Occupational identity of management accountants in Britain and Germany

Abstract

The existence of management accounting as an unproblematic occupational label is often taken for granted. Prompted by contemporary discussions concerning radical changes in management accounting practice, we sought to examine the extent to which practitioners' accounts of practice demonstrate a coherent occupational identity. Collecting sixty-four occupational autobiographies in seventeen German and twelve British firms we found that management accountants in the two countries constructed common occupational identities out of their diverse experiences. Echoing the findings of anthropological practice theory, the good practitioner rhetorically reconciled a wide variety of contradictory attributes in their occupational idiom.