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An ethnographic field study in Big Six public accounting firms, where management by objectives and mentoring are used as techniques of control, examines how organizations transform professionals into disciplined and selfdisciplining organizational members whose work goals, language, and lifestyle come to reflect the imperatives of the organization. The study shows that the scope and effect of these techniques shaped the identities of organizational participants but that the discourse of professional autonomy fueled resistance to these pressures toward conformity. Implications of these results are discussed as they relate to conflict between professionals and organizations and to the critical study of organizations.
Every year when they called you in on your review, it's always, "Well, you did great this year. You did wonderful. Now, what are you going to do to do twenty percent more next year?" Felt great the first couple of times they said it, but by your sixth or seventh year in [partnership], and you're doing twenty percent more every year, there's got to be a point when you say, "Gee, how much more can I do?"
One of the major issues that is beyond my control and I have not anticipated is the unwillingness on the part of the partners and staff to pay the price for changing strategic direction, mainly by giving up personal freedom and influence over one's activities and the activities of those around them.
I have become chargeable [i.e., I have become identifiable as a revenue stream].
These remarks, by a Big Six public accounting firm practice partner during a resignation interview, a deputy chairman, and a senior manager, describe a conflict in professional organizations revolving around the issue of how control is exercised over professionals. As stated by the practice partner, control, through such techniques as management by objectives (MBO), was being applied to managing partners and was in fact affecting their actions and career decisions. To the extent that it "felt great," it even appears that the partner had for a time identified with the firm's value system, stressing financial performance. In contrast, the deputy chairman's comment suggests that partners were unwilling to discard their professional autonomy for the greater good of the firm, thereby signaling that their conformity to such control techniques was incomplete and...