From bean-counter to lion-tamer: an ethnographical investigation into the lived experience of UK ACA chartered accountants and their career boundaries

Abstract

The accountancy profession of the twenty first century, and the roles therein, are rapidly evolving, transforming, and potentially contracting. As digitalisation deepens, the acceleration of Artificial Intelligence, robotics and distributed ledger accounting threaten to finally sound the death knell for the traditional ‘bean-counter’ stereotype. The purpose of this study was to examine the career boundaries of contemporary chartered accountants, to consider how boundary expanding is expressed in practice. Employing an ethnographical approach, the study investigated the lived experience of accountants’ career boundaries through the auto-ethnographical lens of the researcher, a chartered accountant herself. The research unearthed a rich and diverse collection of boundary-stretching and boundary-contracting case studies, spanning a full career generation, and contributes a new model of ‘career boundary elasticity’ which has implications for the accountancy profession.