Researchers have examined the socialization of auditors at various stages of their professional development, but they have done little or no work on the continued effects of this socialization after auditors leave the firms. Put simply, they have not explored the ways that ex-auditors remember their past. Drawing on the literature in social memory studies and on 37 semi-structured interviews with ex-auditors who used to be employed at large Canadian accounting firms, we perform memory work to examine how ex-auditors transform their audit experience into cultural memory. The narratives of past audit experience elicited during the interviews reveal that ex-auditors develop a complex contemporary representation of this experience. When they solicited their communicative (individual) memories, our participants remembered multiple conflicts between their self-identity and the normative work environment during their time at the firms. However, when they reflected on the impact of their audit experience on their new careers, an alternative and much more collective version of this past emerged. Cultural memories with an elitist and class work dynamic that maintained and justified claims of professional and social superiority began to predominate. We argue that communicative and cultural memory are connected because it is communicative memory that allows cultural memory to take on social forms and exercise cultural domination. Our study makes three important contributions. First, it broadens the socio-temporal perspective of auditing research by highlighting the continued effects of the professional identity of auditors after they change careers. Second, it shows that representations of the past provide ex-auditors with a powerful means to promote their professional interests and structure power relationships within organizations. Third, it introduces the use of reflexive memory work as a rigorous methodological approach in accounting and organizational research.

Auditees can play an active role in influencing staff auditors' professional judgment and skepticism. Yet, although it constitutes one of the main threats to auditor independence, very little is known about the means and extent of auditees' power during the audit engagement. To address this knowledge gap, our study focuses on a specific category of auditees, namely, auditees who have worked as auditors in large accounting firms. We interviewed 36 of these auditees and triangulated our findings with 11 interviews conducted with auditors. At the theoretical level, we conceptualize auditees' influence over auditors as intentional and active through the notion of “social power.” Overall, our analysis shows that the efficacy of auditees' power during the engagement materializes through the mobilization of two main power resources developed during their time at the firms: (i) expert knowledge of auditing techniques and (ii) social capital. On the one hand, relying on their cognitive authority, auditees' employ three different power strategies to constrain staff auditors' operational independence: stage‐setting , teaching , and questioning . On the other hand, auditees' social capital can support the use of two additional strategies: attracting and monitoring . Our triangulation analysis confirms our findings and suggests that auditors may be aware of the threats to independence that auditee expertise and social capital pose. By focusing on auditees' agentic capabilities—that is, individuals' capabilities to consciously exert influence over the course of events—we reinterpret the pressures exerted by clients on auditors as the product of strategic actions and discuss substantive consequences for independence risk.

Accounting firms have traditionally operated as both elite and reinventive institutions that offer a structured and prestigious career path and enforce a deeply transformative socialization process for auditors. However, recent labor market shifts and evolving work preferences are challenging this regime of power, with significant implications for firms and their employees. Drawing on 31 semistructured interviews with auditors in Canada, our study examines how these changes are reshaping power dynamics within accounting firms. First, we find that firms are increasingly struggling to define and produce the ideal auditor. Instead, as we highlight, they are experiencing the emergence of the default auditor , a professional shaped more by labor market constraints and transactional engagement than by traditional firm‐driven selection and disciplinary mechanisms. Second, we analyze the erosion of pastoral power (i.e., power rooted in guidance and care) within firms, as staff auditors prioritize the care of the self, while partners and managers (P&Ms) increasingly struggle to establish and sustain pastoral relationships with their subordinates. As a result of this erosion, P&Ms fluctuate between self‐sacrifice (i.e., taking on additional responsibilities to compensate for auditors' disengagement) and a growing sense of inequity (i.e., feeling they are giving too much while receiving too little in return). To capture this growing impasse, we develop the concept of disciplinary and pastoral paralysis , a state in which P&Ms can no longer rely on traditional mechanisms of discipline and punishment to enforce norms of professional conduct but also struggle to reinvent new forms of pastoral power. We examine the implications of this loss of control, questioning whether it represents a temporary shift or a more permanent transformation. Finally, we discuss the broader consequences of accounting firms becoming less like normalizing institutions and more like “ normal ” organizations.

Researchers have studied the entry of professionals into the public accounting field, their careers at an organization, and their exit from the field. However, they have largely overlooked the mobility of these professionals, whose careers involve firm transfers. Drawing on Bourdieu's sociology and interviews with 31 transferees and 7 non–Big 4 legacy partners, we examine the move of Big 4 professionals to non–Big 4 firms. Our findings show that transferees have an ingrained belief that a Big 4 career is the ideal professional trajectory. But they experience points of disjuncture at these firms, prompting them to reevaluate this organizational illusio and their career aspirations and ultimately reinforcing their transfer decision. After moving, transferees learn by trial and error how to valorize and layer their habitus and different forms of capital in order to adjust to the non–Big 4 firms. Our findings challenge prior assumptions about the superiority of Big 4 professionals and the distinctive forms of their capital by showing that the capital needed to obtain powerful positions at Big 4 and non–Big 4 firms are similar, but that its nature and relative value varies. Our findings reveal a paradoxical dynamic in which transferees' Big 4 habitus and capital undergo a complex, iterative process of valorization and layering when these professionals move within the public accounting field. This contrasts with a materialization of professional domination that occurs when former Big 4 employees move outside the public accounting field. For most of our transferees, dissonance also develops between the Big 4 and non–Big 4 layers of their habitus, and they never completely deconstruct their organizational illusio. These findings reveal that the reflexivity of transferees is both shaped and limited by their Big 4 habitus and illusio. Overall, our results contribute to the understanding of professional mobility within the public accounting field.