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

本文提供了对会计行业最近建立年轻专业委员会的趋势的见解。我们的研究使用了丰富的实地调查数据，深入分析了嵌入荷兰专业学院的青年会计师委员会（青年教授）如何试图在专业辩论中实现相关性。从两个不同的角度，我们首先研究了委员会在专业机构中的地位如何影响代理的发展，然后我们分析了委员会复杂的审议过程。我们说明了专业机构和我们的焦点委员会之间的关系是如何不平衡的，尽管青年教授正式嵌入并渴望参与专业辩论，但该小组无法利用其社会地位作为代理平台。我们进一步展示了委员会如何努力在其不同的成员中创造共同的意向，这同样限制了小组的效率。该研究扩展了我们对早期职业会计师与专业机构之间关系的理解；它还阐明了委员会在希望在专业辩论中发挥重要作用时所进行的复杂审议。