Department of Management seminar Caught in limbo: Sustainability auditors and their experience of a regulatory shock

With Professor Martin Messner

While prior literature highlights phases of liminality in auditors' careers, we investigate how auditors experience more substantial shocks to their professional trajectories. Empirically, we examine how sustainability auditors in a mid-tier audit firm experienced the regulatory shock of the downscaling of sustainability reporting requirements in the European Union. Based on 20 months of observant participation as well as 25 interviews, we show that regulatory disruption can turn the liminality inherent in audit careers into a more profound experience of limbo. Such limbo manifests in an erosion of professional agency, disrupted career trajectories, uncertainty about the value of accumulated expertise, and weakened social embeddedness. Yet the same regulatory shock does not affect all auditors equally. Differences in personal objectives and commitment as well as organizational roles influence auditors' vulnerability to disruption and their coping strategies. Overall, the paper adds to our understanding of the fragility of professional identities and career trajectories in an emerging audit domain whose development remains strongly dependent on regulation.