PUBLICATIONS

Research has definitively shown that overwork isn’t good for employees or their companies — and yet, in practice, it can be hard to overcome unhealthy work habits and reach a more sustainable work-life balance. To explore what it takes for busy professionals to make a change for the better, the authors conducted a series of interviews with mid- and senior-level managers at two global firms. They found that while the majority of respondents assumed working long hours was inevitable, a significant minority of them were able to resist this pressure and achieve a healthier balance through a process of increasing awareness, conscious reprioritizing, and implementation of public and private changes. The authors go on to emphasize that to achieve lasting change, you must view this process not as a one-time activity, but as a cycle in which you constantly re-evaluate your evolving feelings and priorities, and adjust your work and life choices accordingly.

Under the pressure of always increasing demands of publication, excessive working hours are widespread in academia. Based on an autoethnography of myself as a pregnant woman under Covid, I explore the extent of my being caught by the illusio–“being taken in and by the game” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992), that prompted me to remain absorbed by the publishing game and to overwork until the very last day before giving birth to my son. I also explore how the forced deceleration induced by the maternity leave as well as the Covid confinement contributed to increased awareness and reflection thus helping me to transcend the illusio that prompted me to overwork. I also reflect to the extent of this conversion being reversible given the continued pressures of the academic context.

How can you develop habits early in your career that will help you create a good work-life balance and avoid burnout?

• You have to start by understanding why you overwork in the first place. Are you just following the lead of your workaholic boss? Are you trying to get ahead and think that working long hours will help you get there? Are you trying to show others that you are a hard worker? Or does being busy help you feel important?

• Given all the reasons you may choose work over rest, how can you start to create the work-life balance you need? Start by gaining self-awareness. How do you feel about your tendency to overwork? Then, take back control of your time by setting boundaries, communicating with your colleagues, and learning to say no. It may also be helpful to redefine your free time — it’s not “unproductive time,” it helps you recharge. Finally, if you feel you cannot make progress toward the work-life balance you desire, you may want to consider quitting your job and finding a new one.

Research on work-family balance decisions generally presents them as an individual’s rational choice between alternatives. The anticipatory socialisation literature highlights the role that early formative experiences play in shaping work and parenting decisions. We go further to emphasise the role of habitus – historically constituted dispositions –in work-family balance decisions. This relational approach explores how the entrenched and historically formed dispositions of individuals interact dynamically with contextual (i.e. organizational) imperatives. Numerous studies have highlighted the difficulties of reconciling the intense demands of professional careers with family lives. Drawing on 148 interviews with 78 male and female professionals, our study looks at much deeper rooted causes of work-family conflict in professional service firms than have previously been considered. We identify four broad patterns of response to the work-family conflict: professionals may willingly reproduce their parental model, reproduce their parental model against their will, willingly distance themselves from their parental model, and distance themselves from the parental model against their will. We show that the impediments to greater equality lie not only in organizational and societal structures, but within individuals themselves in the form of historically constituted dispositions which contribute towards the maintenance and reproduction of those structures.

Most of the discussion and advice for work-life balance tends to focus on changing individual career decisions, or team expectations, or organizational contexts. But what if other factors — like our upbringing — mattered as well? 148 in-depth interviews with 78 working parents based in London revealed that the work-life balance of their own parents played a role in shaping their behaviors and attitudes around balancing work and life. Most subjects fell into one of the four categories: (1) They willingly adopted their parents’ model of work-life balance; (2) they unintentionally adopted their parents’ model; (3) they willingly rejected their parents’ model; or (4) they unintentionally rejected their parents’ model.

Purpose – Despite the growing amount of research on the social and organizational role of legitimacy, very little is known about the subtle discursive processes through which organizational changes are legitimated in contemporary society. The purpose of this paper is to explore the subtle processes of interdiscursivity and intertextuality through which an organization constructs a sense of legitimacy.

Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on the case of a newly privatized oil company in a transitional, post-communist economy, the authors’ research uses critical discourse analysis to analyze the annual reports, corporate press releases, and relevant media from the four years following privatization.

Findings – The authors argue for a relational understanding of legitimacy construction that emphasizes how legitimacy relies on the multiple processes of intertextuality linking corporate narratives and media texts. Corporate narratives are not produced solely by the discourses that occur at the individual and organizational levels; they are also produced by the much broader discourses that occur at the societal level.

Originality/value – This study’s main contribution is that it reveals the intertextual and interdiscursive construction of corporate narratives, which is a key element in understanding how discourses around privatization are interlinked and draw upon other macro-level discourses to construct legitimacy.

Two contradictory logics have historically been present in the publishing field (Thornton, 2002): editorial logic and market logic. Based on a qualitative case study within the French publishing sector, our study demonstrates accounting’s colonization of the editorial process. Specifically, we explore the effects of the income statement on shaping the publication of a collection of children’s books. Our study shows that previous traditional editorial logic is marginalized and that the controller has become the key actor in taking stock of the creative process. Moreover, we also note the performative effects of the income statement on actors and their understanding of the creative process. Our case study explains how the widespread use of accounting technologies in this context is sustained by a market logic that it in turn sustains and strengthens.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand: how and why do experienced professionals, who perceive themselves as autonomous, comply with organizational pressures to overwork? Unlike previous studies of professionals and overwork, the authors focus on experienced professionals who have achieved relatively high status within their firms and the considerable economic rewards that go with it. Drawing on the little used Bourdieusian concept of illusio, which describes the phenomenon whereby individuals are “taken in and by the game” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992), the authors help to explain the “autonomy paradox” in professional service firms.

Design/methodology/approach – This research is based on 36 semi-structured interviews primarily with experienced male and female accounting professionals in France.

Findings – The authors find that, in spite of their levels of experience, success, and seniority, these professionals describe themselves as feeling helpless and trapped, and experience bodily subjugation. The authors explain this in terms of individuals enhancing their social status, adopting the breadwinner role, and obtaining and retaining recognition. The authors suggest that this combination of factors cause professionals to be attracted to and captivated by the rewards that success within the accounting profession can confer.

Originality/value – As well as providing fresh insights into the autonomy paradox the authors seek to make four contributions to Bourdieusian scholarship in the professional field. First, the authors highlight the strong bodily component of overwork. Second, the authors raise questions about previous work on cynical distancing in this context. Third, the authors emphasize the significance of the pursuit of symbolic as well as economic capital. Finally, the authors argue that, while actors’ habitus may be in a state of “permanent mutation”, that mutability is in itself a sign that individuals are subject to illusio.

Despite decades of gender-balanced recruitment and clear-cut criteria for promotion based on meritocracy, women in public accounting firms remain proportionally fewer in number in the highest levels of the hierarchy than men. This paper aims to explore the mechanisms fostering women’s rarity in top positions within French accounting firms in terms of organizationally constructed approved paths. Drawing on 23 semi-structured interviews with both male and female accountants, the specificities of these approved paths, alongside the construction of alternative, feminized routes, lacking the legitimacy of the former and often implying a derailment of women’s careers from a very early stage, will be explored. It is suggested that more than a matter of only lifestyle preferences or practical constraints, this rarity is constructed by the interplay between the two, often resulting in “unintended and unwanted consequences, which retroactively may become unacknowledged conditions of future actions” (Giddens, 1984: 76). The focus of this study is to understand how the discursive and practical components of daily routines contribute to the reproduction of Big Four’s gendered culture. Furthermore, this paper challenges the concept of the glass ceiling and instead conceives of the construction of women’s careers in the accounting profession in terms of a labyrinth.

One of the key tendencies in modern financial communication is to report elements of intellectual capital (IC). Romanian companies, especially those listed on a financial market, are called to observe European and international financial reporting standards, but intellectual capital reporting is not yet a priority. Our research question is what are the axes of IC disclosure in the annual reports of a recently privatized company, and what would be the challenges, risks and benefits involved of such disclosure. In answering these questions we based our study on the content analysis of the post-privatization annual reports of a Romanian listed company from the oil industry. The content analysis, presenting both quantitative and qualitative approaches, focuses on intellectual capital disclosures in the annual reports. The findings of our exploratory study transcend local importance and point out new research perspectives.

Value creation relies more and more on intangible elements, which are difficult to measure and manage, and be reported to shareholders and stakeholders. The financial communication practices of several companies already integrate intellectual capital issues (e.g. Skandia) and standard setters begin to question on the opportunity to set standards on such reporting practices (e.g. FASB Report in 2001). We study here, using content analysis, the intellectual capital issues present in two consecutive corporate annual reports of PETROM SA. The choice of this particular company relies on the reorganization process following the privatization, which represents a critical context for value creation. The results of our content analysis are presented in the form of a balanced scorecard.