Accounting for ourselves: Are academics exploited workers?

Who is the academic who reflects upon the self who has undertaken the research and written the manuscript? The ‘reflexive turn’ that has become more prevalent in the social sciences calls for us to account for ourselves by pursuing answers to this question, even though it is impossible to ever fully know the self. In this paper we turn upon our academic profession theoretical perspectives that we, as critical accounting and management researchers, customarily use when trying to understand other employees in other workplaces. We begin with theories of the self, then draw on queer theory and, finally, the exploration of means of control over staff. Our paper is somewhat disquieting, for this analysis suggests that we, academics working in departments of accountancy, human resource management, marketing or whatever sub-discipline we may choose to explore, are susceptible to control and exploitation through the norm of the ideal academic, a normative self we strive to achieve but which remains, for the vast majority of us, always out of reach.