{"title":"Working apart: Remote working and social bonding in the Big Four audit firms","authors":"Pauline Beau, Lambert Jerman","doi":"10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102727","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In this article, we investigate the influence of remote working on social bonding in Big Four audit firms. Through analysis of 42 interviews, we show that remote working places less demand on auditors to get involved in their firms’ collectives, in addition to individualizing their experience of work and reducing spontaneous mutual support mechanisms. While remote working is sometimes perceived as a way to achieve a better work-life balance in these firms, our results suggest that the potential gain in wellbeing may be achieved to the detriment of social bonding between auditors. Our results contribute to auditing research in two ways. They reveal the collective dimension of auditors’ identity construction by confirming that the place of work is not just a setting, but one of the chief mechanisms of social bonding at work. Additionally, they highlight remote working’s ambivalent impact on the attractiveness of Big Four audit firms.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48078,"journal":{"name":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":8.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Critical Perspectives on Accounting","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1045235424000261","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"BUSINESS, FINANCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In this article, we investigate the influence of remote working on social bonding in Big Four audit firms. Through analysis of 42 interviews, we show that remote working places less demand on auditors to get involved in their firms’ collectives, in addition to individualizing their experience of work and reducing spontaneous mutual support mechanisms. While remote working is sometimes perceived as a way to achieve a better work-life balance in these firms, our results suggest that the potential gain in wellbeing may be achieved to the detriment of social bonding between auditors. Our results contribute to auditing research in two ways. They reveal the collective dimension of auditors’ identity construction by confirming that the place of work is not just a setting, but one of the chief mechanisms of social bonding at work. Additionally, they highlight remote working’s ambivalent impact on the attractiveness of Big Four audit firms.
期刊介绍：
Critical Perspectives on Accounting aims to provide a forum for the growing number of accounting researchers and practitioners who realize that conventional theory and practice is ill-suited to the challenges of the modern environment, and that accounting practices and corporate behavior are inextricably connected with many allocative, distributive, social, and ecological problems of our era. From such concerns, a new literature is emerging that seeks to reformulate corporate, social, and political activity, and the theoretical and practical means by which we apprehend and affect that activity. Research Areas Include: • Studies involving the political economy of accounting, critical accounting, radical accounting, and accounting''s implication in the exercise of power • Financial accounting''s role in the processes of international capital formation, including its impact on stock market stability and international banking activities • Management accounting''s role in organizing the labor process • The relationship between accounting and the state in various social formations • Studies of accounting''s historical role, as a means of "remembering" the subject''s social and conflictual character • The role of accounting in establishing "real" democracy at work and other domains of life • Accounting''s adjudicative function in international exchanges, such as that of the Third World debt • Antagonisms between the social and private character of accounting, such as conflicts of interest in the audit process • The identification of new constituencies for radical and critical accounting information • Accounting''s involvement in gender and class conflicts in the workplace • The interplay between accounting, social conflict, industrialization, bureaucracy, and technocracy • Reappraisals of the role of accounting as a science and technology • Critical reviews of "useful" scientific knowledge about organizations
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