Interpreting qualitative data

Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs

The rise of professionalism

This article critically analyses the manner in which intersectionality and related social positionality shape digital enterprise activities. Despite popular claims of meritocratic opportunity enactment within traditional forms of entrepreneurship, ascribed social characteristics intersect to influence the realisation of entrepreneurial potential. However, it is purported that the emerging field of digital entrepreneurship may act as a ‘great leveller’ due to perceived lower barriers to entry, disembodiment of the entrepreneurial actor and the absence of visible markers of disadvantage online. Using an interpretivist approach, we analyse empirical evidence from UK women digital entrepreneurs which reveals how the privileges and disadvantages arising from intersecting social positions of gender, race and class status are reproduced online. This analysis challenges the notion that the Internet is a neutral platform for entrepreneurship and supports our thesis that offline inequality, in the form of marked bodies, social positionality and associated resource constraints, is produced and reproduced in the online environment.

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A Web of opportunity or the same old story? Women digital entrepreneurs and intersectionality theory

The aim of this paper is to summarize literature relevant to the professional organization and to present a contemporary analysis of the archetype concept in this field. In order to understand recent and ongoing changes in professional organizations, the paper begins with a review of how the professional archetype evolved from the 1960s to 1990. Then, with examples from contemporary accounting, health care and law organizations, it considers the processes by which an institutionalized archetype can change. Forces for change - such as deregulation, competition, technology and globalization - can challenge the interpretive scheme and eventually delegitimize the existing archetype. At the same time, significant environmental changes can override isomorphic pressures and de-institutionalize the long- accepted structures. Thus we herald the emergence a new professional archetype - or perhaps several competing archetypes. Finally, the paper reviews the evolving field of professional organization as a whole, and understands the extant archetypes. A typology of professional organizations is proposed that currently seems to have three clusters of organizations - possibly three competing archetypes - namely, the traditional professional partnership, the specialized 'Star' form and the corporate global professional network, or GPN.

The changing professional organization: A review of competing archetypes

The legal profession in England and Wales is becoming more diverse. However, while white women and black and minority ethnic (BME) individuals now enter the profession in larger numbers, inequalities remain. This article explores the career strategies of 68 white women and BME legal professionals to understand more about their experiences in the profession. Archer’s work on structure and agency informs the analysis, as does Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998) ‘temporally embedded’ conceptualization of agency as having past, current and future elements. We identify six career strategies, which relate to different career points. They are assimilation, compromise, playing the game, reforming the system, location/relocation and withdrawal. We find that five of the six strategies tend to reproduce rather than transform opportunity structures in the legal profession. The overall picture is one of structural reproduction (rather than transformation) of traditional organizational structure and practice. The theoretical frame and empirical data analysis presented in this article accounts for the rarity of structural reform and goes some way towards explaining why, even in contexts populated by highly skilled, knowledgeable agents and where organizations appear committed to equal opportunities, old opportunity structures and inequalities often endure.

Structure, agency and career strategies of white women and black and minority ethnic individuals in the legal profession

This article considers the theoretical explanations for why women are not remaining within and progressing through the ranks of the solicitors' profession in England and Wales. It sets out the findings from a Law Society commissioned project to examine the reasons why women have had a break from practice or chosen to leave the profession. Finally, it considers whether one of the purported strategies used to empower women solicitors - the business case for equality of opportunity in the solicitors' profession - is actively working against women and the profession (more broadly), and that only a return to a wider values-based approach to professional identity will meet the criticisms raised by many of the women who participated in this research.

Women solicitors as a barometer for problems within the legal profession: time to put values before profits?

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/pdf/diversity-in-the-legal-profession-in-england-and-wales-a-4dxfujtnfh.pdf

Diversity in the legal profession in england and wales: a qualitative study of barriers and individual choices

Differences in the working lives of solicitors have become increasingly marked in recent years. Growing numbers of lawyers are employed in the public and corporate sectors and, with the increasing size and wealth of City of London commercial firms, there are significant differences between these firms and those 'high-street' firms that serve local communities. These differences impact on lawyers throughout training and beyond, both in terms of rites of passage into the profession and in conditions of employment. This research, the final stage in a longitudinal survey spanning the 1990s, combines quantitative and qualitative methods to explore the reactions of newly qualified solicitors to their work. Building on the project's previous surveys, which charted the nature of disadvantage suffered by many prospective entrants to the legal profession, the research finds a large measure of satisfaction regarding careers. It also identifies causes for concern, including increasing specialisation in legal education and the potential separation of the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards of professional practice.

Career paths and choices in a highly differentiated profession: the position of newly qualified solicitors

Les AA. s'interessent a la criminalite informatique et affirme qu'elle constitue un probleme social majeur pour l'avenir. Ils estiment que la criminalite informatique permet de rendre visible la criminalite en col blanc. Ils portent plus particulierement son attention sur les «hackers» qui penetrent de facon illicite dans certains systemes informatiques. Ils s'attachent a definir la criminalite en col-blanc, a evaluer le cout de la criminalite informatique. Ils etudient le phenomene du «hacking» ainsi que les legislations mises en place pour y repondre. Il passent en revue les arguments en faveur et en defaveur d'une criminalisation de ce type de delinquance. Ils envisagent un certain nombre de renforcements de l'appareil juridique, en ce domaine, en Grande-Bretagne

Liz Duff

Papers

Structure, agency and career strategies of white women and black and minority ethnic individuals in the legal profession

Women solicitors as a barometer for problems within the legal profession: time to put values before profits?

Diversity in the legal profession in england and wales: a qualitative study of barriers and individual choices

Career paths and choices in a highly differentiated profession: the position of newly qualified solicitors

Computer Crime in the Global Village: Strategies for Control and Regulation — in Defence of the Hacker