As part of the unification of the Canadian accounting profession, a lot of effort has been devoted to organizational structures and systems. In these times of change, recruitment of prospective professional accountants remains an important factor for the Canadian and international development of the profession. In this paper, we explore professional accountants’ recruitment by accounting associations in Ontario before (CA, CGA, CMA) and after (CPA) the merger of the three professional accounting associations. We use a legitimacy framework to make sense of the recruitment website content of each association. We find, in the post-merger period, that the CPA profession adopts a more passive approach to legitimacy management, focusing mainly on exchange aspects of legitimacy, whereas prior to the merger a wider range of legitimacy management strategies were deployed by the predecessor associations. Important implications ensuing from our study are discussed.

中文翻译：

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在加拿大注册会计师合并之前和之后吸引潜在的专业会计师

作为加拿大会计行业统一的一部分，在组织结构和系统方面投入了大量精力。在这些变化的时代，招聘有前途的专业会计师仍然是该行业在加拿大和国际发展的重要因素。在本文中，我们探讨了安大略省会计协会在三个专业会计协会合并之前（CA、CGA、CMA）和之后（CPA）对专业会计师的招聘。我们使用合法性框架来理解每个协会的招聘网站内容。我们发现，在并购后的时期，注册会计师行业对合法性管理采取了更加被动的方式，主要关注合法性的交换方面，而在合并之前，前任协会部署了更广泛的合法性管理策略。讨论了我们的研究产生的重要影响。