Understanding social exclusion in elite professional service firms: field level dynamics and the ‘professional project’

Ashley, Louise; Empson, Laura

doi:10.1177/0950017015621480

Cited by 64 publications

(90 citation statements)

References 30 publications

(41 reference statements)

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“…Our results suggest a need for further qualitative research to illuminate privileges and penalties in elite professions, both in terms of progression within and entry to the profession (Ashley and Empson ; Britton, Dearden, Shephard and Vignoles ) and in particular how different ethnic groups, intersected by gender, experience mobility within the profession. Quantitative research that can map career trajectories to partnership over time incorporating transitions between firms would also further advance our understanding of the different career paths and mobility experienced by solicitors of different ethnicities and genders within the profession.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Firms tend to recruit and promote people who display the right signifiers as these are viewed as less risky options. Recruiting certain types of candidates (white men from advantaged backgrounds) makes commercial sense and explains why inequality is reproduced in elite firms despite their public commitment to diversity management discourses and practices (Ashley and Empson ).…”

Section: The Social Structure Of the Legal Profession And Inequalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Privileges and penalties in the legal profession: an intersectional analysis of career progression

Tomlinson

Valizade

Muzio³

et al. 2018

British Journal of Sociology

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Intersectionality theory is concerned with integrating social characteristics to better understanding complex human relations and inequalities in organizations and societies (McCall ). Recently, intersectionality research has taken a categorical and quantitative turn as scholars critically adopt but retain existing social categories to explain differences in labour market outcomes. A key contention is that social categories carry penalties or privileges and their intersection promotes or hinders the life chances of particular groups and individuals. An emergent debate is whether the intersection of disadvantaged characteristics (such as female gender or minority ethnic status) produce penalties that are additive, multiplicative or ameliorative. Research is inconclusive and as yet pays little attention to moderating factors such as employer type, size, geographic location or work profile. Drawing on administrative records for individuals qualified as solicitors in England and Wales, collected by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), combined with aggregated workforce data and firm characteristics of their law firms, we undertake a statistical analysis of the intersection of gender and ethnicity in the profession with a degree of precision and nuance not previously possible. In response to calls to broaden studies of inequalities and intersectionality beyond their effect on pay or income (Castilla ) we focus on career progression to partnership as our key measure of success. The original contribution of our study is twofold. First, we establish statistically different profiles of law firms, showing how the solicitors' profession is stratified by gender, ethnicity and socio-economic background, as well as the type of legal work undertaken by developing a model of socio-economic stratification in the profession. Second, we demonstrate that while penalties tend to be additive (i.e. the sum of the individual ethnic and gender penalties) this varies significantly by law firm profile and in some situations the effect is ameliorative.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: The Social Structure Of the Legal Profession And Inequalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Privileges and penalties in the legal profession: an intersectional analysis of career progression

Tomlinson

Valizade

Muzio³

et al. 2018

British Journal of Sociology

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“…In the context of this congested graduate labour market, we examine here the contemporary associations between social background, educational credentials and elite destinations, using the case of entry to top finance and consultancy firms. Our analysis provides a rare quantitative glimpse into the social and educational origins of graduates into elite firms in the UK, and uses the overlapping fields of financial, consultancy and accountancy firms (Ashley and Empson : 217–18) to explore its socially and institutionally stratified recruitment patterns, in terms of both overall entry, as well as the internal sorting of graduates within the firms themselves.…”

Section: Introduction: Higher Education Prestige Employers and Elitementioning

confidence: 99%

The field of graduate recruitment: leading financial and consultancy firms and elite class formation

Donnelly

Gamsu²

2019

British Journal of Sociology

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The symbolic value of being recruited by a high status multinational company likely represents an important marker of distinction. For the first time, a unique Destinations of Leavers in Higher Education (DLHE) data-set is used here to model entry to elite multinational company in finance, accountancy and consultancy sectors among graduates of different social origins, universities, degree subjects and with different degree classifications. From a sample of 11,755 graduates working across these three sectors, we examine what predicts entry to 31 leading firms and then examine pay hierarchies among the 3,260 graduates working for these companies using random-effects models. At first glance, significantly, we find that elite recruits come from a much broader range of universities than might be imagined. However, a closer look at the highest paid graduates within these firms reveals more familiar patterns of social and institutional stratification. We argue that these patterns likely reflect the nature of work undertaken by graduates in these elite firms, with institutional and social origins of graduates differing according to the particular track taken in what are likely to be highly differentiated graduate recruitment schemes.

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“…For example, Rivera (2011Rivera ( , 2012 has shown in the US how elite professional service firms attempt to find recruits that represent a 'cultural match', in terms of the past experiences of potential recruits and existing professional staff. There are two key ways in which this cultural match can be demonstrated: university credentials and extracurricular pursuits (Ashley & Empson, 2016;Cook et al, 2012). However, cultural matching goes much deeper than that, stretching all the way back to the social backgrounds (Ashley & Empson, 2013) and early childhood experiences of potential recruits (see Berglas, 2006 andEmpson, 2004).…”

Section: Anticipatory Socializationmentioning

confidence: 99%

When the past comes back to haunt you: The enduring influence of upbringing on the work–family decisions of professional parents

2017

Self Cite

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Research on work-family balance decisions generally presents them as an individual's rational choice between alternatives. The anticipatory socialisation literature highlights the role that early formative experiences play in shaping work and parenting decisions. We go further to emphasise the role of habitus -historically constituted dispositions -in workfamily balance decisions. This relational approach explores how the entrenched and historically formed dispositions of individuals interact dynamically with contextual (i.e. organizational) imperatives. Numerous studies have highlighted the difficulties of reconciling the intense demands of professional careers with family lives. Drawing on 148 interviews with 78 male and female professionals, our study looks at much deeper rooted causes of work-family conflict in professional service firms than have previously been considered. We identify four broad patterns of response to the work-family conflict: professionals may willingly reproduce their parental model, reproduce their parental model against their will, willingly distance themselves from their parental model, and distance themselves from the parental model against their will. We show that the impediments to greater equality lie not only in organizational and societal structures, but within individuals themselves in the form of historically constituted dispositions which contribute towards the maintenance and reproduction of those structures.

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Understanding social exclusion in elite professional service firms: field level dynamics and the ‘professional project’

Cited by 64 publications

References 30 publications

Privileges and penalties in the legal profession: an intersectional analysis of career progression

Privileges and penalties in the legal profession: an intersectional analysis of career progression

The field of graduate recruitment: leading financial and consultancy firms and elite class formation

When the past comes back to haunt you: The enduring influence of upbringing on the work–family decisions of professional parents

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