ABSTRACT

This paper offers insights into the accounting profession’s recent trend of establishing young-professionals boards. Our study uses rich fieldwork data to provide an in-depth analysis of how a committee of young accountants (the Young Profs), embedded in the Dutch professional institute, attempts to achieve relevance in professional debates. Taking two distinct perspectives, we first study how the committee’s position in the professional institute affects the development of agency, following which we assay the committee’s complex deliberation processes. We illustrate how the relationship between the professional institute and our focal committee is lopsided, in that, despite the Young Profs’ formal embeddedness and eagerness to partake in professional debates, the group is unable to use its social position as a platform for agency. We further show how the committee struggles to create shared intentionality among its diverse set of members, which likewise limits the group’s effectiveness. The study extends our understanding of the relations between early-career accountants and professional institutes; it also sheds light on the complex deliberations a committee undertakes when aspiring to attain significance in professional debates.

摘要

本文提供了有关会计界最近成立年轻专业委员会的趋势的见解。我们的研究使用丰富的实地调查数据来深入分析位于荷兰专业学院中的年轻会计师委员会（年轻教授）如何尝试在专业辩论中取得相关性。从两个不同的角度出发，我们首先研究委员会在专业机构中的职位如何影响代理机构的发展，然后我们分析委员会的复杂审议过程。我们说明了专业机构与我们的联络委员会之间的关系是多么偏颇，因为尽管年轻教授具有正式的内在精神和渴望参加专业辩论的意愿，但该团体仍无法利用其社会地位作为代理的平台。我们进一步展示了委员会如何努力在其不同成员之间建立共同的意图，这同样限制了该小组的有效性。该研究扩展了我们对早期会计师与专业机构之间关系的理解；它也阐明了委员会在渴望在专业辩论中发挥重要作用时所进行的复杂讨论。