Diversity and Professionalism in the Big 4 Firms: expectation, celebration and weapon in the battle for
talent
CPA Paper
In this paper you review the web-sites of the Big 4 firms to identify themes in how they depict diversity.
You then link these themes to underlying logics and/or discourses of diversity to argue that the
depiction of professional identity is now more heterogeneous whereas the professional identity was
previously more homogeneous. You differentiate between a state logic, business logic and professional
logic.
You begin with a table that provides some excerpts from the diversity statements of the Big 4. This
table shows the elaborate attention that is paid to “speaking diversity” in the profession and also how
the similarity in the fundamental discourse of the Big 4 Firms.
You introduce the institutional logics literature and illustrate how 3 logics of state, market and
professionalism are associated with the diversity discourses of the Big 4.
You describe how you analyse the web-sites of the Big 4 to inductively generate some insight into how
they represent “professionals”.
Then you present findings that show how little diversity there actually is in the profession and
summarize your findings regarding how this differs from the extent to which the images of the
professionals on the Big 4 web-sites seem to be suggesting a much more diverse profession.
The themes you identify from your analysis of the websites are:
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Diversity as my brand/bringing the “whole self to work”
Diversity as an expectation “in the name of the client”
Diversity as “good business” and as a weapon in the war for talent
Diversity as a celebration and “feeling good”
Diversity as a social network
You have selected what I think is an important topic and you have some interesting data that I think
could be developed further. To develop the study further I have several suggestions that I hope you will
find useful.
1. I think the first issue that you might consider tackling is your objective. Do you see yourself as
taking a critical or more descriptive stance? There are many traditions in the literature on
professional identity and diversity in accounting; some take a strong critical position (e.g.
Annisette, Hanlon, Zanoni) while others take a more descriptive approach. I think this is a
crucial first step in developing this paper further as it will help you to situate your work in a
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particular stream of literature. Your introduction and theory sections emphasize institutional
logics which is not a particularly critical approach whereas much of the literature you cite takes
a more critical stance. This is key as the underpinning theoretical assumptions and conceptual
tools are quite different. For example, you draw on much of the literature on professional
identity which challenges essentialist categories of identity while the business case for diversity
and representations of diversity in the profession seem to continue to emphasize essentialist
approaches to identity. Clarifying where you stand on these two issues, i.e. your objectives and
your philosophical assumptions related to the core concepts you use will help you clarify your
research question and to take a more theoretically informed approach to your analysis. If you
opt to take a more critical approach you will need to more explicitly incorporate power into the
study while a more descriptive approach may take you in a different direction.
2. Essentialist vs. non-essentialist conceptualizations of identity. I see this as a particularly critical
issue for you to think about as the data you analyse is clearly rooted in more essentialist notions
of identity with a long list of categories ranging from gender and race to personality and
educational background (Table 1). These are radically different ways of thinking about diversity,
particularly from an identity perspective. Situating “personality differences” and gender or race
as comparable categories implies that the bases of historical inequality and systemic
discrimination are no different than whether you are more “extroverted or introverted”. The
categories and ways of representing diversity are potentially theoretically interesting foci for
your analysis that are not well developed in the paper in its current state. You may want to take
a look at some current reviews of the identity literature that address these fundamentally
different ways of conceptualizing occupational identity (e.g. Ashcraft, 2013).
3. Research Questions. While you have reviewed a very broad array of literature related to
professional identity and diversity, particularly in accounting, the core research questions you
wish to explore needs to be clarified. If you want to focus on institutional logics, you might ask
yourself how institutional logics plays into diversity and professional identity. Currently, while
your introduction emphasizes logics this is not tightly linked to your method and findings. You
discuss state vs commercial vs. professional logics superficially but is not clear how this
motivates a particular research focus-are you interested in isomorphism among firms? Are you
seeing institutional logics as mechanisms that undermine changes in professional identity?
Alternatively, you may decide not to use institutional logics as a frame and instead explore
another aspect of diversity and professional identity in which case you will need to clarify
whether you see diversity discourses as something more substantive than politically correct
window-dressing in the profession. As you note, there is a very wide gap between what the
firms’ claim as objectives related to diversity and the results in terms of the demographic make
up of the profession. Does this matter to them? Should it?
4. Method. This is an area that I think needs to be substantially re-visited once you have given
some thought to your position vis a vis objectives/assumptions and how you would like to frame
your focal research question. The data you have all seems to be current and you include data
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from North America and the UK. I wondered why you decided to include data from these
distinct geographic locations but to treat it as one “field”. Can you provide a good rationale for
this? Obviously, much of the professional and legal context that governs the professions and
may motivate their diversity statements is situated in national and even state or local legislation,
markets, etc . The firms themselves of course are to some extent “global” but you may want to
think about how global they really are. Are they global brands or are they global firms? Is
accounting a global profession? Can it be with distinct economic and legal contexts? These are
very important distinctions as they require quite different approaches to sampling and analysis.
More importantly you seem to be conflating “the profession” of accounting, the firms and
diversity policies and practices. The profession does not have a “global” diversity policy and I
think is arguably not “global”. The firms are not homogeneous either and each presumably has
distinct policies and practices. Thinking through the level of analysis is central to producing a
compelling analysis. Are you going to compare across firms within nations? Across nations?
What about the professional institutes? In Canada there are 3 accounting designations-two of
which have rights to conduct audit, the UK has more and the US fewer. The firms in Canada hire
professionals with both designations yet they perform quite different tasks and have different
status. Canada and the UK had similar divisions between CA and CGA/ACCAs until very recently
while the US has the CPA. Did you just sample the CA sites? If so, you need to be clear about
this in your method.
One of the central arguments you seem to make in the paper is that the professional identity as
depicted on these social media sites is now more heterogeneous than it “was”, yet you only use
data from the present. If you want to make temporal comparisons, you need to radically change
your method.
Finally, it is not clear how you sampled the data from the sites. You have a lot of interesting
quotes and pictures; however, it is not clear where these reside on the sites. As you note, there
are multiple audiences that seem to be targeted and multiple objectives e.g. recruitment,
“values statements” etc. that may be more focused on corporate culture and depictions of the
profession that may be targeting clients, the general public and/or policy makers. As you note,
there are some differences in the rhetoric of diversity when “strategic” statements are made
versus in those focusing on recruitment. Again, a more systematic approach to sampling and
analysis would be helpful.
Overall, I think you have the makings of a potentially interesting study and you have some good
data. I would suggest clarifying your objectives/assumptions and focal research question which
should then drive your methods. If you are taking a primarily inductive approach, you may then
try to clarify exactly what frame will be best for representing your findings. Good luck!
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