Voice and silence in tax: a study into the propensity of tax practitioners for speaking up

This thesis explores employee voice in the tax profession, focussing on tax practitioners working for Big 4 accounting firms in Ireland. Despite the significant body of research that has been conducted into ethics and ethical awareness in the profession, there remains a dearth of research into employee voice in the wider sense, in terms of its role in improving operational efficiency, the raising of employee grievances, and as means of challenging managerial prerogative. This is symptomatic of both the limited employment relations research in respect of accounting firms, as well as the absence of voice research in the traditional professions in general. Moreover, accounting firms are traditionally non-unionised – with declining trade union density worldwide, and increasing experimentation amongst employers into non-union voice mechanisms, there have been growing calls within Industrial Relations literature for a greater research focus on employee voice in non-unionised settings, such as these. The main contribution of this thesis lies in the unique conceptual approach employed in addressing these gaps. Underpinned by an interpretivist philosophy, this study uses a unique, cross-disciplinary approach to inductively explore voice in the tax profession. Following detailed analysis of 47 semi-structured interviews conducted with participants at all levels of seniority in Big 4 firms, this study has revealed that employees in tax are generally comfortable speaking up about certain issues at work (labelled ‘ProSocial Contribution’ and ‘Professional Issues’) but are far less comfortable speaking up about ‘Workplace Problems’. The nature of these issues and the main antecedents influencing their decisions to voice or not are examined in detail. From a managerial perspective, both middle and senior management participants indicated their broad support for employee voice, albeit there were signs that they would not take immediate action based on it, even in prosocial situations, unless confident that it would make good commercial sense to do so. The interviews also revealed a largely homogenous approach to employee voice across all four firms, with evidence of formal and informal direct voice mechanisms in operation. In outlining these mechanisms in detail, management’s tight control over the voice process at these firms is illuminated. The limitations of the study and a future research agenda are also presented.