Old game, new rules and 'odd friends': Digitalization, jurisdictional conflicts, and boundary work of auditors in a 'big four' professional service firm

Multi-professional service firms must deal with external pressures, such as increasing digitalization and internal tensions arising from differences between professions. Advances in digital technologies affect the content and control of work among professions, reshaping established jurisdictions. Although the importance of digital technologies for professions and their organizations is growing, our understanding of how digitalization affects the content of professional work and jurisdictional arrangements between existing and emerging professions is limited. Drawing on data collected from 25 semistructured interviews, participant observations, and archival data in a Big Four firm, we explored the changes in content and control of audit work due to digitalization, and how auditors responded to jurisdictional conflicts through boundary work. Findings of the study show digitalization impacts critical activities and jurisdictions of auditors in diagnosis and treatment phases, increasing the effectiveness and value of audit work. Accounting auditors can respond to jurisdictional conflicts through different boundary work types for each act of professional practice. The study advances our understanding of digitalization's implications on professions by revealing that professions can reduce contestation and increase collaboration through boundary work in the diagnosis and treatment phases. In contrast, professions' ability to abstract helps them maintain favorable conditions in the inference phase.