From meticulous professionals to superheroes of the business world: A historical portrait of a cultural change in the field of accountancy
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
ISSN: 0951-3574
Article publication date: 2 January 2014
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relative cultural shift from professionalism to commercialism in the accounting profession, based on an analysis of the promotional brochures used by the Ordre des comptables agréés du Québec (Institute of Chartered Accountants of Québec), over the last 40 years, to attract new members.
Design/methodology/approach
The study's specific objectives are: to examine accountancy's cultural representations depicted in promotional brochures; to evaluate the extent to which these representations are indicative of the commercialist shift as documented in the literature; and to establish whether the representations under study provide further insight into the nature of the cultural shift. Drawing on the semiotic approach developed by Roland Barthes, the authors' analysis is predicated on the idea that promotional brochures and advertisements, though often simple in appearance, constitute complex representations that convey meaningful information about influential values and cultural change.
Findings
The authors found that commercial values are increasingly apparent through the celebration of multidisciplinary services and the emphasis on generous compensation and high dynamism.
Originality/value
Barthes' framework was especially useful to analyze the interplay between images and text to gain insight into the historical emergence of what has become the accountant's representation of today. As such, this study points to promotional representations participating to the inculcation of a cosmopolitan culture, where the internationalization of business is supposedly natural, inevitable, and beneficial to everyone. The authors' research also highlights the increasingly significant role played by marketing experts in designing professional institutes' brochures, consistent with the broader view of marketization as a key trend within the accounting industry.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors benefited from the comments on previous drafts by Marion Brivot, Merridee Bujaki and Henri Guénin-Paracini. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Citation
Picard, C.-F., Durocher, S. and Gendron, Y. (2014), "From meticulous professionals to superheroes of the business world: A historical portrait of a cultural change in the field of accountancy", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 27 No. 1, pp. 73-118. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-09-2012-1087
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited