‘Angry accountants’: Making sense of professional identity crisis on online communities

Abstract

This study used netnography to explore accountants’ individual and collective conceptualization and perception of their identity in a context of de-professionalization. Drawing from Guo’s identity sense-making framework, the paper focuses on how Italian accountants within a so-called “community online” have tried to make sense of their professional identity crisis by sharing feelings and emotions about the unstable context surrounding their profession. The Italian context provides an interesting case of “institutionalized de-professionalization” affecting accountants’ identity, prestige and image. It is affected by the ongoing expansion of regulatory intervention, which is transforming the profession, and a “non-interventionist” professional body that does not protect its members. The paper contributes to the literature on accounting professionals experiencing identity crises and provides theoretical and practical implications, discussing the figure of the “bureaucrat accountant”, and also contributes to the growing use of netnography as a useful qualitative method to study identity.