As explained earlier, academics in the tertiary sector have to follow certain guidelines (section 4.1.1). Two pathways to becoming an academic have been described – intentional and accidental academics (Lindholm, 2004). Intentional academics are those who determine decisively as undergraduate or graduate students that they would pursue an academic career. In contrast, for accidental academics the career decision making process is random or fortuitous.
In this research, none of the fifteen academic participants were intentional academics in its pure sense, i.e., none pursued academia as their career intentionally. Lacking any sort of coherent structure or intentionality in choosing the academic route, all of them were thus accidental
academics. But as seen from their accounts, once they were exposed to the world of academia, they intentionally chose it as their career. Therefore, they can be termed as “incidental” academics. Among them, again, were two types – accounting practitioners who decided to shift to academia from firms or from other sectors, and those who decided to take this pathway while they pursued accounting degrees in the universities.
Of the fifteen participants, ten who shifted to academia already had the professional qualification of Chartered Accountancy. Three had worked in other sectors, but they decided to shift to academia. Seven participants had worked in mainstream firms as accounting practitioners, but an encounter with academia as a guest lecturer made them realise that this was a better career option than being practitioners. Having worked in the firms for several years, these participants found the work too stressful and/or that it no longer suited their changed family circumstances. Eventually, they chose accounting academia for a better work-life balance and/or to satisfy their personal career goals. It was easy for them to make the transition as there are no specific qualifications for teaching in universities, and their professional qualifications (Chartered Accountancy) and practical experience were sufficient to be accepted as lecturers. However, if they wished to be promoted to the higher positions they were required to complete the PhD, which some had attained and the others in this category were working towards it.
The other five participants decided to become academics while they were pursuing accounting degrees in universities. Two of these were fresh graduates and the other three were mature students who did not go straight from school to university. Instead, after several years of work experience they went to university as their “second innings”, to satisfy their desire to learn and also to further develop themselves.
Thus, none of these five participants were studying with an intention of becoming an academic. They were all offered tutoring opportunities while studying at the university, and on proving their
competence as a tutor and on completing the academic qualifications, they were offered further lecturing opportunities. These they accepted, as by then, they had become well-acquainted with the academic life, and could see it as a prospective career. They had also realized that they loved
teaching and research, and enjoyed certain perks associated with the job.
Thereafter, it was a conscious decision to progress by concentrating on the activities required in order to work their way up on the academic career ladder. Everett, Neu and Green (2003) found that the culture of accounting academe accepts a junior faculty member after proving his/her effective teaching ability and an ability to publish good scientific research in quality, referred journals. This was echoed in the experience of these participants.
Thus, it can be summarised from the above discussion that in this sample, accounting academics have followed two career pathways: Student-tutor-to-academic or Chartered Accountant-to- academic. Therefore, it was decided to use these categories to describe the career pathways, as shown in Table 4.2.
Table 4-2 Pathways of accounting academics
Student-tutor-to-academic CA-to-academic Total
Male 3 5 8
Female 2 5 7
Total 5 10 15
The numbers are almost identical with regard to gender and do not reveal much information about the formation of their career pathways. This is where the qualitative approach plays an important role as it can go deeper and explore the story behind the numbers. The interaction with the participants underlined the reasons for these decisions, and each story is different. Some representative cases are illustrated below.
Student-tutor-to-academic route
Of the three male “Student-tutor-to-Academics” participants, two were fresh graduates. One of the graduates preferred the role of an academic to a practitioner after becoming CA by completing the professional and academic qualifications, while the other did not have a specific career goal. In fact, he endured enormous pressure to join the family business which he did not wish to do, so he saw taking up teaching as a way out of the situation, and seized this opportunity recognizing it as a suitable career goal. He worked toward the completion of the postgraduate degree whilst simultaneously teaching lower level classes, and further confirmed his academic position by completing the PhD programme.
The third male participant’s story is more involved. Michael was a high-school drop-out because of personal circumstances. Then he ventured in different employment sectors, initially as a scooter mechanic and later working in the financial sector. He reached the highest positions in those organisations despite having no academic qualifications. After several years of work experience, he decided to go back to university. He recollected, “… and I remember thinking this just isn’t really the world that I want to be in.” He shared his thought process about the decision. “I had various financial assets and I thought to myself, I asked myself the question, and I still remember, if I never study and I get to the end of my life, would I be happy? And I decided the answer is no, I’d never be happy.” So he ended up quitting work to study at the university and took the bold decision of funding his three years’ full time course by selling one of his properties. Giving up the job meant additional and substantial sacrifices – “I took a pay drop to come here, a relatively significant pay drop, but I wouldn’t have done this any other way.” Like the other two male participants, he was offered tutoring opportunities that he enjoyed, and he has now progressed on to an academic position. The two female academics also had different stories. Sally already had a degree in Environmental Science, and had worked in that field, but later as a single mother the responsibility of her young daughter navigated her career in a different direction. She decided to re-kindle her interest in accounting from her school days as her all-girls school did not offer the subject, and enrolled for an accounting degree at the university. The other one, Sue pursued a university education once her children were older, and chose accounting. She did not have a chance to study accounting in her school, though for a different reason: the classes in her school were streamed, and being in the top stream she had to do sciences and languages.
Thus, the reasons for choosing accounting academia for the participants are quite different. The male participants mainly chose it to satisfy their own career goals, and not for family reasons. In contrast, both the women chose academia because along with satisfying their personal interests, it offered them flexibility with regard to managing family responsibilities. For Sue flexibility meant, “As long as you are there for your lectures and you are there for a couple of office hours a week, didn’t matter when you did your work. So I’d come back after they [the children] were all in bed at nine at night, and did a couple of hours… worked then.” The non-CA academics have completed the professional requirements and are now Associate Chartered Accountants.
CA-to-Academic route
The ten “CA-to-academic” participants decided to shift to academia predominantly for flexibility and for a better work-life balance. For the five male participants, it was largely for job satisfaction, control, independence, and flexibility. Arthur expressed this view, saying “Yes, I just felt it [academia] was really much more satisfying. I could have that much more control over what I was doing. I could
decide what was important, and I liked the idea of doing research, and was curious about things.” Ryan was with an accounting firm and his initial ambition was to become a partner, but this changed with a lecturing opportunity:
Obviously the experience of lecturing, the role, that I quite enjoyed, and getting into
research. In the accounting profession you have to account for every six minutes of time and accounting is a very time pressured sort of role, there is a huge budget pressure on you all the time…
Like the female student-tutor-to-academics, the five female accounting practitioners switched to academia primarily because of family responsibilities. It was a well-thought out decision for Jane:
Knowing friends working in the corporate, in the CA environments… it is not quite as easy for them now that they have got children. So I think you have to look at the whole package. Though financially I would be better off working in the CA environment or working in the corporate than what I am here, but when you factor in all of those other things that sometimes you just can’t put a price on it, especially having young children…
Similarly, Sarah shared that – “What I had underestimated was that accounting is very demanding, and that it does take up a lot of time. In practice there are times when there are deadlines, and you are just required to keep working nights, weekends, and evenings… to get something finished. It’s not family friendly, and that’s the reason I decided to go into academic work.”
The discussion above has described the different career pathways of the study’s accounting academic participants. It has re-affirmed the discussion in Chapter 2 about the salience of
expectations concerning a primary role for women as a caregiver, and their decisions having a more relational emphasis than those of men who emphasise the values of self-enhancement and
independence much more than women.