Time: 1:00 - 2:00pm Venue: FB 4.04/4.08 (Lunch from 12:30pm in the kitchen)
Ioana Lupu, Cass Business School, City University
Transcending the culture of long working hours: reflexivity and resistance in the accounting field
The purpose of this paper is to explore how and why professionals become motivated and enabled to resist working long hours.
Based on 60 semi-structured interviews conducted in Big Four firms in France and UK, I aim to answer the question: How can knowledge professionals resist overwork when it has penetrated their very mode of being?
The findings suggest that competing devotions, events that break the routine such as maternity and divorce, and disillusionment with the stakes of the accounting field are likely to increase awareness and reflection thus helping people to transcend the illusion that prompted them to overwork.