The genesis of professional organisation in English accountancy

Walker, Stephen

doi:10.1016/s0361-3682(02)00031-4

Cited by 120 publications

(116 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…In addition to its socio-economic consequences for the casualties of business failures, a large-scale corporate insolvency is associated with 'big money owed, and big fees charged by those trying to sort it out' (Flood & Skordaki, 1995, p. 5). Academic researchers have shown how the engagement of accountants in insolvency practice was of considerable importance to the professionalisation of accountants in Britain (Napier & Noke, 1992;Walker, 1995Walker, , 2004a; how insolvency work contributed to the emergence of the accounting stereotype (Bougen, 1994), and is the arena in which jurisdictional interfaces with the profession of law are most evident (Walker, 2004b).…”

Section: The Insolvency Professionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender essentialism and occupational segregation in insolvency practice

Joyce

Walker

2015

Accounting, Organizations and Society

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Advances towards egalitarianism in professional recruitment may be offset by processes of occupational re-segregation. Drawing on gender theory this paper investigates horizontal segregation in the UK insolvency profession, as revealed through the lived experiences of female and male practitioners. It is shown that horizontal segregation pervades at different levels of practice and is undergirded by various elements of gender essentialism. Physical essentialism explains why insolvency practice has been traditionally gendered male. Interactional essentialism combines with the management of work-life balance to define the subfields of corporate and personal insolvency as masculine and feminine respectively. Gender essentialist assumptions also pervade the distribution of roles and the allocation of work tasks. Networks are identified as arenas for the reproduction and perpetuation of occupational segregation. The findings indicate the continuing potency of gender in everyday professional life, and suggest the limitations of diversity-orientated policies and the complexities of formulating transformative agendas.

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Section: The Insolvency Professionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender essentialism and occupational segregation in insolvency practice

Joyce

Walker

2015

Accounting, Organizations and Society

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“…Within accounting literature, 'knowledge' has historically been studied as a 'strategic resource', primarily in the context of intra-and inter-professional battles over jurisdictional rights (Walker, 1988;Sugarman, 1995;Walker, 1995;Walker, 2004a;Walker, 2004b;Dyball et al, 2007). Covaleski et al (2003), Walker (2004a) and Evans and Honold (2007) utilize the work of Abbott (1988), who describes the necessity of maintaining and controlling an abstract system of knowledge in order to maintain and defend a professional jurisdiction and to penetrate other professional jurisdictions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whilst prior studies of the accounting profession have addressed accounting regulations (Cooper and Robson, 2006), the audit function (Carpenter and Dirsmith, 1993;Power, 1997) (including auditor independence (Robson et al, 1994) and the internal audit market (Covaleski et al, 2003) and more recently, the market for corporate taxation (Hasseldine et al, 2011), there is a dearth of research on the insolvency field (see Walker, 1995;Halliday and Carruthers, 1996;Walker, 2004aWalker, , 2004bCooper and Joyce, 2013). Accordingly, the empirical focus of this paper is upon the British insolvency profession.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Knowledge mandates in the state–profession dynamic: A study of the British insolvency profession

Joyce

2014

Accounting, Organizations and Society

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1At the beginning of the 21 st century, the British Government was faced with significant policy decisions to make in the field of corporate insolvency. The impact of the American rescue culture and the acceptability of failure, the development of international insolvency laws within the European Union and localized problems inherent in current insolvency practice provided the impetus for legal reform. Using the work of Halliday (1985Halliday ( , 1987, this paper seeks to understand how professional knowledge and authority impact upon the state-profession relationship and the development and deployment of state policy. The British Government reacted to the global and local pressures with a shift to codification and prescription, greater enforcement of the legal system and an attempt to control and institutionalize insolvency practitioners' moral authority. However in spite of radical reforms, insolvency practitioners' services were retained and their private, expert knowledge systems and authority valorized over corporate management. Insolvency practitioners' localized knowledge, the capacity to disguise moral authority as technical expertise and their networks and coalitions with senior members of Parliament and capital providers, resulted in an interpretation and implementation of legislation that has not seen the dramatic shift in practice that the reforms had envisaged. Despite the reforms being triggered within the global institutional sphere of corporate failure, the institutional sphere of corporate failure, at least in Scotland, retains a local definition, with business rescue packages derived from professionals' social intelligence, their daily micro practices and localized networks.

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“…The sociology of professions literature has also identified the importance of the stateprofession axis in relation to the development of the accounting profess ion ( Poullaous, 1993, 1998;Walker andShackleton, 1995, 1998). The importance of the State in accounting is not restricted to the development of the accounting profession and can be seen more generally too with the State influencing other types of accounting change.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The development of company law in India: The case of the Companies Act 1956

Verma

Gray

2009

Critical Perspectives on Accounting

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The influence of culture and politics on the promulgation of accounting regulations in the Companies Act 1956 in India immediately post independence is analysed using an exploratory framework based on the work of McKinnon (1986) and Gray (1988).Within the framework, the process of change is analysed into three phases, a source phase, diffusion phase and reaction phase with all phases of change being influenced by intra-system activity, trans-system activity and the social and cultural context of India. In particular, the importance of the role of the Government within the process of accounting change is seen and the social context is seen to influence both the need for change and the process of change.

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The genesis of professional organisation in English accountancy

Cited by 120 publications

References 24 publications

Gender essentialism and occupational segregation in insolvency practice

Gender essentialism and occupational segregation in insolvency practice

Knowledge mandates in the state–profession dynamic: A study of the British insolvency profession

The development of company law in India: The case of the Companies Act 1956

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