Document Type

Thesis

Date of Completion

Spring 5-5-2023

Department

Business

Academic Major

Accounting

Second Academic Major

Information Systems

Faculty Advisor

James L. Huff, Ph.D.

Abstract

While the role of shame in professions is an emerging area of research, it has not been thoroughly studied in accounting’s professional or educational settings. Shame has been explored in engineering and nursing education with powerful implications regarding well-being and learning. This study is primarily driven by the research question, “How do pre-professional accountants experience professional shame?” Using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), I interviewed three pre-professional accountants to further understand the lived experiences of shame as accounting interns. I demonstrate the insights from the analysis of these transcripts, which characterize the experience of locating identity as pre-professionals, navigating expectations, experiencing failure as a threat to belonging, and seeking to preserve belonging as a response to the threatened belonging. These findings can be used to develop an educational structure to prepare pre-professionals for the workplace as well as address the social norms that invite imbalanced identity representations in the field.

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