Boundaries, barriers, or bridges? Unraveling the integration of doctoral students in the accounting academic community

Abstract

ABSTRACT We aim to understand how the accounting academic community shapes and socializes doctoral students. From a critical-qualitative stance, the analyses found support in Étienne Wenger’s Social Learning Systems, focusing on the relationship between doctoral students’ socialization and the accounting academic community – understood as a Community of Practice (CoP). Our findings indicate that doctoral students, as Legitimate Peripheral Participants, do not become central members due to imposed communitarian limits. These limits work as an impediment to the relationship between the individual and the CoP. Some participants indicated a loss of meaning and episodes of epistemic violence that (re)produce community limits that define the ‘good accounting academic’, among other aspects, regarding boundaries and power dynamics. We contribute to expanding the discussion on Social Systems of Learning and CoPs by presenting empirical evidence of the barriers between CoPs and the professional socialization process.