies of professionals and professional service
?rms in toto from its origins in industrial and organiza-
tional psychology. Because of this history, OPC research
has tended to overemphasize organizational outcomes
that may arise from the tension between the organization
and the profession such as turnover and job satisfaction.
Too little attention has been paid to issues of interest that
are unique to professions, such as changes in core profes-
sional values. This oversight is best re?ected in the ways
in which professional commitment is measured. Typical
questions focus attention on an individual professional’s
participation in, and attitude toward, professional institu-
tions (i.e. professional associations, continuing education,
professional trade journals). Largely absent from these
3
The ‘‘Big Four” refers to the four largest international accounting ?rms
and consist of Deloitte and Touche, Ernst and Young, KPMG and Pricewa-
terhouseCoopers. In 1970 there were eight such ?rms but a series of
mergers in 1989 created the ‘‘Big Six”, the 1997 merger of Price Waterhouse
and Coopers & Lybrand reduced this to the ‘‘Big Five” and the recent
collapse of Arthur Andersen has left the ‘‘Big Four”. To be consistent, we
refer to this elite group of ?rms as the ‘‘Big Four” (as that was the status of
the ?rms at the time this research was conducted) except where context
suggests otherwise.
4
A few discordant voices (e.g., Tinker, 2002) have argued that accounting
professionalism and the related idea of a ‘‘golden age” have always been
?ctional. However, most studies on the matter point towards the idea of a
general reduction – but by no means homogeneous – in professional
accountants’ adherence to professional values.
R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427 411
Table 1
Prior studies of organizational professional commitment of accounting professionals.
Paper Subjects Professional commitment Organizational commitment
Construct Measurement Mean
(scale
of 5)
Construct Measurement Mean
(scale
of 5)
Aranya, Pollock,
and Amernic
(1981)
607 Canadian CAs in public practice Professional
commitment
15-item scale adapted from Porter, Steers, Mowday,
and Boulian’s (1974) organizational commitment
questionnaire
3.90 Organizational
commitment
15-item scale adopted
from Porter et al. (1974)
3.91
Aranya and
Ferris (1984)
1206 Canadian CAs and 810 California CPAs Professional
commitment
15-item scale employed in Aranya et al. (1981) 3.79 Organizational
commitment
15-item scale employed
in Aranya et al. (1981)
3.85
Lachman and
Aranya
(1986)
810 California CPAs Professional
commitment
15-item scale employed in Aranya et al. (1981) 3.84 Organizational
commitment
15-item scale employed
in Aranya et al. (1981)
4.00
Jeffrey and
Weatherholt
(1996)
102 US accountants (employed in Big Six ?rms) and
85 accountants employed at three Fortune 500
corporations
Professional
commitment
15-item scale employed in Aranya et al. (1981) 3.68 N/A N/A N/A
Lord and
DeZoort
(2001)
171 audit staff members from one international
accounting ?rm
Professional
commitment
15-item scale employed in Aranya et al. (1981) 3.62 Organizational
commitment
15-item scale employed
in Aranya et al. (1981)
3.71
Bamber and Iyer
(2002)
257 US CPAs, employed in Big Five ?rms Professional
identi?cation
Five-item scale adapted from Mael and Ashforth
(1992)
3.71 Organizational
identi?cation
Five-item scale adapted
from Mael and Ashforth
(1992)
4.26
Shafer, Lowe,
and Fogarty
(2002)
319 US CMAs Dedication to
the
profession
Four-item scale adapted from Hall’s (1968)
professionalism scale
3.64 N/A N/A N/A
The data reported in Table 1 is not exhaustive. It aims to provide a temporal template to assess the variability of professional and organizational commitment. Although the scales used by authors vary somewhat,
they nonetheless overlap signi?cantly – being related to the relationship between the individual and her/his profession/employing organization.
4
1
2
R
.
S
u
d
d
a
b
y
e
t
a
l
.
/
A
c
c
o
u
n
t
i
n
g
,
O
r
g
a
n
i
z
a
t
i
o
n
s
a
n
d
S
o
c
i
e
t
y
3
4
(
2
0
0
9
)
4
0
9
–
4
2
7
measures is any indication of the degree to which profes-
sionals accept and acknowledge core professional values
of independence, and autonomy in controlling the context
of work.
A second shortcoming of past research is that it has
not paid suf?cient attention to changes in the context of
professional work. Previous studies tend to assume, for
example, that professionals who work in corporations as
in-house counsel or internal auditors are subject to signif-
icant bureaucratic pressures, but those who work in tradi-
tional professional service ?rms are not. In fact, Big Four
accounting ?rms are larger organizations than most For-
tune 500 corporations.
5
Moreover, work within large law
and accounting ?rms is increasingly fragmented and spe-
cialized, making work within professional service ?rms
much more similar to that of large bureaucracies (Leicht
& Fennell, 2001). It is also known that partner autonomy
in large accounting ?rms is now signi?cantly constrained,
as a result of a strengthening of professional control in
the aftermath of the collapse of Enron (Gibbins & Jamal,
2006).
A third shortcoming of prior research is that it fails to
adequately account for the ?ow of professional workers
into non-professional settings. Most prior literature was
based on the assumption that when professionals worked
in non-professional ?rms, they would be few in number
and, as a result, professionals would retain supervisory
control over other professionals (i.e. Scott, 1987). That is,
it was assumed that professionals would be able to recon-
struct the basic elements of a professional ?rm inside a
large bureaucratic organization. This is clearly no longer
the case. More contemporary studies demonstrate that
professionals in both corporations and professional part-
nerships are often subject to decisions about compensa-
tion and promotion made by non-professionals (Hafferty
& Light, 1995; Leicht & Fennell, 2001; Tolbert & Stern,
1991).
A fourth shortcoming of prior research is that while it
has focused attention on the migration of professionals
into bureaucratic work settings, it has failed to examine
the migration of non-professional work and non-profes-
sional workers into professional settings. Over the past
two decades, professional service ?rms have become mul-
tidisciplinary (Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005; Wyatt, 2004).
Big Four accounting ?rms offer traditional professional ser-
vices, such as audit and accounting work, in conjunction
with non-traditional services, like management consulting
and the provision of information technology services,
where professionals are asked to provide advice outside
their conventional professional training and jurisdiction.
Increasingly, large law and accounting ?rms are hiring
non-professionals, or professionals whose career has been
based in industry and government and who lack the social-
ization and training of a traditional professional service
?rm. As professionals engage in non-professional projects,
and work alongside employees who do not share profes-
sional norms and values, we might expect that professional
practice will, increasingly, be driven by logics and assump-
tions drawn from a managerial rather than a professional
perspective.
We seek to correct these de?ciencies by re-examining
the relative strength of ?ve competing value commit-
ments of individual accounting professionals across four
distinct variations in the context, content and location
of professional work. The ?ve competing value commit-
ments are to one’s profession, to the employing organiza-
tion, to clients, to the rigor and enforcement of
independence requirements, and to attitudes about the
value of the CA designation. We categorize these commit-
ments into two distinct logics. Following Friedson (2001),
Leicht and Fennell (2001), and Suddaby and Greenwood
(2005), we conceive of commitment to one’s profession,
and acceptance of the rigor and enforcement of indepen-
dence requirements as consistent with an ideal logic of
professionalism. Conversely, we categorize commitment
to one’s employing organization, a strong identi?cation
with clients and the espousal of the commercial value
of the CA designation as consistent with logic of manage-
rialism. We measure the relative strength of these com-
mitments across four distinct changes in the context of
professional work, each of which has been attributed as
a source for the erosion of ethics in the accounting profes-
sion: employment in non-traditional organizations;
engaging in non-traditional kinds of accounting work
(particularly management consulting); rank in organiza-
tional hierarchies; and the position of the employing ?rm
within the organizational ?eld. A brief description of
these changes, along with explicit hypotheses, is elabo-
rated in the following section.
Hypotheses: The increasing diversity of professional
work
Work context
Until relatively recently, most accounting professionals
in Canada worked in traditional professional partnerships.
That is, they worked in organizations controlled by other
professionals and in contexts where decisions about perfor-
mance and compensation were made by peers. The growth
of large organizations during the second half of the twenti-
eth century, however, created a new work context for
accountants, lawyers and related professionals who,
increasingly, were hired as ‘‘in-house” salaried employees
of corporations, government and related organizations (Ab-
bott, 1988; Derber & Schwartz, 1991). By the latter part of
the 1980s, in-house corporate law was the fastest growing
component of the labor market for lawyers (Curran, 1986;
Halliday, 1987), a trend which continued into the next dec-
ade (Leicht & Fennell, 1997).
The accounting profession has a long history, arguably
longer than the legal profession, of embedding individual
professionals in organizational settings. In North America
railroads were among the earliest private ?rms to hire
‘in-house’ accountants. By 1941 a formal professional
5
In 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers, the largest of the, now, Big Four
employed over 140,000 people. Its 2006 revenues of $22 billion US, were it
a publicly traded corporation, would have placed it 96th in the Fortune 500
list and it had more international of?ces than either Coca Cola or General
Motors (PwC, 2007).
R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427 413
association of internal auditors was incorporated in the US.
Over the next four decades an increasing proportion of
accounting professionals found work in large organiza-
tions, government and education, rather than the more
traditional work context of a public accounting partner-
ship. However, in the last two decades the migration of
accountants to non-traditional work settings appears to
have stabilized with about 40% of American Institute of
Certi?ed Public Accountants (‘‘AICPA”) members employed
in public accounting ?rms and the remaining 60% em-
ployed in industry, government, education and other work
contexts (AICPA, 2006). In Canada, the proportion of
accountants in public practice is quite similar (CICA,
2000); like the US, this ratio appears to have stabilized over
the past twenty years.
Critics have pointed to the shift away from public prac-
tice accounting as one of the primary sources of changes
in professional values in accounting. These arguments
take a variety of forms, each offering a variation of the
proletarianization argument described above. Some, for
example, suggest that because internal auditors and man-
agerial accountants are employees of, and subject to the
power structure of, an organization they are not able to
develop professional values of objectivity and indepen-
dence (Ziegenfuss, Singhapadki, & Martinson, 1994). Oth-
ers suggest that accountants working in industry
become highly specialized and, as a result, are not ex-
posed to the broad range of practical and ethical issues
available in public practice that are necessary to develop
sound professional judgment and values (Wyatt, 2004).
Most share the concern that, while formal accounting
education provides substantive skills and knowledge, it
is only through long exposure to the socialization prac-
tices of a traditional public accounting ?rm that individual
professionals can inculcate the idealistic norms, goals and
culture of the accounting profession. This was the conclu-
sion of Hastings and Hinings (1970), who found that char-
tered accountants in industry exhibited lower
commitment to professional values than did their coun-
terparts in public practice.
A key assumption in this debate is that the traditional
professional partnership offers an institutionalized mecha-
nism for the reproduction of core professional norms and
values. The historical ideal organizational form for profes-
sional work has been the sole practitioner (Seron, 1996).
In sole practice, organizational controls and pressures are
largely absent. Even as professional ?rms have grown in
size, researchers have observed that large professional
partnerships exhibit several key distinctions from corpora-
tions. In professional ?rms, the bulk of employees are pro-
fessionals who share the same training. Similarly the norms
and goals of the employing organization are aligned with
those of the rest of the profession (Scott, 1965; Wallace,
1995). Professional ?rms are, generally, less demanding in
terms of ?nancial accountability than are corporations
(Greenwood, Hinings, & Brown, 1990). In sum, professional
?rms, historically, have more strongly reinforced tradi-
tional professional norms and values than do corporate
forms of organization. At this point, it is useful to review
and clarify the notions of professional values and
professionalism.
Professionalism has long been recognized to encompass
two contradictory value clusters.
6
One component of pro-
fessionalism emphasizes the ideology of service in which
the professional is described as a guardian of the public
interest (Friedson, 2001, p. 123). In this discourse, profes-
sional values are thought to transcend commercial interests
and professionals construct identities that are independent
from both the state and consumers. Professional careers
are considered a ‘calling’ and professional associations pro-
mulgate rules and regulations that suppress commercial
activities such as advertising and overt intra-professional
competition. Professionals present themselves as being
above petty commercial interests because they serve a high-
er social function and espouse values of autonomy and
independence.
A competing value cluster, however, arises from the
reality that not only do professionals need to generate rev-
enue, like any other business, but they are placed in an ex-
tremely advantageous position to do so. Traditional
professions, for example, are granted some degree of eco-
nomic monopoly (Abbott, 1988; Larson, 1977). Until quite
recently, most professionals in North America were consid-
ered exempt from antitrust regulation and were free to ?x
prices for their services and discipline members who devi-
ated from established tariffs (Arthurs & Stager, 1990).
Commercialism, therefore, exists as an inherently contra-
dictory, and often suppressed, element of the institutional
logic of professionalism (Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005). In
sum, the two competing value clusters represent different
ways in which discourse constructs professionalism. Fur-
ther, the two clusters may affect one another. For example,
historically professionals have used the discourse of ideal-
type professionalism to legitimate projects that have con-
structed concrete social barriers around an economic and
occupational category (Gidney & Millar, 1994).
It is important to acknowledge that not only do these
competing logics become embedded in the routines and
mechanisms that reproduce professions, but that the de-
gree to which they are articulated will vary across different
work and organizational contexts. That is, the more
embedded an individual is in organizational structures that
are consistent with ideal-type professionalism, the more
likely they are to espouse values about the importance of
independence and autonomy in professional behavior
(Gendron, 2002). Or, as Larson (1977, p. 215) observes,
‘‘the farther one moves from the classic market situation
of the ‘‘free” personal professions, the more purely
6
We recognize that the notion of professionalism is used in distinct
ways in literature. Professionalism is sometimes conceived of as a very
instable notion which encompasses contradictory value clusters (for
instance, one which celebrates the ideology of public service and another
which emphasizes commercial interests). From this perspective, the
broader logic of professionalism is continuously subject to change as a
result of ongoing contests between value clusters. From a different
perspective, however, professionalism is seen as a more stable notion,
consisting of the ideal discourse of public service and disinterest in
commercial matters. While in this paper we often represent professional-
ism from the ?rst perspective (i.e., as an encompassing notion), our ?ndings
and conclusions would not be signi?cantly altered if we had instead relied
on the second perspective. Whether or not the two perspectives are
reconcilable is beyond the objective of this paper.
414 R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427
ideological do the professional claims of disinterestedness
and universality of service become.”
Drawing on the above, it can be hypothesized that as
individual professionals migrate to non-traditional work
contexts, they will be less likely to espouse the core logic
and values of ideal-type professionalism and more likely
to adopt a managerial logic.
Hypothesis 1. Professionals who work in non-traditional
contexts are more likely to adopt a managerial logic than
professionals who work in traditional contexts.
Speci?cally, we predict that accountants working in tra-
ditional public practice ?rms will be more likely to espouse
commitment to their profession than to their employing
organization than accountants working in government,
private corporations and other contexts outside the profes-
sional partnership. Similarly, accountants working in tradi-
tional public practice ?rms will be more likely to
acknowledge the importance of core professional institu-
tions enforcing the rigor of professional independence than
accountants working in government and industry. Con-
versely, we expect that accountants who work outside
the traditional professional partnership will be more likely
to espouse the logic and values of commercialism. That is,
we expect that in contrast to their counterparts in public
practice they will be less likely to express commitment
to their profession and more likely to express commitment
to their employing organization. Similarly we expect they
will be more likely to identify with their clients and to
acknowledge the commercial signi?cance of their CA
designation.
Work content
One of the most signi?cant changes in the context of
accounting work over the previous four decades is the dra-
matic expansion in the scope of activities performed by
accountants. Core activities of accountants, since the
1930s, have been the provision of audit and accounting
services. Increasingly, however, and particularly since the
1970s, a broad array of non-core expertise and services,
all of which fall under the broad category of ‘‘management
consulting”, were added to the portfolio of large audit
?rms (Suddaby et al., 2007). These services were consid-
ered natural extensions of the audit function and were jus-
ti?ed on the basis that the provision of such services
actually improved the audit (Berardino, 2000). Consulting
services, particularly the provision of information technol-
ogy services to large corporations, were very pro?table and
by 2000 more than half of the revenue of Big Five ?rms was
derived from non-core services. More signi?cant, perhaps,
is the observation that, by the same year, 96% of publicly
traded companies received non-audit services from their
auditors (Abbott, Parker, Peters, & Raghunadan, 2003).
Critics, including the US Securities and Exchange Com-
mission, argued that the simultaneous provision of audit
and consulting services could seriously impair the profes-
sional judgment and independence of the auditor. Such
impairment could occur directly, by clients threatening to
reduce lucrative consulting contracts if certain question-
able accounting practices were not overlooked in their
audit. However, it is recognized that the threat to profes-
sional judgment created by consulting services has also
been oftentimes more subtle – in that consulting intro-
duced a new logic into audit ?rms that gradually rein-
forced the in?uence of managerialism and progressively
undermined ideal professional values and judgment.
Wyatt (2004, pp. 47–48), a former Andersen partner, de-
scribes the cultural shift that occurred inside accounting
?rms as a result of the migration away from core audit
services:
‘‘Increasing numbers of new hires joined the organiza-
tion without any accounting background in their col-
lege education. They progressed within the ?rm
without any accounting training and likely with little
or no understanding or appreciation of the level of pro-
fessionalism that accounting ?rm personnel were
expected to meet in the conduct of their engagements.
Likewise, these individuals progressed without neces-
sarily having been exposed to the accounting rules of
professional conduct, although they did have to abide
by the internal rules on restricted investments, a neces-
sity that became increasingly distasteful for consulting
personnel in the ‘‘go–go” markets of the 1990s. As the
consulting practices grew, the numbers of nonaccount-
ing-trained personnel likewise grew. These people were
not paraprofessionals, but rather they were relatively
high-paid personnel with strong skill sets in areas with
little or no relation to accounting or auditing. Their
numbers grew rapidly, and their success in generating
high-margin fees gave them an increasing voice in ?rm
management. [...] The relative success of the consul-
tants created enormous pressure on the auditing and
tax practice, both to grow revenues and increase mar-
gins. The successes in the consulting practice increas-
ingly in?uenced behavior by auditing and tax leaders
and the impact of these behavioral changes gradually
affected the behavior patterns of audit and tax person-
nel as well. Improved pro?tability became the key
focus.”
Wyatt reports that the introduction of new practices
changed promotional criteria within ?rms; the ability to
cross-sell consulting services as part of audit arrangements
was a key issue when professionals were evaluated for
partnership.
We argue that the shift away from core audit and
accounting services is a key factor in shaping the mindset
of the individual professional. Most particularly, we be-
lieve that professionals who work primarily in the provi-
sion of non-core services are more likely to display
characteristics, attitudes and values consistent with a com-
mercial rather than an ‘‘ideal professional” orientation. In
sum, we predict that professionals whose work content
falls outside the traditional areas of audit and accounting
will be more embedded in a managerial logic than their
counterparts whose work content falls in these traditional
areas.
Hypothesis 2. Professionals who deliver work content in
non-traditional professional services are more likely to
R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427 415
adopt a managerial logic than professionals who deliver
work content in traditional professional services.
Speci?cally, we expect that professionals whose work
content is in non-traditional areas will be more likely to
express commitment to their employing organization and
to identify with their clients, and less likely to express
commitment to their profession or to the need to enforce
the rigor of professional independence than their counter-
parts whose work falls into traditional content areas. Sim-
ilarly, we expect that professionals whose work content is
in non-traditional areas will be less likely to describe their
career as a ‘calling’ and are more apt to justify their career
choice in utilitarian terms.
Location within the organization
A third potential source of erosion of professional val-
ues arises from an individual’s hierarchical position within
an organization. Previous research has determined that the
con?ict between organizational and professional commit-
ment decreases as one rises to the level of partner within
professional ?rms (Sorensen, 1967; Sorensen & Sorensen,
1974). Aranya and Ferris (1984) also found that the level
of organizational and professional con?ict varied inversely
with hierarchical position and further observed that the
con?ict measures were higher in non-professional (i.e.
non-traditional work contexts) organizations than in pub-
lic practice ?rms. Several explanations have been offered
to account for these results. One is that as professionals
get more experience, they are better able to reconcile con-
?icting values between organization and profession. An-
other is that senior partners have more at risk in their
employment relationship and thus are more likely to com-
mit to their employing organization (Aranya & Ferris,
1984). Both explanations are consistent with the adapta-
tion thesis; that is, as professionals become more en-
trenched in organizations they devise mechanisms to
resolve con?icts that arise in norms and values between
profession and organization.
Leicht and Fennell (1997) argue that this early re-
search actually understates the in?uence of organizational
rank on professionals because it was conducted during a
time when, even in bureaucratic settings, professional
autonomy and controls were still intact. That is, through
the creation of Chinese walls and related bureaucratic de-
vices, professionals were able to maintain norms of peer
review even in corporate settings. In contemporary corpo-
rate settings, however, competitive pressures to generate
revenue and reduce costs have drastically reduced the
ability of in-house professionals to resist bureaucratic
pressures. Traditional public practice ?rms, such as the
Big Four, are no exception as the dramatic growth in
the scale and scope of their operations along with
increasing competitive pressures to generate revenue
have made these organizations appear more like bureau-
cratic or corporate organizational forms than ideal-type
professional partnerships. For both in-house professionals
and those employed in large professional partnerships,
career progress and mobility appears to have become
more strati?ed and more subject to isomorphic pressure
from organizations (Abbott, 1988). An important conse-
quence of this is that professional norms become more
subordinated to managerial concerns (Kunda, 1992), par-
ticularly as one’s career progresses up the organizational
hierarchy (Leicht & Fennell, 2001).
Based on these prior ?ndings, therefore, we predict that
professionals of higher rank in an organization are more
likely to adopt a managerial logic than those professionals
of lower rank in the organization.
Hypothesis 3. Professionals of higher rank in an organi-
zation are more likely to adopt a managerial logic than
professionals of lower rank.
Speci?cally, we expect high ranking organizational pro-
fessionals to express stronger commitment to their organi-
zation and their clients, and are less likely to accept the
espoused logic of the need of professional institutions to
enforce independence than professionals of lower or inter-
mediate rank. Professionals of higher rank will be more
likely to view their career in utilitarian terms.
Location in an organizational ?eld
Institutional theory offers a slightly different way of
interpreting the profound contextual changes in the nature
of accounting work with different predictions about where,
across the spectrum of accounting practice, we will ?rst
observe the erosion of norms and practices that underpin
the idealistic logic of professionalism. A prominent way
of understanding institutional change is to focus on the
role of central and peripheral organizations within an orga-
nizational ?eld. Peripheral actors are usually thought to be
more likely to initiate institutional change because they
are less embedded within their ?eld and are more able to
resist coercive, normative and cognitive pressures (Garud,
Jain, & Kumaraswamy, 2002; Ingram, 1998; Kraatz & Zajac,
1996; Lawrence, Hardy, & Phillips, 2002; Leblebici, Sala-
ncik, Copay, & King, 1991).
While there is considerable evidence that peripheral ac-
tors are more likely to initiate institutional change, there
are some prominent examples where actors centrally posi-
tioned in the ?eld act as change agents. This is particularly
the case in the professions where, both in law (Sherer &
Lee, 2002) and accounting (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006;
Greenwood, Suddaby, & Hinings, 2002), prominent and
large partnerships were the ?rst to adopt organizational
reforms. The largest accounting ?rms were the ?rst to
adopt multidisciplinary practices because their powerful
position within the ?eld exposed them to new ideas and
gave them the capacity to resist institutional pressures
and norms (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006). By embracing
multidiciplinarity, however, the largest accounting ?rms
moved away from the jurisdictional and normative centre
of their ?eld. Anecdotal accounts of the evolution of bigger
accounting ?rms also emphasize that, between 1980 and
2000, these ?rms moved from being the cornerstone of
the accounting profession to more like their Fortune 500
clients (Wyatt, 2004). It is reasonable to argue that over
this time period, the biggest ?rms evolved away from
being a central component of the accounting ?eld to be-
come a peripheral member of Fortune 500.
416 R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427
The shifting position of large accounting ?rms between
professional and corporate ?elds is re?ected in changes
over time in studies of the relationship between ?rm size
and attitudes of individual accountants to ethics and pro-
fessionalism. In an early study, Loeb (1971) found that
accountants in large public accounting ?rms held stronger
ethical values than did accountants in smaller public
accounting ?rms. In contrast, a more recent study by Goe-
tz, Morrow, and McElroy (1991) found that accountants in
the smallest public accounting ?rms expressed stronger
identi?cation with core professional values than accoun-
tants in the largest ?rms. An obvious explanation for the
difference in outcomes is that, in the twenty years that
separate these two studies, the large accounting ?rms have
become dramatically larger and have shifted in their ?eld
position to identify more closely with corporate bureaucra-
cies than traditional professional partnerships.
Based on these prior theoretical and empirical observa-
tions, we predict that deviation from commitment norms
among individual accounting professionals will be most
profound among those accounting professionals employed
by the Big Four accounting ?rms. That is, we think that the
very largest accounting ?rms have, over the course of the
past 25 years, migrated away from the accounting profes-
sion and now occupy a position in the organizational ?eld
of the world’s largest commercial organizations. As a result
of this migration, the Big Four ?rms have lost the motiva-
tion and means by which traditional professional values
are reproduced. We expect, therefore, that employees of
Big Four accounting ?rms will be the most likely loci with-
in which we will observe an erosion of commitment to the
profession and to core professional values.
Hypothesis 4. Professionals employed in ?rms on the
periphery of the organizational ?eld are more likely to
adopt a managerial logic than professionals employed in
?rms that occupy the centre of the ?eld.
Speci?cally, Big Four accountants will express stronger
commitment to their organization and stronger identi?ca-
tion with their clients, and be less likely to accept the role
of traditional professional institutions in enforcing the rig-
ors of independence than professionals employed in med-
ium or small accounting ?rms. Similarly, Big Four
accountants will be more likely to view their CA designa-
tion in instrumental terms and less likely to see their pro-
fessional career as a ‘calling’ than professionals employed
in medium or small ?rms.
Measures
Dependent variables
Organizational commitment
Organizational commitment is typically characterized
by three factors: a strong belief in and acceptance of the
goals and values of an organization; expressed willingness
to exert effort on behalf of the organization; and a strong
identi?cation with the organization and an expressed de-
sire to maintain organizational membership (Price, 1997).
These factors were captured with six questions drawn
from Mowaday, Porter, and Steers (1979) organizational
commitment questionnaire instrument. The questions that
comprise these measures, and the measures that are de-
scribed below, are reproduced in Table 2. All questions
were measured on a ?ve-point Likert Scale ranging from
1 = ‘‘strongly disagree” to 5 = ‘‘strongly agree”; one ques-
tion is reverse coded. Cronbach’s a for organizational com-
mitment is 0.79.
Professional commitment
Measures of professional commitment assess the ‘‘rela-
tive strength of identi?cation with and involvement in
one’s profession” (Morrow & Wirth, 1989, p. 41) and cap-
ture the degree to which members care about, are dedi-
cated to and express pride in being a member of a
profession (Wallace, 1995). We used seven items for this
measure. The Cronbach’s a for the professional commit-
ment items is 0.82.
Also, relying on insights gained from qualitative inter-
views we developed three new variables: client commit-
ment; commitment to the core professional value of
independence; and a utilitarian/commercial view of one’s
professional designation.
7
Each measure is described in
turn.
Client commitment
Client commitment is a measure designed to assess the
degree to which a public accountant identi?es with and is
motivated by the demands and goals of his or her clients.
The three questions, shown in Table 2, are adapted from
measures of organizational and professional commitment
and were pre-tested with three practitioners, three direc-
tors of accounting professional associations in Canada
and three academic accountants. The items produced a
Cronbach’s a of 0.78, indicating a high degree of reliability
of the items.
The rigor and enforcement of professional independence
This measure is designed to assess the degree to which
respondents accept the historical norm of independence as
a core professional value (Abbott, 1988; Friedson, 2001).
Independence is de?ned here as a ?rm commitment to
professional standards rather than the demands of clients.
We identi?ed four items to measure the degree to which
respondents accept the importance of the rigor and
enforcement of independence requirement by professional
institutions (shown in Table 2). The items were also pre-
tested with our panel of accounting professionals and
7
The qualitative interviews were aimed at developing a better under-
standing of the ties between individual accountants and their profession.
Fifteen experienced Canadian CAs were interviewed in late 2000 and early
2001, several months before the collapse of Enron: seven public accoun-
tants; three practitioners in industry; and ?ve directors of the Canadian
Institute of Chartered Accountants or provincial institutes of CAs. We
restrained our interviews to CAs occupying high hierarchical functions
because these individuals went through and were able to observe
signi?cant changes in the accounting profession, such as the emergence
of multidisciplinary ?rms and the commodi?cation of ?nancial auditing. All
interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed, and were conducted by
one, or two of the authors.
R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427 417
academics. The Cronbach’s a for these items is 0.75, again,
indicating a high degree of reliability between the items.
Attitude to the value of the CA designation
This ?nal measure is designed to assess the degree to
which respondents view their designation as a chartered
accountant in instrumental terms. An interesting ?nding
from our initial qualitative inquiry is the emerging percep-
tion that a professional designation means different things
for individual professionals depending on their work con-
text. For some, the CA designation represents a measure
of intellectual achievement and standing in a professional
community. For others, the designation is simply a means
to an end. The former group indicated that they display,
with pride, their designation on business cards and letter-
heads, even when their day-to-day work did not require a
professional designation. The latter group, by contrast, was
strategic about the use and display of their designation and
in many cases, particularly when working primarily in con-
sulting, strategically omitted their designation from busi-
ness cards and letterhead.
We conclude, from this preliminary study, that some
accountants identify with their accounting designation in
purely instrumental or careerist terms – i.e. as a means
of enhancing earnings, while others view their accounting
designation in ‘ideal-professional’ terms – i.e. as a measure
of status and integrity. Based on our initial qualitative
study, and the responses of our pre-test group, we identi-
?ed four items designed to tap into respondents’ feeling
that being a chartered accountant served utilitarian pur-
poses of career and ?nancial reward, rather than a public
duty or calling. The Cronbach’s a for the items in this mea-
sure is 0.73.
Independent variables
Respondents were categorized in their work setting by
indicating the type of ?rm they were employed in (public
accounting ?rm, corporation, government, not for pro?t,
education or other). Information on organizational rank
was gathered in two ways. Respondents in public account-
ing were asked to indicate if they were a partner, manager,
senior, junior or ‘other’ rank. All others selected their rank
from the categories of top, middle, junior manager or
‘other’ rank. In analyzing the rank data, partners (public
practice) and top managers (non-public practice) are in-
cluded as ‘‘top level managers” (see note 2 in Table 3 for
further details).
Respondents were categorized as working primarily in
core accounting work if more than half their time was
spent working in the areas of accounting and auditing.
While tax is often considered a core area of accounting
along with auditing (Abbott, 1988), the profession’s inde-
pendence requirements are generally not binding for tax
work, nor are accountants granted an exclusive monopoly
over tax advice, making it somewhat removed from the
core activities of the profession. Our decision to include
tax as a non-core activity, thus, was based on two observa-
tions. First, our qualitative interviews with senior accoun-
tants indicated that tax was professionally distinct from
Table 2
Measurement of variables: questions.
Organizational commitment
1. I am proud to tell my friends that I am part of my current employer/?rm
2. When someone criticizes my current employer/?rm, it feels like a personal insult
3. I hope to be working for my current employer/?rm until I retire
4. My current job gives me considerable opportunity for freedom in how I do the work
5. I seriously intend to look for a job at another employer/?rm within the next year. (Reversely coded)
6. My own sense of who I am (i.e. my personal identity) overlaps to a great extent with my own sense of what my current employer/?rm represents
Professional commitment
1. My CA is a signi?cant part of my working life
2. I am extremely glad that I chose this profession over others I was considering at the time I joined
3. I consider the CA designation as a signi?cant accomplishment in my career
4. I am proud to tell my friends that I am a CA
5. I identify myself as a CA in my working environment
6. I feel pride when I see other CAs being recognized
7. I deeply care about the future of the CA profession
Client commitment
1. When someone praises my largest client, it feels like a personal compliment
2. When I talk about my largest client, I usually say ‘‘we” rather than ‘‘they”
3. The successes of my largest client are my successes
Rigor and enforcement of independence requirements
1. I believe that independence is one of the main foundations of the CA profession
2. I believe that the profession’s independence requirements need to be strictly enforced in every sphere of activities in which public accounting ?rms
are involved
3. I think the profession would be better off if the profession’s independence requirements for CAs in public practice were more rigorous
4. I think that the business community in general would be better off if the profession’s independence requirements for CAs in public practice were
more rigorous
Value of the CA designation
1. The CA designation is a very good foundation to start a career in business
2. The CA designation has contributed to a large extent to my career
3. The CA designation provides the opportunity to earn suf?cient ?nancial rewards
4. The CA designation provides a lot of ?exibility in employment opportunities
418 R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427
audit because auditing contained a higher objective ‘third-
party’ duty to the shareholders. Tax, by contrast, invites an
accountant to become more closely aligned with the client,
much like the subjective alignment between a lawyer and
her client. Second, this categorization is borne out by pro-
fessional legislation in North America which gives accoun-
tants a closed professional jurisdiction with respect to
audit work but not with respect to tax. Respondents who
indicated less than half their time is spent in audit and
accounting were categorized as ‘‘non-core”.
8
Finally, respondents in public accounting ?rms were
categorized as being employed in one of four size group-
ings of ?rms: Big Four; medium (see Table 3), small (all
others except sole practitioners) and sole practitioners.
This categorization scheme follows that commonly ac-
cepted in the Canadian accounting industry and is identical
to the categorizations used in the trade publication The
Bottom Line.
Analysis
Because the intent of this study is to offer a preliminary
exploration of shifts in value and logic orientation within
the accounting profession across different contexts of
work, we focus analytic attention on measuring the degree
of difference in attitudes and commitment of individual
accountants in different work arrangements. We use anal-
ysis of variance (ANOVA) to measure these differences. AN-
OVA is particularly suitable for analysis involving
independent categorical variables with continuous depen-
dent variables and has a wider application than the two-
sample t-test as it can simultaneously test for differences
in means across more than two categorical groups.
9
Post
hoc analyses in ANOVA also allow us to identify precisely
where signi?cant differences between categories have
occurred.
Method
Data was collected with a bilingual, online survey that
sampled more than 7000 Canadian chartered accountants
in four provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia,
and Québec).
10
The membership of these four provinces in
Table 3
Demographic data of respondents.
Dimension Alberta British Columbia Nova Scotia Québec Total
c
No. % No. % No. % No. % No. %
Gender
Female 90 31 150 31 88 33 92 33 420 32
Male 197 69 341 69 175 67 186 67 899 68
287 100 491 100 263 100 278 100 1319 100
Organizational type
Big Four ?rm 29 10 72 15 20 7 20 7 141 11
Medium accounting ?rm
a
12 4 28 6 25 9 20 7 85 6
Smaller accounting ?rm 55 19 102 21 44 15 38 14 239 18
Sole practitioner 32 11 44 9 17 6 20 7 113 8
Total in public accounting 128 45 246 51 106 37 98 36 578 43
Industry 113 40 151 31 119 41 103 38 486 37
Government 20 7 43 9 30 10 49 18 142 11
Other 25 9 44 9 34 12 22 8 125 9
286 100 484 100 289 100 272 100 1331 100
Hierarchical position
b
Higher 135 48 221 46 148 52 129 47 633 48
Middle 117 42 228 47 107 37 118 43 570 43
Lower 15 5 22 5 16 6 11 4 64 5
Other 12 4 13 3 16 6 16 6 57 4
279 100 484 100 287 100 274 100 1324 100
a
Respondents were speci?ed that medium accounting ?rms include the following: BDO Dunwoody; BHD Canada; Collins Barrow/Mintz and Partners;
Grant Thornton; HLB/Schwartz Levitsky Feldman; Mallette Maheu; Meyers Norris and Penny; and Richer, Usher and Vineberg. These ?rms employ a
professional staff that varies from 228 to 1610 individuals (The Bottom Line, 2002).
b
The higher hierarchical position comprises partners (public accounting) and top managers (non-public accounting settings). The middle position
comprises managers and seniors (public accounting) and middle managers (non-public accounting settings). The lower position includes juniors (public
accounting) and junior managers (non-public accounting settings).
c
The numbers do not add up to the total response number because of missing information. A number of respondents did not clearly indicate their
af?liated provincial institute.
8
While tax has been considered a non-core activity in this paper, we
understand that this categorization may be subject to challenge. Accord-
ingly, we re-ran the statistics with tax included as a core activity. Although
there are some differences in the two sets of analyses, the major ?ndings as
indicated in the ‘Discussion’ section are not affected.
9
As one of the fundamental assumptions of ANOVA is homogeneity of
the variance a ‘homogeneity of variance’ test was conducted with every
analysis. Where this assumption was violated, the Browne Forsythe test
was used to determine if the results are comparable to the ANOVA F-
statistics and p-values and whether any adjustments to the interpretation
of the results would be needed. The results of the two tests were found to
be comparable.
10
The second author, who is ?uent in both French and English, translated
all of the questions (originally formulated in English) in French. The French
questionnaire was subsequently checked for clarity by four individuals: one
director of the Ordre des comptables agréés du Québec; one retired CGA
and his wife; and one academic in sociology. Only minor modi?cations
resulted from their comments.
R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427 419
2001 represented 48% of the total number of CAs in Can-
ada.
11
The questionnaire gathered information on the
respondents’ current job, their articling experience, mea-
sures of professional and organizational commitment, and
the degree to which they characterized their career in utili-
tarianism terms. Most questions were randomized
– although the order of the sections was not.
12
Data collection started several months after the collapse
of Arthur Andersen, in the last quarter of 2002, and ended
mid-January, 2003. Table 3 summarizes descriptive data on
the sample.
A request to participate in the survey was sent by each
of the four provincial institutes to a randomized sample of
7169 active members. Prospective participants were in-
formed of: the purpose of the survey; an estimate of com-
pletion time (about 20 m); brief biographies of the
researchers; details about con?dentiality; a hyperlink or
address to the appropriate website as well as the required
username and password to log in. Two reminders, approx-
imately 10 and 20 days after the initial request, were sent
to individuals included in the original sample.
13
A total of 1606 members responded to the question-
naire. Of these, over 1200 respondents on average were
usable for each full set of analyses. The response rates by
province are as follows: British Columbia 20.5%, Nova Sco-
tia 20.1%, and Québec 11.7%.
14
To assess howwell our sample represents the population
we compared the gender, organizational type andhierarchi-
cal position of our respondents with provincial data on
membership. The gender split of our sample is nearly iden-
tical to that of the underlying population. Similarly, the
organizational type proportions in Alberta, Nova Scotia
and Québec closely approximate that of the population.
Our sample from British Columbia, however, appears to
over-represent members in public practice (51% of our
respondents, versus 36% of the underlying population). We
also seem to have a disproportionate number of high rank-
ing respondents (46–52%, depending upon the province)
as compared to the underlying population (29–35%).
15
While we do not know the exact reason for this difference,
we suspect that respondents might have in?ated their rank
status inthesurveydue toegocentrismor social desirability.
These differences between sample and population need to
be taken into account when interpreting the results.
We also assessed the validity of our sample by compar-
ing early and late responses, based on the assumption that
late responses offer good proxies for non-respondents
(Roberts, 1999). A comparison of sample means of these
two groups using t-tests indicate there were no signi?cant
differences between the two groups on most variables of
interest in this study.
16
Results
Work context
Table 4 presents the results of the ANOVA analysis of
the comparison of commitments between professionals
employed in traditional (i.e. public practice) and non-tradi-
tional (government, corporations and other) work settings.
The results demonstrate statistically signi?cant differences
between professionals employed in public practice organi-
zations and non-traditional work settings across each of
the dependant variables.
Public practice accountants are more committed to
their profession than are those who migrated to non-tradi-
tional work settings (F = 40.21, p < .001), thus offering sup-
port for the argument that public practice accountants
have a stronger connection to the institutional logic of pro-
fessionalism. This result is consistent with the prediction
of Hypothesis 1, that accountants who work in the tradi-
tional ideal of a public practice partnership are more clo-
sely aligned with traditional professional values.
The results, however, do not uniformly support our
assumptions of public practice as the repository of ideal-
type professionalism. Accountants in public practice also
report higher degrees of organizational commitment
(F = 35.57, p < .001). Public practice accountants also ap-
pear to be more likely to view their accounting designation
in commercial terms (F = 4.05, p < .05). Moreover, mem-
bers of public accounting ?rms are less likely than mem-
bers practicing in-house in private industry or
government to support the rigor and enforcement of pro-
fessional independence (F = 132.94, p < .001).
11
We asked the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario to
participate but were unable to obtain permission to contact their
membership. Despite this we have no reason to believe the absence of
respondents from Ontario biased our results.
12
A copy of the survey instrument is available from the ?rst author.
13
A temporary cookie was placed on the respondent’s computer once s/he
initially answered the survey to ensure that people would only complete
the survey once. We were unable to send speci?c reminders in Alberta due
to changes in the institute’s information technology system. As a result, we
were unable to calculate a response rate for Alberta comparable with the
rate for the other provinces.
14
Although somewhat low, these response rates compare favorably to
contemporary large scale surveys of accountants – See Bamber and Iyer
(2002) (22.8%); Elias (2002) (15.2%) and Valentine and Fleischman (2003)
(9.5%). The lower response rate in Québec may be due to various reasons –
including doubt as to whether researchers from English-speaking univer-
sities were able to conceive a meaningful questionnaire in French. One
French-speaking respondent indeed sent an e-mail to us after having
completed the survey, highlighting that he almost decided not to answer
the survey for this reason, and how surprised he was about the high quality
of the French questionnaire.
15
In three institutes members voluntarily provide information on their
hierarchical position. In two institutes, data on hierarchical position was
available for about 30% of the membership. In the third institute the
corresponding proportion is 82%.
16
In accordance with Roberts (1999), we assessed non-response bias, for
each of the provincial institutes, by comparing early (i.e. the earliest 25%
responding in each province) and late respondents (i.e. the latest 25%
responding in each province). A comparison of the means of all dependent
and independent variables of interest (as speci?ed in Tables 4–7), as well as
the general demographic variables of age and gender, found little difference
between early and late respondents. In general, independent-sample t-tests
did not reveal signs of signi?cant non-response bias, except that late
respondents were slightly older, they occupied more senior ranks within
their employing organizations, and there were fewer late respondents from
mid-size ?rms. However, two of such differences disappeared with a
different method of comparing early and late respondents (using the cut-off
point of 20 days from the survey start date in the province, i.e., around the
second reminder time). These results suggest that there is unlikely to be a
systematic bias due to differences between those who responded and those
who did not.
420 R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427
These results paint an interesting, if somewhat confus-
ing, picture. Clearly there are statistically signi?cant differ-
ences in attitudes and commitments to various elements of
professionalism between those practitioners who migrated
to more bureaucratic forms of practice and those who re-
mained in traditional professional partnerships. The results
regarding commitment to one’s profession and one’s orga-
nization are consistent with prior research on organiza-
tional professional con?ict. That is, there does not appear
to be inherent contradiction between commitment to one’s
profession and commitment to the person’s employing
organization, at least in public practice ?rms. Professionals
in traditional professional service ?rms have higher mean
scores on both forms of commitment. Indeed, the results
seem to demonstrate that accountants in public practice
are more engaged in both their organizational and profes-
sional environments than are those who work in govern-
ment and industry.
More surprising, however, is the observation that
accountants in public practice are more likely to view their
professional designation in utilitarian terms than are
accountants in industry and government. While this result
is consistent with common interpretations of recent scan-
dals in the audit profession, it offers a somewhat unsettling
view of professionalism in public accounting ?rms as
devaluing the intrinsic value of professional work. It is sim-
ilarly surprising that accountants in public practice are less
supportive of the rigorous enforcement of professional
independence. While this, again, is consistent with wide-
spread understandings of the events surrounding Enron,
it suggests that the traditional professional partnership
has failed to reproduce core values of the coercive role of
professional institutions. The results also reinforce the
important point made earlier regarding the limitations of
classic attitudinal instruments (such as the professional
commitment instrument) imported from other ?elds into
studies of professionals without careful adaptation to con-
text. As a result of this methodological oversight, the study
of accounting (predicated on such instruments) may have
developed in a void, within a world grounded on myths
(Hopwood, 1979).
In sum, we can conclude that the hypothesis that the lo-
gic of ideal-type professionalism is better preserved in tra-
ditional professional partnerships is, on balance, not
supported. While accountants in traditional work contexts
retain high commitment to their profession, they tend to
see their professional designation more in utilitarian or
commercial terms, and are less committed to traditional
notions of the enforcement of independence by profes-
sional institutions than accountants who work in non-tra-
ditional contexts.
Work content
Table 5 shows how attitudes and commitments of
accountants differ when comparing professionals who
work primarily in traditional or core services of accounting
and auditing versus those whose work involves less tradi-
tional services. There is no statistically signi?cant differ-
ence between the two groups in terms of their
commitment to the profession or with respect to their util-
itarian attitudes about a professional career. As predicted
in Hypothesis 2, however, accountants working outside
of core accounting are more committed to their employing
organization (F = 10.77, p < .001). Also, in support of
Hypothesis 2, accountants in non-traditional types of work
identify more closely with their clients (F = 5.74, p = .017).
Somewhat surprisingly, accountants working in less
Table 4
Context of work: means, standard deviations and analysis of variance – public practice versus industry, government and other.
Work setting Organizational
commitment
Professional
commitment
Independence
enforcement
Utilitarian view of CA
designation
Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D.
Public practice 23.17 4.93 30.26 3.56 14.49 3.11 17.33 2.09
Industry, government and other 21.53 4.55 28.90 4.19 16.26 2.55 17.09 2.28
F 35.57
***
40.21
***
132.94
***
4.05
*
*
p < .05.
***
p < .001.
Table 5
Content of work: means, standard deviations and analysis of variance: core versus non-core work.
Type of work Organizational
commitment
Professional
commitment
Client
commitment
Independence
enforcement
Utilitarian view of CA
designation
Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D.
Core 21.59 4.65 29.6 3.82 9.05 2.79 15.15 2.99 17.14 2.10
Non-core 22.55 4.82 29.4 4.10 9.65 3.10 15.65 2.91 17.20 2.28
F 10.77
***
.989 5.74
*
8.71
**
.195
*
p < .05.
**
p < .01.
***
p < .001.
R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427 421
traditional areas report higher commitment to the core
professional role of independence enforcement (F = 8.71,
p < .01) than do their counterparts in core accounting.
In general, the results support the notion that as
accountants migrate to different forms of work, their com-
mitment to their employing organization and their clients
increases. The results, therefore, offer support for the argu-
ment that professional norms are compromised when pro-
fessionals engage in, or are exposed to, non-professional
work. The ?ndings are tempered, however, by the signi?-
cantly lower commitment toward independence enforce-
ment by those accountants working in the core areas of
accounting.
Position in organization
In conducting this analysis we chose to focus on differ-
ences between two categories of professionals: top level
professionals (i.e. partners and senior managers) and all
others. We do so for two reasons. First, professional service
?rms are relatively ?at hierarchical structures with essen-
tially two ranks, partners and associates (Galanter & Palay,
1991; Greenwood et al., 1990). This simple division is lar-
gely replicated in corporations, government organizations
and other ‘in-house’ positions where professionals adopt
one of two identities; an in-house professional or a top
manager (Gunz & Gunz, 2006). Second, there is substantial
evidence that, as a result of socialization processes, top le-
vel managers inculcate unique value orientations and atti-
tudes (Buchanan, 1974). By dividing the professionals into
these two distinct categories of rank (top level and other)
we seek to assess the degree to which professional atti-
tudes and values may have been eroded as a consequence
of assuming a superior management position within an
organization.
Table 6 shows the results for how commitments and
attitudes vary between top level professionals and all other
professionals on each of the variables. The results indicate
statistically signi?cant differences exist between profes-
sionals who occupy the top positions in their employing
organizations and lower ranking professionals in all areas
except for attitudes regarding the rigorous enforcement
of independence by professional institutes. Top managers
are more committed to their organization (F = 308.83,
p < .001), their profession (F = 22.89, p < .001), their clients
(F = 31.63, p < .001), and are more likely to describe their
professional accounting designation in utilitarian terms
(F = 32.36, p < .001) than are professionals in lower levels
of an organization.
Broadly interpreted, the results offer support for the
argument that migration up the ranks of an organization
dampens some elements of professionalism, particularly
the notion that a professional designation acquires more
instrumental value as one rises in rank in an organization.
Similarly, the results offer strong support for the notion
that professionals of high-rank in an organization are more
likely to adopt a ‘managerial’ logic of identi?cation with
their clients. The support is not uniform, however, in that
top managers exhibit higher degrees of commitment to
both their employing organization and their profession.
Although this result is inconsistent with the broader argu-
ment that organizational rank erodes professionalism, it
may be explained in part by Leicht and Fennell’s (2001)
theory of role reversal in which elite managers appear to
be adopting select attributes of professionalism. Alterna-
tively, the results are also consistent with the argument
made earlier regarding the limitations of attitudinal instru-
ments imported in toto from other ?elds.
Position in the organizational ?eld
Table 7 demonstrates how attitudes toward profession-
alism and commitment differ between public practice
accountants who work in organizations of different size.
We hypothesized that, because the Big Four ?rms now oc-
cupy a peripheral position in the organizational ?eld of
public accounting (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006), the pro-
fessionals within the ?rm will espouse values very differ-
ent from professionals working in more traditional, less
peripheral organizations.
The results offer general support for the notion that
public accountants’ values and attitudes about profession-
alism vary across the type of public accounting organiza-
tion where they practice. While there are no signi?cant
differences across public accounting organization types in
the mean scores of the professional commitment and util-
itarianism variables, there are statistically signi?cant be-
tween-group differences regarding all of the other three
variables. Importantly, Big Four professionals exhibit the
lowest level of commitment to the organization and the
client as well as to the rigorous enforcement of indepen-
dence. Sole practitioners, who exemplify the traditional
organizational form for professions (Galanter & Palay,
1991), by contrast exhibit the highest levels of commit-
ment to organization and clients.
While the results seem to support the notion that atti-
tudes about the rigor and enforcement of independence
have experienced the strongest erosion in the Big Four
Table 6
Position in organization: means, standard deviations and analysis of variance: rank.
Rank Organizational
commitment
Professional
commitment
Client
commitment
Independence
enforcement
Utilitarian view of CA
designation
Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D.
Top level 24.48 4.14 30.05 4.03 10.03 2.98 15.57 3.00 17.57 2.09
Lower levels 20.09 4.32 29.01 3.84 8.63 2.80 15.34 2.89 16.90 2.19
F 308.83
***
22.89
***
31.63
***
2.01 32.36
***
***
p < .001.
422 R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427
accounting ?rms, it should be noted that the Big Four pro-
fessionals’ mean score on this measure is still higher than
the scale mid-point score (12). Further, it cannot be in-
ferred from the results that professionals in Big Four ?rms
have adopted a ‘managerial’ logic across all of the variables
investigated in this study. Rather, the results seem to indi-
cate that Big Four professionals are characterized by con-
tradictory attitudes regarding professionalism, being
simultaneously lower on client commitment, organiza-
tional commitment and independence enforcement. This
observation is perhaps not surprising given that historical
accounts indicate a growing disengagement of then the
Big Five ?rms from their historically close relationship
with accounting professional associations (Suddaby &
Greenwood, 2005). In comparison with other public
accountants, accountants who work in the largest ?rms
would be exposed in their daily life to different and contra-
dictory discourses regarding the nature of professionalism,
translating into a paradoxical set of professional attitudes.
At the very least, our results suggest that the cluster of val-
ues and attitudes represented by traditional professional-
ism is not consistently re?ected in the mindset of Big
Four accountants.
Discussion
The results sketch a useful picture of how four distinct
changes in the organizational context of work correlate
with variation in attitudes of chartered accountants to-
ward professional values and institutions. The changes
are depicted schematically in Fig. 1, which charts four dis-
tinct moments or variation from traditional contexts, con-
tent and position of professional work to new and
emerging contexts, content and position of professional
work. Fig. 1 also identi?es where commitments to organi-
zation, profession, client, independence enforcement and
utilitarian view of the CA designation are high and where
there are statistically signi?cant differences.
Table 7
Location of organization in organizational ?eld-core versus periphery: means, standard deviations and analysis of variance.
Size of organization Organizational
commitment
Professional
commitment
Client
commitment
Independence
enforcement
Utilitarian view of CA
designation
Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D.
Sole practice 25.90 3.14 30.41 3.21 9.80 3.34 15.22 3.29 17.48 2.03
Small size 24.26 4.67 30.24 3.87 9.43 2.92 14.27 3.19 17.30 2.15
Mid tier 22.05 4.68 30.19 3.32 9.60 2.77 15.33 2.78 17.32 1.93
Big Four 20.00 4.78 30.18 3.51 8.78 2.77 13.82 2.85 17.25 2.14
F 39.23
***
0.108 2.70
*
7.20
***
0.31
*
p < .05.
***
p < .001.
Fig. 1. Commitment clusters in four types of change in the context of accounting work (only variables with signi?cant differences found between categories
are included).
R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427 423
First, the results con?rm prior research which indicates
there is no inherent con?ict between commitment to both
one’s profession and one’s employing organization. In par-
ticular, the results extend this observation to suggest that
high-rank professionals can also be committed to clients
while maintaining high levels of commitment to an organi-
zation and the profession. The results, thus, support our
contention that prior research on organizational profes-
sional commitment ought to be reoriented to new and
more theoretically relevant variables.
Second, the results offer considerable reassurance that
the majority of accounting professionals are relatively
highly committed to their profession. For instance, the
maximum and scale mid-point scores pertaining to the
measure of professional commitment are, respectively, 35
and 21; our results indicate that public and non-public
accountants have average commitments of 30.3 and 28.9
(Table 4). Further, Tables 4 and 5 demonstrate results that
consistently support the observation that accountants in
traditional work contexts are more committed, or are no
different from professionals in non-traditional work
arrangements, in their commitment to the accounting
profession.
We also note that, while the differences in value com-
mitments across work contexts may be statistically signif-
icant, they are not substantively different in practical
terms. That is, even when espoused commitments to pro-
fessional values are low relative to other groups, their
mean scores still indicate a strong commitment to profes-
sional ideals. So, for example, we observe that accountants
in public practice are lower in their commitment to the rig-
orous enforcement of independence requirements, than
accountants in industry, government and education. Not-
withstanding this observed difference, the mean score of
this group is still relatively high (i.e. a mean score of 14.5
out of a possible 20 for this group versus a mean score of
16.3 out of a possible 20 for those outside of public prac-
tice). This is a relatively high indication of commitment
and should offer some reassurance that the bulk of Cana-
dian chartered accountants are still relatively highly com-
mitted to professional ideals.
However, the results also con?rm our general argument
that, as the conditions of work change so do the patterns of
value commitments. When we extend our analysis to in-
clude variables which we developed to better capture key
elements of the speci?c work context or environment sur-
rounding accountants, then we observe a growing in?u-
ence of the logic of managerialism in the profession. This
is, perhaps, most evident when tracking the level of com-
mitment to the core professional ideal of rigorous enforce-
ment of independence across the four types of change in
professional work. Table 4 demonstrates that accountants
in traditional public practice are less committed to inde-
pendence enforcement than are accountants who work in
government, education and industry. Similarly, Table 5
shows that attitudes toward coercive enforcement of inde-
pendence is lower for accountants working in traditional
content areas and higher for accountants employed as con-
sultants and information technology experts. And Table 7,
most strikingly, demonstrates that attitudes about com-
mitment to independence enforcement are weakest in
the most elite representatives of the accounting profession,
accountants employed by the Big Four accounting ?rms.
The results also suggest ?rst, that the assumption that
professionals homogeneously share attitudes and values
about the appropriateness of institutional structures is
incorrect. In fact, attitudes vary as a function of conditions
of work. Moreover, fragmentation of values within the pro-
fession can best be understood by attending to the condi-
tions of work. Second, the results suggest that
accountants working in Big Four ?rms hold different atti-
tudes about professional institutions and ideology than
accountants in other types of ?rms. This group of accoun-
tants demonstrated the lowest commitment to their
employing organization, to their clients and to the rigor
of enforcement of independence requirements. Third, the
distinctive values we most commonly attribute to ideal-
type professionalism in accounting, such as commitment
to independence enforcement, is most strongly re?ected
in surprising contexts – i.e. among accountants working
outside of both professional partnerships and core
accounting work. In particular, the in?uence of manageri-
alism in undermining accountancy’s distinctive value of
independence enforcement tends to be more pervasive
among Big Four accountants.
Collectively, these ?ndings reinforce the observation
that the locus of professionalization is becoming defocal-
ized and that the organizational context of professional
work is important in shaping attitudes, norms and opin-
ions about professional ideology (Cooper & Robson, 2006;
Grey, 1998). Where accountants work, both in terms of
their position as individuals within an organization as well
as the position of their organization in the organizational
?eld, holds implications for how they interpret and under-
stand the need for enforcement of independence stan-
dards, the meaning they attribute to their professional
designation and their degree of commitment to their
employing organization, their clients and their profession.
A similar trend is observed when examining the respon-
dents’ hierarchical rank within their employing organiza-
tion. Table 6 demonstrates that as accountants rise in rank
in an organization, regardless of whether that organization
is a traditional professional partnership or anorganizational
bureaucracy, they tend to identify their professional desig-
nation more in utilitarian terms and are more likely to
acknowledge a stronger commitment to their clients. How-
ever, it is critical to observe that high ranking employees do
not differ from low level employees in their attitudes about
the importance of the core value of professional indepen-
dence. One possible interpretation of these results, thus, is
a type of ‘creeping’ careerism that erodes professionalism
(but not necessarily the core value of independence) as
one progresses through the ranks of an organization.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the results also
con?rm that the accounting professionals employed by
the elite members of the profession, the Big Four, operate
under different value assumptions and patterns of commit-
ment than all other accounting professionals. Members of
the Big Four are remarkable by their lower commitment
to any of the variables studied. Their attitudes are particu-
larly contradictory regarding their commitment to the cli-
ent and to the core value of independence. The results
424 R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427
indeed suggest that while they are the least committed to
their clients, Big Four accountants are the least engaged to-
wards the notion of independence enforcement.
It is important to note here that we are not claiming to
measure substantive value outcomes nor are we claiming
that the observed differences in attitudes toward profes-
sional institutions and values translate directly into ethical
outcomes. Rather the intent is to capture the variation in
attitudes and commitments to basic value structures across
different work contexts which we have theorized as con-
tributing to distinct institutional logics. The assumption is
that, while differences in values and attitudes may not
immediately translate into behavioral differences, over
time they may contribute to such changes by making the
adoption of what Brint (1994) and others (Friedson, 2001;
Leicht & Fennell, 2001; Hanlon, 1994) have identi?ed as
the adoption of value clusters that ‘naturalize’ the overtly
commercial elements of professional behavior. Prior re-
search has shown that attitudes are precursors of behavior
(Summers, 1970). That is, not only are attitudes persistent
over time but they are related to ‘‘action tendencies” in
individuals (Campbell, 1963). While this paper has demon-
strated the link between differences in the organization of
professional work and professionals’ attitudes, the logical
next step is to investigate the relationship between differ-
ent attitudes of professionalism and professional behavior.
That linkage is beyond the scope of this paper but would be
a fruitful line of inquiry for future research.
Similarly, we acknowledge the concerns of critical the-
orists who decry the call by Wyatt (2004) and others (Mac-
intosh & Shearer, 2000) for a return to tradition as a futile
attempt to recapture a mythology of a golden age of pro-
fessionalism that, likely, never existed. While this may well
be true, we argue that the logic of professionalism, like
other rationalized myths are important not only because
of their impact on ethical outcomes, but also because they
re?ect and promote widespread understandings of how
professionals ought to act, how professions should be orga-
nized and how professional norms are best enforced. As
such, logics are powerful reinforcing mechanisms by which
professional values and attitudes are reproduced and, ulti-
mately, determine the legitimacy of professional practices
and institutional structures. Even though rational myths of
professionalism may re?ect a golden age that never actu-
ally existed (Tinker, 2005), we cannot simply dismiss them
as irrelevant. Whether or not they re?ect historical reality,
rational myths hold serious consequences in the present as
they become converted into rules, standards and laws of
professional conduct that constrain and enable future
behavior (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Suchman & Edelman,
1996). That changes in work context introduce variation
in professional myths as adhered and enacted in work set-
tings is an important and, we think, understudied insight,
irrespective of how soundly those myths might be based
in historical reality.
Conclusion
This study is a preliminary attempt to map the variation
in professional attitudes and values as the conditions of
professional work change. As with most such efforts to
map variations of so large a scale there are some limita-
tions. Foremost, our study is limited by self-reported atti-
tudes and values. We have not attempted to connect the
expressed values and opinions to overt behavior. Nor do
we think this is necessarily required. The intent is not to
map behavior, but rather to capture changes in attitudes
and logics. In effect our study brings to light the sites and
locations of variation in ideal-type attitudes of profession-
alism across a broad range of work arrangement for
accounting professionals. While there is some expectation
that, over time, shifts in values and opinions will produce
shifts in behavior, there is no assumption that this will oc-
cur in the short term.
Our study is also limited by its timing. That the ques-
tionnaire was administered so closely to the fall of Enron
suggests that the opinions captured might re?ect a short
term reaction to a crisis. However, the timing may also
be considered an asset of this research. That is, it might
be considered a strength that we are able to capture the
variation of attitudes and values about professionalism
held while members of the profession are actively engaged
in a period of critical self re?ection. In fact, it is possible
that some of the between-group differences that we bring
to light in this study are stronger in normal times, when
the external legitimacy of the audit function is not on the
radar screen of public accountants. Further studies that
replicate this one can establish the temporary or enduring
nature of the trends we identify.
This study identi?es several other directions for poten-
tial future research. We are intrigued by the possibility that
accounting ?rms vary in the manner in which they incul-
cate different professional values. It is not clear if this oc-
curs as a result of selection practices (either self or
organizational) or is the result of certain socialization prac-
tices that occur inside public accounting ?rms. Qualitative
work, particularly of an ethnographic nature, would allow
us to better understand how these different value and
commitment patterns are created and reproduced. The
study also identi?es a distinct gap in our understanding
of how professional core values are maintained and repro-
duced among in-house professionals, or those employed in
large organizations where non-professionals control pro-
fessional work and careers. Interestingly, our ?ndings sug-
gest that ‘‘adaptation” characterizes non-traditional
accounting settings while a degree of ‘‘proletarianization”
is re?ected in the world of public accounting. Also, our
study identi?es a possible linkage between shifts in values,
logics and institutional change. There is considerable
opportunity to trace and document this connection in the
context of the accounting profession. Content analysis of
institutionally produced texts (i.e. the annual reports and
publications of the Canadian Institute of Chartered
Accountants or AICPA) could further illuminate this
process.
Perhaps most importantly, our study also points to the
important in?uence that organizations have had on alter-
ing the work arrangements of professionals and, as a result,
in in?uencing logics within the ?eld. Foremost, this study
should raise the level of analysis for researchers interested
in understanding ethical lapses in the professions. Much of
R. Suddaby et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 409–427 425
the critique of professional ethics has focused on the indi-
vidual professional. Our results suggest this is somewhat
misguided, that ethicists must also attend to the way in
which professional work is organized if they want to seri-
ously address ethical issues in professional service ?rms.
The role of large organizations in structuring the condi-
tions by which professional work is produced, and its con-
comitant effect on professional projects, is a subject also
overlooked in the sociology of professions. Accountants
(and, arguably, engineers) are more organizationally
embedded than other professions and offer a unique
opportunity to extend our understanding of how the grow-
ing importance of large organizations will alter our taken
for granted assumptions about professionalism and profes-
sional work.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the ?nancial support of the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Can-
ada, the Deloitte & Touche/Canadian Academic Accounting
Association Research Grant Program, and the H.E. Pearson
endowment.
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