In this field study, we examine tax advisors' decision‐making process when developing tax planning arrangements. Through interviews with 40 tax advisors, our analysis indicates that tax savings may come at a price in practice by unveiling adverse post‐implementation experiences shared by tax partners. Partners find themselves in a tricky position at the time they form their recommendation as they cannot be certain that their client will be able to “live with their tax structure”—that is, maintain it and cope with the inherent risks once implemented. Their main concern is that their client may “get caught out” by a structure too aggressive or complicated for them, having no control over the client's behavior once the plan is implemented. This has significant implications in the tax planning decision‐making process as these concerns shape how partners adapt their work to their client's perceived competency and possibly restrain corporate firms' tax aggressiveness. Following Feller and Schanz (2017, Contemporary Accounting Research , 34 (1), 494–524), we conceive of this as the fourth hurdle of tax planning— whether a tax structure is maintainable, as perceived by tax advisors—and unpack how it operates. Interestingly, restraining the client's tax planning aggressiveness (and the corresponding potential tax savings) is not necessarily perceived by partners as detrimental to the client relationship. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of tax planning in action, highlighting how tax partners seek to influence their client's tax planning aggressiveness.

In recent years, the Big 4 firms have embarked on digital transformation projects that have the potential to throw auditors' daily practice into turmoil. This study looks at the auditors' quest for professional security—namely, their confidence in the fundamental features of their profession. Specifically, we investigate how auditors, when construing their experiences in a firm engaged in a digital transformation project promoting automation of a significant portion of their work, seek to preserve their sense of professional security. Interviews with auditors indicate that, in contrast to the high professional insecurity caused by the commercialization of auditing in the early 2000s, the digital transformation of the profession ultimately strengthened auditors' professional security. Over time, the interviewees became receptive to the firm‐promoted label of tech‐savvy auditor and subscribed to the technological complementarity thesis, which sees closer “collaboration” with technology as enhancing the auditor's work rather than replacing, undermining, or enslaving the auditor. Three implications are discussed. First, our study casts doubt on auditors' romanticized view of the technological complementarity thesis in light of economic and socio‐organizational theories about the automation of work. These theories lead us to question the auditors' belief that they will retain their professional autonomy. Second, according to our analyses, one key explanation for auditors' high level of professional security is that digital transformation projects surrounding the audit function are part of a continuing and reassuring trajectory of commercialization within accountancy. Third, our findings suggest that digital transformation projects act as vehicles for identity development, allowing the tech‐savvy auditor to escape the shameful stereotypes ascribed to the traditional auditor—that is, an auditor who manually performs most of the mundane tasks required to complete an audit.

Because of their complexity and principle-based nature, the creation of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) engendered significant uncertainty that modified the order of things within large accounting firms. This motivated them to establish Professional Practice Function (PPF) units to try to ensure a credible degree of consistency in applying IFRS across a wide range of financial reports at the international level. We study backstage dynamics surrounding a PPF national unit in one of the Big Four firms. We focus on the rise of the PPF as an expert-based control device within the firm, and the role PPF members play as knowledge brokers to interpret IFRS. Our investigation is carried out through ethnographic fieldwork supplemented by interviews with PPF members and field auditors. The analysis brings forward some of the organizational dynamics surrounding PPF members' efforts to establish their credibility as intermediaries both hierarchically, between administrative partners and field auditors, and epistemically, between the unifying logic of IFRS and auditees' financial reporting specifics. Ultimately, our analysis points to the role of the PPF as a gatekeeping or internal control device that mediates between different pools of knowledge to monitor the firm's reputation risk against IFRS implementation challenges. From a legal perspective, our ethnography documents how accounting “law” is made at the firm level and how PPF members strive for consistency – in spite of significant epistemological and organizational challenges. Our ethnography also shows that complex IFRS interpretation issues are not resolved through one person's judgment; instead, the firm's structure surrounding the PPF allows for the constitution of inter-individual judgment that transcends national, sectoral, and (sometimes) organizational boundaries. Finally, we see one important contribution of our work as helping reveal the limits of large conceptual categories such as “auditors”, which tend to downplay the dynamics of convoluted practice relationships.

In 2021, a social movement rallying retail investors unexpectedly shocked Wall Street, forcing a prominent multi-billion-dollar hedge fund to shut down one year later, after incurring massive financial losses. Social movements in financial markets have significantly developed in the wake of the 2007–09 financial crisis, resulting in the emergence of various collective actions. We analyze one recent example of such action undertaken by the r/WallStreetBets (WSB) community on Reddit, which disrupted the stock prices of several “meme stocks” (e.g., GameStop) by disseminating influential investment narratives. We analyze the 150 most upvoted Due Diligence posts on WSB and interview eight members of its community. We find that a popular expertise in investment narratives emerged, developed, and was propagated on this digital platform. WSB authors' claim to popular expertise is made in a hybrid language combining traditional financial expertise with an accessible and entertaining writing style, complemented by references to pop culture. Our analysis brings out a growing resentment among retail investors about the unfairness of financial markets, and its role in mobilizing them for collective action that challenged the existing order of things. Yet this widespread resentment did not spontaneously translate into a meaningful, sustainable collective action initiative. Our thesis is that the development of popular expertise played an instrumental role in the formation of WSB's collective action initiative targeting several perceived investment opportunities.