The Construction of the Self-Governable Professional: How Ex-Auditors Organize Career Transitions Beyond Audit

Abstract

Ex-auditors are professionals who used to conduct audit in accountancy firms, but now have left the audit profession entirely. Whilst ex-auditors represent not a negligible proportion of the original population of auditors, how they conduct career-making and eventually become “ex-auditors” is under-researched. To addresses this limitation in our understanding of audit career, mobilizing Foucault’s work on governmentality, this paper examines four interrelated aspects of how ex-auditors in China organized career transitions beyond audit, focusing particularly on the way in which professional subjecthood was constructed and governed. First, upon entering the audit profession, ex-auditors acted upon a possibility to leave audit in the future. They sought to experiment with being auditors and test their suitability for this career. Second, from prior employment in accountancy firms, ex-auditors acquired certain competencies and resources that enabled them to achieve self-growth and make themselves transitable beyond audit. Third, whilst ex-auditors did encounter disciplinary mechanisms operating in accountancy firms, they managed to turn them from seeming constraints into enabling forces, facilitating career transitions. Fourth, the ultimate decision to quit audit was the outcome of the self-exploration and self-reflection upon their career-making conducted by ex-auditors. Overall, this paper sheds new light on an important aspect of exercising individual agency in the enactment of professional careers, that is, the construction of the “self-governable professional” by ex-auditors in career transitions. It contributes towards the literature on career-making in the audit profession, as well as the Foucauldian studies of accounting professionals that emphasize the governing of subjects.