IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v36y2022i3p427-444.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Organisational Social Mobility Programmes as Mechanisms of Power and Control

Author

Listed:
  • Louise Ashley

Abstract

Successive UK governments have blamed poor rates of relative social mobility on the tendency of elite occupations to exclude according to social class. Organisational programmes implemented in response aim to identify talented young people from less privileged socio-economic backgrounds, help them identify as ‘legitimate’ professionals, and equip them with relevant knowledge and skills. Based on interviews with 35 participants in one programme and drawing on Foucauldian perspectives on governmentality and disciplinary power, the current study explores how these programmes may reproduce inequalities rather than challenge the status quo. It shows how a dominant discourse of merit invites participants to adopt a subject position that conforms with an idealised professional identity and how they shape their conduct in response. The core contribution is to suggest that social mobility initiatives framed by organisations as mechanisms to empower disadvantaged young people, might be read as expressions of neo-liberal governmentality, unequal power and corporate control.

Suggested Citation

  • Louise Ashley, 2022. "Organisational Social Mobility Programmes as Mechanisms of Power and Control," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 36(3), pages 427-444, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:36:y:2022:i:3:p:427-444
    DOI: 10.1177/0950017021990550
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017021990550
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0950017021990550?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Florian Gebreiter, 2019. "Making up ideal recruits," Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 33(1), pages 233-255, October.
    2. Anderson-Gough, Fiona & Grey, Christopher & Robson, Keith, 2001. "Tests of time: organizational time-reckoning and the making of accountants in two multi-national accounting firms," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 99-122, March.
    3. Alvehus, Johan & Spicer, André, 2012. "Financialization as a strategy of workplace control in professional service firms," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 23(7), pages 497-510.
    4. Andrew C G Cook & James R Faulconbridge & Daniel Muzio, 2012. "London's Legal Elite: Recruitment through Cultural Capital and the Reproduction of Social Exclusivity in City Professional Service Fields," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(7), pages 1744-1762, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ashley, Louise & Boussebaa, Mehdi & Friedman, Sam & Harrington, Brooke & Heusinkveld, Stefan & Gustafsson, Stefanie & Muzio, Daniel, 2023. "Professions and inequality: challenges, controversies, and opportunities," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119522, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Olga Loza & Philip Roscoe, 2024. "Making Markets Material: Enactments, Resistances, and Erasures of Materiality in the Graduate Labour Market," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 38(3), pages 684-704, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Daoust, Laurence, 2020. "Playing the Big Four recruitment game: The tension between illusio and reflexivity," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    2. Guénin-Paracini, Henri & Malsch, Bertrand & Paillé, Anne Marché, 2014. "Fear and risk in the audit process," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 264-288.
    3. Modell, Sven & Yang, ChunLei, 2018. "Financialisation as a strategic action field: An historically informed field study of governance reforms in Chinese state-owned enterprises," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 41-59.
    4. Barrett, Michael & Cooper, David J. & Jamal, Karim, 2005. "Globalization and the coordinating of work in multinational audits," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 1-24, January.
    5. Bitbol-Saba, Nathalie & Dambrin, Claire, 2019. "“It’s not often we get a visit from a beautiful woman!” The body in client-auditor interactions and the masculinity of accountancy," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    6. Jones, Keith T. & Hunt, Steven C. & Chen, Clement C., 2008. "Auditors’ performance evaluations: An experimental analysis of the effects of initial impressions and task-specific experience on information later recalled," Accounting forum, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 213-224.
    7. Claire Garnier, 2017. "Comment devient-on associé d'audit ? Le fonctionnement des réseaux informels de promotion dans les cabinets Big 4 en France," Post-Print hal-01907518, HAL.
    8. Breda Sweeney & Don Arnold & Bernard Pierce, 2010. "The Impact of Perceived Ethical Culture of the Firm and Demographic Variables on Auditors’ Ethical Evaluation and Intention to Act Decisions," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 93(4), pages 531-551, June.
    9. Jeacle, Ingrid, 2008. "Beyond the boring grey: The construction of the colourful accountant," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 19(8), pages 1296-1320.
    10. Maria Ishaque, 2021. "Managing Conflict of Interests in Professional Accounting Firms: A Research Synthesis," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 169(3), pages 537-555, March.
    11. Svanberg, Jan & Öhman, Peter, 2015. "Auditors' identification with their clients: Effects on audit quality," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(4), pages 395-408.
    12. Crawford Spence & Chris Carter & Ataur Belal & Javier Husillos & Claire Dambrin & Pablo Archel, 2016. "Tracking habitus across a transnational professional field," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 30(1), pages 3-20, February.
    13. Pernilla Broberg & Torbjörn Tagesson & Daniela Argento & Niclas Gyllengahm & Ola Mårtensson, 2017. "Explaining the influence of time budget pressure on audit quality in Sweden," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 21(2), pages 331-350, June.
    14. Beau, Pauline & Jerman, Lambert, 2022. "Bonding forged in “auditing hell”: The emotional qualities of Big Four auditors," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    15. Claire Garnier, 2018. "L'associé est-il un auditeur comme les autres ? La construction de l'identité de l'associé dans les cabinets Big 4 en France," Post-Print hal-01907933, HAL.
    16. Guo, Ken H., 2018. "The odyssey of becoming: Professional identity and insecurity in the Canadian accounting field," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 20-45.
    17. Martin Kornberger & Lise Justesen & Jan Mouritsen, 2011. "“When you make manager, we put a big mountain in front of you” : An ethnography of managers in a Big 4 Accounting Firm," Post-Print hal-02276736, HAL.
    18. Kuokkanen, Niina, 2024. "A problematizing review of the financialization of living beings," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    19. de Vries, Marlies & Blomme, Rob & De Loo, Ivo, 2022. "Part of the herd or black sheep? An exploration of trainee accountants’ suffering and modes of adaptation," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    20. Narayanan, Venkateshwaran & Baird, Kevin & Tay, Richard, 2021. "Investment decisions: The trade-off between economic and environmental objectives," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(3).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:36:y:2022:i:3:p:427-444. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.