LGBTQI+ professional accountants and the consequences of stigmatization: An identity work perspective

Abstract

Using a qualitative research design and drawing on an identity work perspective, we explore how LGBTQI+ professional accountants relate their self-identity to their professional occupation and manage their stigmatized identity at work. Sharing original empirical data from focus groups and semi-structured interviews with LGBTQI+ professional accountants, we show how they engage in inward-facing identity work by resisting stigmatizing pressures by conceiving of a self that is both outside the norm (“deviant”) and adapted to it (i.e., a deviant-adapted self). However, we also find that stigmatized identities can be embraced by participants as legitimate sources of distinct professional dispositions and a more powerful work ethic. This finding offers a less confrontational view of how marginalized identities and sexuality intersect with the accounting profession. In outward-facing processes of identity work, we show considerable variations in how and when participants communicate about their stigmatized identity. Finally, we highlight the collective dynamic of stigma management as a fundamental condition of possibility for targets to overcome the limits of atomized individual action. However, this collective dynamic entails the risk of all targets being absorbed into a collective representation and social-identity that either makes them invisible, or directly opposes certain aspects of their self-identity. In this respect, we show how some of our participants actively contribute to the creation of a collective social-identity to combat stigmatization within firms, which in turn generates symbolic power differentials and symbolic violence within LGBTQI+ professional accountants.