The gilded path: capital, habitus and illusio in the fund management field

PurposeThe fund management sector plays an important role in society. The sector exists in close proximity to the accounting profession and the concerns of the paper reflect themes discussed by accounting scholars, particularly financialization, inequality and life within elite professional service organizations.Design/methodology/approachThis is an interpretive study of the fund management field based in the UK. It is based on 32 semi-structured interviews with individuals with personal experience of the field, combined with reflections from the researcher's own experience as a practitioner within the field.FindingsThe paper describes the backgrounds and motivations of individuals entering the field, the recruitment processes through which they are admitted, and the different strategies used to gain admission to the field. It explores the habitus of successful professionals in the field and the effects of this habitus.Social implicationsAn important social implication of the paper is the problematization of the fund management industry's dislocation from broader society.Originality/valueBy identifying the different strategies employed by applicants from different backgrounds, it highlights the role of reflexive agency and the complicity between agent and field. Recognizing that professional fund management is organized as a game, it suggests that individuals are so committed to the game they know they are playing that they fail to realize that they are also drawn into a different game, namely the absorbing game of being a fund manager.

Athletes as “Sites of Normative Intersectionality”: Critically Exploring the Ontology of Influence in Sport Coaching

Social structure remains an equivocal term in (sport) sociology. Our understandings of its constitution and role in causally influencing behavior are arguably underdeveloped. Using a critical realist approach, this paper examined how structural entities and reflexive agency combined to influence behavior in an elite youth cricket context (e.g., athletes, coaches). A methodological bricolage was used to generate data and Elder-Vass’s theorizing provided the principal heuristic device. The analysis illustrated how coaches acted on behalf of norm circles in their attempts to shape dispositions of athletes. In turn, athletes engaged in a process of dialectical iteration between reflexive deliberation and (intersectional) dispositions, which influenced their social action in this organizational context. This study holds significance for researchers and practitioners concerned with social influence.

Opting out: professional women develop reflexive agency

PurposeWhile previous research on opting out has been mainly about women who leave their careers altogether, the purpose of this paper is to follow a broader definition of opting out to investigate the process and experience of women developing agency as they leave masculinist career patterns to adopt alternative career solutions.Design/methodology/approachBuilding on an interdisciplinary framework and a narrative approach, this paper analyses the opting out and in processes of women managers in Finland and the USA.FindingsThis paper demonstrates four micro-strategies that the women used to develop individual agency in their processes of opting out of masculinist career models and opting in to alternative solutions for work. These micro-strategies are redefining career success, transcending boundaries, renegotiating working conditions and keeping in touch with professional networks.Practical implicationsOrganisational leaders can use the knowledge of the strategies that empower women in their opting out processes when making decisions regarding working practices. In order to retain their employees, organisations should be supportive of employees’ individual agency and their participation in developing work structures, as well as providing more opportunities for two-way blurring between work and family instead of the current one-way blurring where work spills over to family life, increasing work-family conflict.Originality/valueThis paper develops a framework to better understand women’s agency during the process of opting out of corporate careers and opting in to solutions like part-time work and self-employment, deepening the current understanding of these solutions and presenting the micro-strategies they use to develop reflexive agency.

The communication of expectations and individual understanding

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the case for an analysis of communication at the supra-individual level as a means of rendering the understanding of learning and acting tractable. The paper introduces a method of analysis of redundancy to achieve this. Design/methodology/approach – The paper argues for a supra-individual approach to acting, learning, and understanding against focusing on an individual or quasi-transcendental “observer”. The argument is outlined in four steps: first, articulation of the dynamics of the communication system; second, consideration of the redundancies of expectations within communication; third, the computation of anticipation which enables the authors to model meaning processing; and fourth the feedback of meaning processing on information processing can be measured as redundancy. Anticipated future states can reflexively drive reconstructions in meaning-processing systems. Research limitations/implications – The social system can be considered as a symbolic order of coordination mechanisms. Reflexive agency can access this order and partake in it. However, expectations and their structures do not “exist”, but remain uncertain with the status of hypotheses. Historical embodiment in intentional action is structurally coupled to the order of expectations. The historical instantiations condition and enable the further development of the expectations as a retention mechanism. Originality/value – The modelling and measurement of meaning processing in terms of inversion of the arrow of time and the generation of redundancy provide extensions to the mathematical theory of communication.

Poetic Imag(ination): Finding Praxis Through Haiku

I draw on poetic inquiry to explore my experience using and interpreting haiku within the context of a literacy methods course. From this project I learned that poetry, as a pedagogical tool as well as one of inquiry, opens up spaces for (un)imaginable possibilities to be exposed, moving both teacher and students toward a place of praxis and reflexive agency