Why did you decide to focus your research on these senior figures in the accounting world?
During my doctoral studies I started reading up on the literature on the accounting profession. And much of that research puts forth the idea that accounting professionals, especially those who enter into large public accounting firms are highly socialized in the sense that they are exposed to firm structures - exposed to different mechanisms within the firm, different incentives, different work rhythms. They are subject to a high-pressure environment, competing with peers and having to perform in accordance with firm targets. As they advance through their careers, they come to look alike or behave in a way that aligns with their firms’ expectations. I never really processed that when I was myself a part of a major accounting firm. But when I started studying this, I found it was both intriguing and, well, a little bit disturbing as I could see myself in that position down the line.
My research interests developed around a subject that helped me to understand myself at the same time.
This led to broader research on the workplace which plays a very significant role in our lives. It constitutes a fundamental aspect of who we are. And that's not only captivating for researchers, but for individuals as they look for purpose in their own lives and the role that work plays.
These retirees operate at different levels and in different occupational groups. Could you describe the tensions they feel as they approach this new phase of life?
These partners do go through a sort of phased process towards the end of their careers. And this represents a bit of an emotional roller coaster. People tend to describe Big 4 partners as “professional service heroes.” There is this idea that these are strong, heroic, typically men who can endure anything within the firm setting. Again, they confront a high pressure environment, intense working conditions, long hours, yet partners are convinced they can overcome anything in order to satisfy their clients, compete with their peers, and satisfy performative pressures to meet firm targets. And if they don't, there’s still an up-or-out structure within accounting firms and that means that in order to advance within the firm, they essentially have to buy into this system. Along the way, individuals end up developing a deeply rooted and enduring alignment between their work and their sense of self.
They are convinced this is how things should be and the natural order of the world.
But in the interviews for our qualitative study we started to notice a counterpoint to the literature that currently presents accounting partners as professional service heroes.
You were looking at the Big 4 both in Japan and in the United States. Retirees in these two countries reflect the different geographical areas that they're living, I imagine. How do the experiences of these retirees compare?
What we find in terms of similarities between these two environments is that both sets of partners experience what is referred to as hysteresis. Hysteresis is a concept that refers to a misalignment between understandings of ourselves, and the field or environment that we're operating in. These partners have long held a professional role. When they leave that professional role, they experience some misalignment with the new situation that they find themselves in.
Our research in both Japan and the US showed they both experience hysteresis.
However, our study in these two settings also shows that they experience hysteresis very differently across the two cultural contexts. When we look at the Japanese experiences we see they are basically enjoying what society calls a “graduation”, or a transition to a new phase rather than a complete end to their professional lives. Many of our Japanese interviewees continue to work in board positions, maintaining some aspect of professional work, partly driven by a cultural concept that's referred to as ikigai, which translates as having a purpose in life. And for our Japanese retirees, that often includes an ongoing commitment to work in society.
In contrast, for US partners work tends to be pushed to the background, even if they might also work in board positions. But that something that they often do on a part time basis, kind of in their spare time. It’s almost like work becomes their hobby. Instead, they tend to embrace retirement as a time to fully detach from their professional life and work.
The American partners see their retirement as a hard-earned reward for their decades of commitment.
That aligns culturally, perhaps, with this idea of the American dream - that they've worked hard to get where they are, and then in retirement they redirect their focus to leisure, to golf, to family and to their personal interests rather than continuing in professional roles.
Lisa, you mentioned how retiring in Japan is a form of graduation and is part of the ikigai concept central to Japanese culture. But how does Japanese society accommodate the arrival of these graduates into retirements in terms of a systemic opening out or an acceptance of old wise retirees into their society, in a different role?
That issue was actually something that we came across in our interviews: this idea that in Japan, the role of older individuals is still highly respected. I don't want to say that's not the case in the US, but in Japan the boards sought out people of the caliber of the professional set that we were interviewing. And so, the idea wasn't that they were kind of no longer useful.
The idea was that their experience was highly valued in Japanese society.
And it was seen as something that they could bring to board membership and continue to contribute to society, both in terms of work, but also in terms of imparting their knowledge. This is indicative of cultural institutions in Japan and a possible byproduct of the Japanese perspective on honor and duty.
