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Older professional workers and continuous learning in new capitalism

Tara Fenwick
Human Relations 2012 65: 1001 originally published online 15 June 2012
DOI: 10.1177/0018726712445939

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445939
2012
HUM65810.1177/0018726712445939FenwickHuman Relations

human relations

human relations
65(8) 1001­–1020
Older professional workers © The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/0018726712445939
capitalism hum.sagepub.com

Tara Fenwick
University of Stirling, UK

Abstract
Amidst projected shortages of skilled workers, policy measures to retain older workers
in employment include increasing their participation in learning. However, the few studies
produced to date examining older workers’ learning suggest complexities not recognized
in human capital conceptions of skill development and assumptions of declining seniors’
participation. To build on these studies, particularly in older professionals’ learning,
which has received little attention despite concerns regarding professional transitions
in a knowledge economy, this article examines older professionals’ approaches to and
conceptions of learning. The study involved 816 accountants’ survey responses and
60 interviews with older (50+) Certified Management Accountants in Canada. Far
from withdrawing from learning, these older professionals are particularly focused in
what, when and how they engage. Their enactments are complex, and demonstrate
ambivalences related to discourses of both age and learning. More fundamentally, they
negotiate the various pressures associated with new capitalism strategically: deliberately
complying with some, refusing others, and generally resisting subjectification either as
excluded ‘older workers’ or as continuous learners.

Keywords
accountants, new capitalism, older workers, professional learning, work environment

Introduction
Older workers, often defined as 50+, have recently become an important policy emphasis
in the UK and EU (EU, 2007; OECD, 2006; UK, 2006) as well as in Canada, where this

Corresponding author:
Tara Fenwick, School of Education, University of Stirling, Pathfoot A33, Stirling FK9 4LA, Scotland, UK.
Email: [email protected]

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1002 Human Relations 65(8)

study was conducted (HRSDC, 2007). These policies have focused on retaining older
workers in the labour market by increasing their work satisfaction and meaningful par-
ticipation. The major concerns prompting such action are the increased ratios of ageing
citizens to active workers, projections of a general critical shortage in skilled labour, and
evidence of workplace ageism and exclusion. Studies have shown, for example, that
older workers experience devaluing of their knowledge, stereotyping, subtle barriers to
learning opportunities, and pressure to present themselves as younger and technologi-
cally savvy (Ainsworth, 2006; Carroll, 2007). Policy measures to induce greater partici-
pation of older workers in employment have largely been directed, argues Weller (2007),
to removing regulatory structures that may discourage participation, highlighting work
skills and other positive attributes contributed by older workers, encouraging participa-
tion through ‘moral’ injunctions to serve the labour market, and penalizing employers
that discriminate.
Older workers’ learning has also been identified as an important potential lever to
counter perceived declining skill relevance of older workers. In Canada, for example,
policy has focused on encouraging older workers’ greater access to, and participation in,
learning opportunities (HRDC, 2000, 2002; HRSDC, 2007). This focus is premised on
assumptions that older workers engage less than younger workers in skill development,
and generally do not participate in work learning as much as would be desirable to
increase their employability and retain them in the labour market.
Some evidence has been produced to examine older workers’ experiences in learn-
ing. These studies indicate that the story is more complex than simply increasing older
workers’ access to learning. First, it appears that older workers may have unique atti-
tudes to learning and perhaps even distinct approaches and processes for work learning
(Canning, 2011; Tikkanen and Nyhan, 2006). Indeed, Canning (2011) found that older
workers were less interested in learning new skills than in better utilizing the skills they
had already developed. Second, many have argued that these workers’ learning cannot
be simply understood in human capital terms as increasing individuals’ acquisition of
skills, but must be linked to workplace culture and its embedded learning opportunities
(Fuller and Unwin, 2005), and analysed in the context of capitalist relations that pro-
duce and value particular kinds of knowledge and work (Moore, 2009; Porcellato et al.,
2010; Roberts, 2006). In general, Tikkanen and Nyhan (2006) conclude that older work-
ers’ learning is poorly understood, contributing to its low recognition and support in
work organizations.
A further issue is that the few existing studies have concentrated on non-professionals
such as workers in hospitality or trades. If we turn to professionals and professional
learning, much literature has accumulated to examine the learning of early career profes-
sionals, but little attention has been directed to older professionals in this regard. Even if
we acknowledge the problem of working with the category of ‘older workers’ (Roberts,
2006), the fact remains that policy and related programmes are continuing to target this
group for rehabilitation. Among professional groups, where continuous work learning
has been emphasized as an important dynamic in the global economy to supply flexible,
multi-skilled and entrepreneurial knowledge workers (Gee at al., 2003), the case of older
workers throws up additional questions. How do these older professionals conceptualize
their work knowledge and learning in the face of increased demands for continuous

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Fenwick 1003

learning? In what specific ways, and to what extent, do older professionals participate in
learning?
These are the questions addressed in this article. The discussion presents a study set
in Canada examining the professional learning of older Certified Management
Accountants (CMAs). This article focuses on 60 interviews with older CMAs which
were connected to a survey of a larger group about their learning practices. Like other
professionals in the financial sector, CMAs are particularly pressured by changing
financial regulations and industry restructuring in ‘new capitalism’ (Sennett, 2006) to
maintain a high level of skill and skill adaptability. The article proceeds in four sections,
beginning with a more detailed discussion of age and professional learning in the work-
place. The second section describes the methods and population of the study, and the
third presents findings showing older professionals’ distinct conceptions of and partici-
pation in learning, within the changing conditions of capitalist relations in which they
work. The concluding section argues that, far from withdrawing from learning, these
older professionals are particularly focused on what, when and how they engage. Their
enactments are complex, and demonstrate ambivalences related to discourses of both
age and learning. More fundamentally, they negotiate the various pressures associated
with new capitalism strategically: deliberately complying with some, refusing others,
and generally resisting subjectification either as excluded ‘older workers’ or as continu-
ous learners.

Older workers, new capitalism and continuous

professional learning
Older professionals’ learning needs to be understood within broader dynamics of work-
place ageism as well as within the shifting work arrangements and intensifications in
what critical writers have described as ‘new capitalism’ (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007;
Doogan, 2009; Sennett, 2006). To the first issue, despite legislation intended to prevent
age-related discrimination, there persist discourses of ‘decline’ and obsolescence that
have generated negative stereotypes among colleagues and employers. These construct
older workers as ‘problems’ taking up jobs and resources (Ainsworth, 2006; Carroll,
2007). In their interviews with 56 individuals in northwest UK, for instance, Porcellato
et al. (2010) found a prevalent workplace culture of ageism reinforced through employ-
ers’ negative attitudes about older workers. Discourses of decline amidst prevalent work
structures promoting individualism, argue Ainsworth and Hardy (2009), also work effec-
tively to regulate older workers’ bodies and minds.
Turning to the second issue, the question of older workers’ participation needs to be
situated within the systemic material relations of the capitalist economy. These are
changing, argues Sennett (2006), in a new capitalism marked by unprecedented intensi-
fication of workload and work pace, and shifts in work relations to increasing emphasis
on customer service and networked structures of competitive individuals. Boltanski and
Chiapello (2007) stress the contingency and mobility of work in new capitalism, eroding
links between workers and employers and demanding worker adaptation. Sennett (2006),
too, focuses concern on low levels of loyalty and informal trust produced through new
capitalism’s preference for short-term labour and serial projects. This not only creates

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1004 Human Relations 65(8)

‘institutional deficits’ (p. 64) and institutional paranoia, but also workers’ anxiety and
need for high tolerance of ambiguity and self-reliance: they are left to their own devices
to respond to targets. Time, argues Sennett, is central to this regime, with its accelera-
tions and compressions. Order is imposed according to ‘impatient capital’, which
demands short-term results and immediate change. This is a rationalized time that cuts
deeply into subjectivities and human lives − a point of concern that is stressed by others
analysing the effects of new capitalism on workers (Colley et al., in press; Postpone,
1993).
Within this context, Ainsworth (2006) shows that workplace discourses related to age
tend to be contradictory. Organizational rhetoric often praises traits of reliability, per-
sonal maturity, stability and punctuality assumed to characterize older workers. In prac-
tice, what tends to be valued and rewarded are the flexible dynamism and technological
competence associated with younger workers (McVittie et al., 2003; Riach, 2007). One
example is illustrated in Weller’s (2007) study of older flight attendants seeking employ-
ment following the collapse of a major Australian airline. The women’s job-search dif-
ficulties had little to do with technical skills and much to do with their ability to perform
a corporate brand representing sexualized aesthetic stereotypes and a particular dynamic
self that excluded many older women. In another study, Moore (2009) found that older
workers who had become critically conscious of these discriminatory work relations
were perceived as obstacles to change. In these changing work structures, Roberts (2006)
argues that long-term employee experience is actively devalued, and employee loyalty is
treated suspiciously as unimaginative, unambitious and inflexible. The problem with
focusing on increasing older workers’ participation in the labour market, Roberts (2006)
maintains, is that the market has become unattractive to these workers through changing
work practices and management − complexities which are being ignored in the insistence
on treating the current crisis of potential labour shortages as one of economic rationality.
Overall, Roberts (2006: 82) argues that work structures in these new forms of capitalism
are producing not only a ‘crisis of the reproduction of the collective worker as a whole’
but also new moral imperatives.
One of the more significant moral imperatives emerging in the intensified relations of
new capitalism is continuous lifelong learning. This emphasis has been framed by policy
discourses of the technologized knowledge economy emphasizing innovation, entrepre-
neurism and resilience (OECD, 2006), despite critiques such as Warhurst and Thompson’s
(2006: 793), which concludes that ‘the knowledge economy is a policy increasingly at odds
with the evidence’. Workers, perhaps particularly those in the professional-managerial
group, are meant to learn continuously to adapt to flexible jobs, flexible knowledge and
skills, and flexible work locations (Gee et al., 2003). Critics such as Casey (2011) have
argued that these conditions conflating lifelong learning with work and the economy denies
personhood, and delimits workers’ subjectivities to objects of organizational utility. The
underlying problem in such knowledge economy policies is their assumptions – first, that
learning processes are a simple matter of cumulative acquisition of knowledge; and second,
that learning purposes are inevitably supposed to be entwined with employability, produc-
tive growth and market competitiveness. Porcellato et al. (2010) argue that such prevailing
assumptions do not adequately account for the complex interrelations influencing older
workers’ learning, such as self-perceptions, ageist cultures and conflicting values attached

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Fenwick 1005

to forms of knowledge. These models also fail to account for the non-linear, participative
processes of workers’ learning. Many studies have traced the complex ways in which work
learning is woven with identity, desire, community and activity (e.g. Billett, 2002; Evans et
al., 2006; Fenwick, 2008; Rainbird et al., 2004). For example, older workers’ learning atti-
tudes to, and participation in, learning are shown to depend on how learning opportunities
are embedded, supported and managed within the wider culture of workforce development
(Fuller and Unwin, 2005).
Older professionals’ learning in new capitalism suggests a particularly interesting
case, given the rapidly changing knowledges and professionalisms that are emerging.
Evetts (2011: 5) explains that professions now can be categorized in terms of work ‘asso-
ciated with the uncertainties of modern lives in risk societies’, following the ‘risk soci-
ety’ thesis proposed by Beck (1992). Professionals have become increasingly engaged in
dealing with risk and enabling clients and institutions to deal with uncertainty; they must
be flexible and entrepreneurial to adapt to the public’s radically shifting demands. At the
same time, argues Evetts (2011), classic notions of professionalism, including authority,
trust, credibility and discretion, have become eroded on the one hand by logics of market
and consumerism, and on the other by bureaucracy and management. In general, Evetts
(2009, 2011) has maintained that new professionalism is shifting more to an ‘organiza-
tional’ orientation and away from a purely ‘occupational’ or professional allegiance.
Whereas occupational professionalism incorporated collegial authority and relationships
of trust between employers and practitioners, organizational professionalism relies upon
client control as well as managerialist regulation through standardized procedures, out-
put measures, hierarchical structures and external audits. Discourses of enterprise and
innovation infuse classic professional discourses of quality, care and service. How does
this influence conceptions of professional learning? For Evetts (2011: 23), customer
evaluation and freedom of choice means that professional competence becomes more
connected with results achieved in specific contexts of positions, tasks and performances,
raising new requirements for self-regulated governmentality through explicit accounting
of professional competence. Fenwick (2009) has shown how professionals’ continuous
learning, for example, is increasingly audited to help create these outputs. Meanwhile,
expectations for inter-professional collaboration have increased, often demanding learn-
ing for ‘co-configured’ professional work (Engeström, 2007), and new competencies in
‘relational agency’ for building common knowledge across very different professional
perspectives, categories and organizational boundaries (Edwards, 2007).
These tensions of professionalism in new capitalism affect all professionals, but may
pose particular issues for older professionals. First, professionals in later career stages
are often expected to lead and mentor others (Tikkanen and Nyhan, 2006) − an interest-
ing prospect in face of demands for innovation, entrepreneurism, risk, competition and
so forth. Second, if we accept Evetts’s account of fundamental shifts, older practitioners
will themselves have experienced a trajectory straddling occupational and organizational
professionalism. This may warrant corresponding shifts in the nature and direction of
their learning over time to survive, as well as in their engagement in the accountability
mechanisms for learning. The shifts towards greater emphasis on inter-professional and
co-configured professional work structures may create a double pressure for older pro-
fessionals: they can be expected to struggle like most professionals with the blurred

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1006 Human Relations 65(8)

boundaries of responsibility and identity that such co-productive arrangements entail

(Edwards, 2007), while at the same time struggling to establish their credibility and
authority as older practitioners in an ageist culture. Third, the ‘new’ demands claimed in
new capitalism of work intensification, contingency, mobility, eroded loyalty and tenu-
ous worker−employer links (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007; Sennett, 2006) may particu-
larly affect long-experienced, ageing professionals whose practice was shaped in
different work relations. Overall, how do older professionals position their knowledge
and learning amidst discourses of impatient capital, short-term labour and just-in-time
learning? How do they negotiate the ongoing transformations of professional work and
knowledge? To date there are few published studies of older professional workers exam-
ining such dynamics in terms of practitioners’ conceptions and forms of participation in
learning.

Methods: Examining learning of Canadian Certified

Management Accountants
This study, conducted in 2008−2009 in the Canadian province of Alberta, involved 60
individual interviews with older professional accountants (the major focus of this article)
as well as a descriptive survey capturing responses among accountants 50−65 years old in
Alberta. All respondents were Certified Management Accountants (CMAs) − a university-
educated, self-regulating professional group flourishing in Canada as well as other coun-
tries whose practice incorporates two distinct bodies of knowledge: accounting and
managing. Two questions in particular guided the study: (i) ‘How do older professionals
conceptualize their work knowledge and learning in the face of increased demands for
continuous learning?’; and (ii) ‘In what specific ways, and to what extent, do older profes-
sionals participate in learning?’. We defined ‘older’ CMAs as ‘50+’, following the work-
ing definition of recent major EU research initiatives focused on older workers (EU
Commission, 2007). While older workers may be more experienced in a particular prac-
tice than their younger colleagues, this is obviously not always the case. Among CMAs,
as in many other professions, older individuals may turn to the career after years spent in
other forms of work, or they may have returned to CMA practice after absence from the
labour force. CMAs seemed particularly appropriate for a study of professionals’ learning
because they experience major changes in financial regulations and technologies that
likely require learning. Further, continuous learning is now a requirement of the CMA
Association in Canada, as elsewhere. To retain their licence to practice, Canadian CMAs
must demonstrate their participation in a minimum of 120 hours of professional learning
activity over a three-year period, with a minimum of 30 hours annually towards the 120
(CMA, 2000). These professionals often work alone as the only CMA or controller in a
work unit, and therefore often cannot rely on a CMA community of practice close to hand
within which to learn. In Canada, where we conducted the study, the CMA Association
was concerned that a high percentage of its members were over 50, and were located in
remote regions without easy access to professional development opportunities offered
through the Association.
First, we designed a 15-question electronic survey for provincially certified CMAs,
intended to provide a broad descriptive overview of these practitioners’ learning practices.

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Fenwick 1007

The survey was made available online for eight weeks for anonymous participation to all
certified CMAs in Alberta regardless of age (5487 members). Aside from demographic
information, questions elicited respondents’ priorities in professional learning, preferred
learning approaches, resources they found most useful, motives for participating, and any
experiences of exclusion or barriers to access related to age. A total of 277 CMAs in the
50−65-year-old group responded. (There were no available statistics showing the percent-
age of the total CMA provincial membership that fell into this ‘older’ category.) The focus
in this article is on these responses: the intention here is not to compare this group’s
responses with responses of those in other age groups.
Survey respondents 50−65 years of age were also invited to contact us to volunteer for
an in-depth personal interview about these issues. A total of 117 volunteered − about half
men and half women. We selected 60 (32 women and 28 men) to represent a range of
experiences in participants’ years of experience, regional location (urban/rural, northern/
central/southern Alberta) and current employment (sector, organizational size and type).
Clearly, a limitation of this study is that it may only have attracted respondents who have
particular interest in professional learning or particular opinions about the relations of
age to work and learning; non-respondents may well act and think in patterns not reflected
in the following discussion. Two-thirds of the sample were aged 50−54, 15 were 55−59
and five were 60−65. One-third worked in large businesses (engineering, law, construc-
tion, insurance, forestry), one-sixth in different multinational oil and gas companies, and
one-sixth in government departments (municipal, provincial and federal). Of the remain-
der, six individuals were instructors in post-secondary institutions, five worked in not-
for-profit organizations, two in large banks, five were independent consultants, and two
were unemployed. Almost 70 percent of the men were managers in managerial (e.g.
Controller) or senior management roles such as Vice-President of Finance, compared
with 45 percent of the women, of which only half were in senior management roles. This
was the main gender difference that emerged in the study, and we were told that the pat-
tern of far more men than women in senior management roles was consistent with
broader employment patterns among CMAs. Gendered work conditions and perfor-
mances among these professionals are complex and would warrant a separate analysis to
properly account for issues such as diverse industrial contexts affecting gender (think of
comparing a large urban-based civil service department with a northern Alberta oil pro-
ducer employing mostly men). The same could be said for dimensions of race and ethnic-
ity, which can be expected to intersect with gender as well as with age. These are
important dynamics worth pursuing through critical research, but lie beyond the scope of
the present analysis, which focused more broadly on the intersections of age with profes-
sional learning and conditions of new capitalism.
One semi-structured personal interview with each participant about 60 minutes in
duration was conducted in a setting chosen by the interviewee, usually in a work or home
office. The questions elicited basic demographic and career history information, and
descriptions of participants’ current workplace role and context, everyday activities and
interactions. Participants were then asked to narrate key changes in their career path from
a time they identified as early career to the present, in terms of their professional prac-
tices, knowledge and expertise. They identified the strategies that they employed both
within and outside work practices to develop this expertise, and the support they valued

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1008 Human Relations 65(8)

most. Question probes led interviewees to describe contextualized narrative examples of

their present work practice, its challenges and their knowledge-in-use, as well as when
and why they developed new knowledge and with what strategies. Finally, participants
reflected upon any distinctions between the kinds and processes of knowledge develop-
ment they now pursue in their present work context, from other key phases in their pro-
fessional careers.
All interviews were transcribed verbatim and anonymized. Content analysis of tran-
scripts was conducted manually by three researchers, two of whom had conducted the
interviews. After a general reading/listening to a group of transcripts, a researcher coded
each transcript in that group for themes and issues prompted by the research questions,
the literature review and unique participant characteristics. A small selection of tran-
scripts were coded independently by two researchers, who then cross-checked the themes
and issues to create a synthesis and a larger set of themes as resources to assist the further
coding. Then we prepared a brief summary (three or four pages) of each interview. It
provided key details of the work context, the participant themes coded by the researcher,
key ‘small stories’ or critical incidents, and the researcher’s issues and questions raised
by the transcript. In a set of meetings among the three researchers, these summaries were
then compared. We analysed the nature of similarities and differences among the partici-
pant themes, and compiled a large matrix of common themes and outliers linked to work
contexts and career trajectories. We also together re-examined the small stories and the
issues/questions in light of the emerging thematic matrix, noting the inconsistencies and
tensions that were appearing among these themes. We then turned to the most prominent
constructs from the ‘new capitalism’ thesis, and examined the transcripts and themes
critically in light of these claims as well as central themes pertaining to older workers
and their learning, summarized in the previous section.

Older professionals’ learning practices: Strategic

transactions of knowledge in changing conditions
of work
These older professionals reported work conditions that, according to new capitalism propo-
nents, reflect fundamental changes in work relations. Interviewees made frequent reference
to the pace of regulatory change affecting their work and its dominant forms of knowledge,
such as IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards), organizational changes in per-
sonnel restructurings, and new IT implementations. These CMAs also experienced rela-
tively high occupational mobility, sometimes related to organizational restructuring/
redundancies and sometimes to the individual professional’s choice to leave one post for
another with more pay or opportunity. All interviewees reported working in different posts
over their careers (the survey did not probe job changes), and one-quarter had been employed
in at least three different jobs in the past ten years. These job changes sometimes occurred
across very different sectors (government, heavy construction, oil and gas, retail etc.) and
activities (e.g. from systems analysis to financial strategy, or from tax accounting to general
management). Such dramatic shifts require learning new knowledge, new occupational
environments, and a new occupational identity and relationships.

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Fenwick 1009

Interviewees often referred to the potential exhaustion resulting from this intensifica-
tion of change, information overload, constant change and skill demand: ‘When you
come home, you’re tired’ (male financial supervisor, oil producer corporation, 58). Yet,
amidst the pressures and shifting work relations, these older professionals had adopted a
range of strategic learning strategies for at least three purposes: (i) to manage intensified
work and mobility; (ii) to resist continuous learning and innovation; and (iii) to position
themselves amidst discourses of dynamism and youth.

Strategic learning to manage intensified work and mobility

What is worth noting with these older workers is how they managed their learning within
conditions of intensified work and mobility. All older CMAs in the interviews as well as
survey responses described their participation in a wide variety of learning opportunities,
selected for particular purposes. Sources included some formal provisions (workshops
and courses) but mostly informal learning (unplanned and rooted in everyday activity).
The top three most preferred knowledge sources for professional learning chosen by
survey respondents were (i) professional books and publications, (ii) face-to-face con-
versations and (iii) web-based information, including CMA courses but also national (tax
laws) and transnational knowledge sources (such as software products and financial
regulations). In addition, the interviewees readily identified moments and events as
‘learning’ activities that are not often recognized as such by workers: hallway conversa-
tions, surfing the web, solving problems, meeting informally with colleagues, and so
forth.
In other words, these older professionals had integrated wide-ranging learning strate-
gies into their work as a matter of course. However, they expected to choose and use
those strategies that they had determined to be most suitable for their purposes.
Interviewees were quite clear, for instance, about whether or not they learned effectively
through ‘network’ gatherings or courses. Most had developed strategies and confidence
to access less evident knowledge sources. One had created his own learning network,
another had sought out webinars hosted by different financial agencies, and several were
sufficiently confident to contact knowledge elites directly:

If I need information, I go to the experts on the subject. So, take carbon capture and storage for
instance. Go to the expert to find out, you know, where can we capture this stuff and, you know,
where can, where could we possibly store it? Who is going to build the pipeline and how do we
go about doing that? (Male senior cost analyst, oil producer corporation, 58)

Older CMAs usually engaged with all of these sources for very focused learning
purposes. For example, 75 percent of women and 73 percent of men among the older
CMA survey respondents indicated that the top most important skill they continue to
learn informally is solving problems for their work. The other two top-valued con-
cepts or skills among older survey respondents were ‘planning strategy’ and ‘manag-
ing staff’, perhaps reflecting the high percentage of employment in senior or
supervisory positions. Only 16.5 percent of older survey respondents reported any
exclusion from learning opportunities, giving reasons such as remote locations

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1010 Human Relations 65(8)

preventing travel to professional meetings. The top reason given for not participating
in more formal professional development was ‘learning opportunities uninteresting
or inappropriate to needs of mature CMAs’. Overall, the range of learning strategies
and resources developed by these older CMAs is impressive, compared with the
rather limited professional learning approaches reported broadly among accountants
(Paisey et al., 2007).
Focus in learning was highly valued, and described in various terms as something that
developed with professional experience:

I’ve got to focus and I can’t be all things to all people … so I don’t need to learn everything.
(Woman, director of finance & administration, not-for-profit seniors organization, 52)

Some chose a specialism, such as international auditing, which required new competence
in a sub-field of accounting or management. These specialist learning demands arose
from a job change, a general concern to increase one’s edge of credibility in a competi-
tive job market, or from personal interest. A 54-year-old male senior audit manager with
government describes his learning as constantly intense because of the pressure to spe-
cialize: ‘how you enhance your career is to enhance your expertise in a specific area –
you get good at finding that kernel of knowledge fast’.
Others took a generalist approach, leaving behind their knowledge and identities as
professional accountants:

I’m totally out of touch with accounting … sophisticated modeling is definitely something
I’m not learning! I’m not quite sure if I have the inclination and the energy to even learn
that stuff… [What’s important is] to keep abreast with what is happening out there, for
instance on the climate change front. So I need to know how the Europeans are thinking
about it. How the Japanese and Australians are thinking. (Male senior business advisor, oil
corporation, 58)

Overall these older CMAs reflected the difficult intensifications of pace, change and
contingency in their work, and the pressures to continually develop new knowledge to
cope with this constant change, which Sennett (2006) and others claim have transformed
the workplace. In contradiction to literature claiming concerns for older workers’ declin-
ing participation in learning, these professional workers demonstrated a strong degree of
engagement. They also personified the self-reliant, flexible subject that some claim has
been produced in new work relations (Casey, 2011; Gee et al., 2003). However, in con-
trast to broader claims about new capitalism’s subjugation of workers to new regimes of
control, general anxiety and ambivalence, these workers also indicated a clear expecta-
tion to exercise strategic personal control over how, when, and for what purposes they
chose particular activities of work and learning:

I’m choosing to learn, whereas 10 years ago others chose. This is what I do for a living and
these are the areas that I need to improve to better do what I’m doing. I’m actually learning
more than when I was working years ago … because what I’m choosing to learn is related to
what I’m doing, it’s more specific. Right now I’m more in control. (Male, controller in small
tool business, 50)

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Strategic learning to resist continuous learning and innovation

In addition to wanting personal control over their work learning purposes and approaches,
older professionals seemed to have decided to protect themselves against the increasing
onslaught of information. One could argue that they learned how to refuse the excesses
of the knowledge economy:

One of the problems that I actually struggle with is how much we have coming at us, so to try
to sort that out as to what is important and what isn’t. It’s just impossible to take it all in. And
so part of my learning now is learning how to figure out what I actually need and to pay
attention to that and let the rest go. (Woman senior manager, international chartered accounting
firm, 60)

Keeping up is impossible. Furthermore, as successful career histories over time con-

tinued to demonstrate, a tight focus on what is immediately relevant seems to work at
least as well as continuous, expansive learning in sustaining one’s employability:

All I need to do is keep myself aware of changes in the areas that are relevant to my clients. So
instead of continually increasing and adding new knowledge and skills as I would have done
and did do 15 years, 20 years ago now I’m simply broadening the knowledge base that’s
relevant to me at this point. (Woman, independent accounting practice, 52)

These observations and others are indicative of a shared theme among the interview-
ees: that the most valued knowledge, and the focus of most older CMAs’ learning activi-
ties, was directly related to the fluctuating demands of their current job rather than to a
distinct body of accounting/managerial knowledge associated with the CMA discipline.
This reflects a transition that Evetts (2009) observes in current economic conditions from
an ‘occupational’ to an ‘organizational’ orientation: that critical skills, knowledge and
outputs are becoming increasingly defined not by the professional discipline but by man-
agerial demands. Individuals often used phrases like ‘value-added’ to describe their
learning in terms of their organizations, and seemed genuinely focused on ensuring that
they developed those skills (whether in financial strategy, communicative competence,
innovative systems etc.) that would serve their organizations best, in the roles they cur-
rently held. While many interviewees referred to their CMA designation as highly cred-
ible and valued among employers, many maintained tenuous or no links with their
professional community or the CMA knowledge they had originally mastered to acquire
their professional certification:

… the CMA being focused on the accounting aspect of the designation. But there are a lot of
people like me who don’t fit into that role, but continue to pay the society dues because it gives
you credibility with clients. (Female sales manager, information technology, 51)

Yet while these older professionals undertook strategic learning for particular pur-
poses, they opposed external control of their learning. Five interviewees indicated a criti-
cal awareness of the never-ending ‘treadmill’ of their profession’s expectation for
‘continuous learning’: ‘Once you get on this learning thing you can’t have time off

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1012 Human Relations 65(8)

right?…. I always thought that’s sort of a creepy treadmill kind of model’ (male manager,
large chemical firm, 59). In fact, there was strong resentment expressed by all but three
of the 60 interviewees about having to demonstrate their learning. This audit is a require-
ment linked with annual renewal of licence, driven by the CMA professional association,
which requires all professionals to maintain a written log book of learning activity. The
older CMAs referred to surveillance, distrust and incursion on their autonomy, perhaps
particularly resented from the position of an older professional who felt they had earned
more respect:

They treat you like a school kid a bit. I suppose that’s an old guy thing. I don’t like being treated
like a school kid. (Male manager, large chemical firm, 59)
The constant logging learning activities is onerous I’ve got enough paperwork and files. That’s
the last thing I’m going to think about before I go home at night. It takes away from what you
assume is something that is part of your professional obligation anyhow. (Male chief accountant,
pulp mill, 56)
It seemed like big brother was watching me. I know what I’m doing. I took your courses. I
passed the courses. I’ve been a good person, I haven’t had to go to jail for doing bad things with
my CMA designation. (Woman accounting manager, small construction business, 53)
Here I am and I’m advancing and people respect me and they really want me to do their work
and yet I still have to prove that I’m learning. It seems kind of weird. (Male systems analyst,
international concrete manufacturer, 57)

These expressions of resentment were the only resistance possible, given that failure
to comply could compromise the renewal of one’s licence to practice. Yet they indicate
an important refusal to be complicit in the disciplining of one’s own learning practices.
Perhaps one’s professional knowledge is a final sphere to protect from disciplinary tech-
nologies of audit and report. Perhaps, too, older professionals find it easier to resist the
breathless demands for continuous learning, expanding knowledge and career advance-
ment. Many seemed to have demonstrated for themselves the most efficient learning
strategies with which to negotiate work systems successfully and survive, judging from
the fact that all interviewees but three were employed in well-paying jobs that they
claimed to enjoy. They tended to follow their own values in deciding how and what to
learn, and these values were not often aligned with discourses of new capitalism:

Your time becomes more precious. You’re more aware of where you want to spend your time.
I think that you’re less interested in career development and growth. You really want to just
target in on the things that you’re interested in. (Male VP of finance & administration, insurance
firm, 52)

Strategic self-positioning in discourses of dynamism and youth

Despite older professionals’ apparent confidence in determining their own pace and pur-
poses for learning, and their resistance to external pressures for particular forms of con-
tinuous learning, there was ambivalence in how they positioned themselves and
felt positioned in their work. On the survey, only 16 percent indicated that

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Fenwick 1013

they had experienced or witnessed age discrimination in their workplace, and only three
interviewees described actual experiences of age discrimination. All three did so in the
context of their applying for new jobs, echoing Weller’s (2007) finding that ageism often
materializes at the point of recruitment. Beyond these instances, interviewees insisted
that there was no age discrimination in their organizations. Some claimed that in fact
they enjoyed greater respect, status and recognition because of their age, with greater
access to learning opportunities and a general organizational valuing of the kinds of
experience they could bring.
However, a number explicitly positioned themselves as ‘not old’, either presenting
themselves as ‘youthful’ or distancing themselves from colleagues displaying character-
istics of ‘older workers’:

I look much younger than I am. They usually credit me with 10 fewer years. It’s how you carry
yourself, it’s in your mindset. (Woman CEO, large non-profit agency, 49)
I don’t come across as old … I keep fit and slim … I take karate …. (Male senior officer,
government department, 56)
I’d never put on my resume the number of years I’ve been around. (Woman asst. deputy
minister, government department, 52)
You don’t want to be the old person unbending. I’ve always been flexible, high energy. (Woman
director of finance & administration, seniors’ agency, 52)

Here we see subject positions that conform to Sennett’s (2006) new capitalism: mobile,
flexible and dynamic. These are formulated in tension with individuals’ denial of ageist dis-
crimination, and in direct contradiction to the age-related weariness that many admitted not
only feeling but expressing openly as a legitimate part of life change. These attempts to engage
with discourses of youthfulness also reflect a certain anxiety that bubbles in tension against the
confident certainty that interviewees expressed in their value as older professionals. Even
among those who had recently changed jobs, entailing adjustments to new work activities and
cultures, interviewees presented a certain settled comfort with the adjustment process:

The learning is easier now than in previous job shifts. Before it was a struggle to find out how
to do it, who I had to talk to, who I had to get authorisation from. Now it’s a lot easier –
Because, my age, you know, the confidence in what I’m doing and the maturity from my age.
(Woman controller, insurance firm, 62)
I’m in less of a hurry now, I can wait . . . I sort of don’t feel like I have to leap tall buildings in
a single bound anymore. (Woman controller, car dealership/PT college instructor, 58)

Yet there was further tension between this unhurried, confident patience and the way
many interviewees positioned themselves with respect to their younger colleagues. Some
admitted becoming caught up in competition with younger workers, in the intensified
work pace and self-promotion that concerns new capitalism critics:

You’re always fighting to stay ahead of the pack and at some point, somebody from the pack
will go ahead of you … the message is that you’ve reached your peak. (Male manager liaison,
oil producer corporation, 53)

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1014 Human Relations 65(8)

However, at the same time, a number also perceived younger CMAs to lack the
important judgment, patience, and wisdom that they personally felt they brought to the
job as older professionals − particularly in contexts of organizational problem-solving,
which was the skill identified as ‘most valued’ by older survey respondents.

I can walk into situations and know I’ve done this all before whereas they think the world is
coming to an end. (Male manager, large chemical firm, 59)
Young CMAs think they can do everything there is to do be done in the world. Confidence is
good but it takes some learning time to teach them that they still don’t know everything and
they’re going to learn a lot of savvy and things they need to know from experience. (Male tax
leader, large energy corporation, 53)

Here we see a positioning that seems apart from, even countering, the ‘impatient capi-
tal’ (Sennett, 2006) embodied in younger workers. Similarly, in commenting on younger
workers’ strong digital technology skills, so often associated with fast capitalism’s net-
worked structures and contingency of information, older workers seemed to feel com-
fortably distant rather than threatened or competitive. Some interviewees praised these
recently graduated CMAs for their ‘tech-savvy’, while others pitied them as uncritically
over-reliant on technology:

What younger CMAs are bringing to the workplace today is leap years beyond what I had.
They’re light years ahead in terms of use of tools and technology than I’ll ever be able to do.
(Male corporate secretary, oil and gas corporation, 54)
Younger CMAs just don’t have the knowledge. They’re dependent on computers and really
don’t understand how information goes into computers. They don’t have the experience or
knowledge to even question the reasonability of it. (Male senior manager internal audit,
government, 50)

But for individuals who position themselves as generally certain of their value as
wiser, experienced professionals, insulated from new capitalism’s excesses, these older
CMAs seemed rather focused on comparing themselves to their younger colleagues.
Some interviewees clearly admired, if cautiously, the eager energy that they perceived
among the new recruits. Others emphasized that their own mature judgements and stra-
tegic knowledge of experience, powerful in organizations, were not often available from
younger recruits. Yet there remained discomfort, even resentment, about younger col-
leagues. Several portrayed younger CMAs, for example, as overconfident, and overly
impatient for entitlement and respect.

Younger CMAs are more willing to give their opinions, thoughts, innovative ideas right off the
mark whereas 15 years ago you’d take a bit more time to learn the organisation before putting
yourself out there . . . They think they are due respect vs having to earn it. (Woman, city finance
manager, 52)

Overall these older professionals expressed ambivalent emotions and attitudes about
their positions, recalling the contradictory discourses that purport to value age-linked
knowledge described by Ainsworth (2006). They presented themselves as apart from,

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Fenwick 1015

and not particularly shaped or threatened by, many pressures of dynamism and youth
embodied by early career accountants. Clearly, they recognized themselves in a distinct
category to their younger colleagues, viewing them from afar with both admiration and
frustration and perhaps a bit of parental indulgence. They seemed comfortable enunciat-
ing the employment advantages of age and experience. Yet simultaneously they also
sometimes took up the subject positions enacting the hyper-competitiveness, mobility
and youth obsessions that they otherwise countered. We might conclude that their posi-
tionings reflect an ambivalence about age and ageism, as well as a nimble capacity to
negotiate and enact, as necessary for survival, the different discourses available for
organizational performance without becoming truly subject to any of them.

Conclusions
Older professionals’ conceptions and forms of participation in learning need to be under-
stood within the conditions structuring their work and learning activity. In the case of
older Certified Management Accountants in Canada, these conditions reflect certain
characteristics associated with new capitalism (Sennett, 2006) and shifts in professional-
ism (Evetts, 2009). In short, these characteristics are intensified demands for flexible,
multi-skilled productivity and development of new specialized knowledge, continuous
flexible adaptation to accelerated regulatory change and organizational restructuring,
increased audit through measurable outputs, and an explicit imperative for continuous
learning that is innovative, dynamic, and driven by organizational demands du jour.
Amidst this contingency and acceleration of ‘impatient capital’ (Sennett, 2006), the
60 older professionals interviewed in this study seemed to negotiate a complex balance
of learning engagement. In some instances they exemplified and even perpetuated new
capitalist values. Their learning focused on developing specialist knowledge of immedi-
ate relevance to their present jobs, and in this pursuit they used wide-ranging resources
and learning activities. Their allegiance to the ‘profession’ of management accounting
seemed limited to pride in the brand, with many indicating only tenuous or non-existing
links with their original CMA professional knowledge base and community. Loyalty – to
a particular organization, career identity or repertoire of skills – was often limited to the
current job. In general they characterized themselves as self-reliant and self-determining
learners, mobilizing a range of networks to generate specific knowledge required to
solve immediate problems.
Therefore, at a simple level, the study shows just how problematic are the assump-
tions pervasive in existing research and policy that older workers’ skill relevance and
participation in learning are declining. At least in the case of older management account-
ants, these professionals assumed full personal responsibility to learn what was neces-
sary to remain competitive, ‘value-added’, employable workers. Further, these older
professionals demonstrated a surprisingly well informed and strategic use of learning
approaches to develop the expertise they wanted to develop. In this sense they could be
characterized as enacting the continuous learning subjects required by work organiza-
tions in new capitalism. While many interviewees remarked on these intensifications and
their exhausting effects, few were critical of these conditions or openly resistant to them.
They appeared highly focused on the immediate, to the exclusion of larger systems and

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1016 Human Relations 65(8)

analyses. As one example, not a single interviewee alluded to the global financial turmoil
that was just beginning to be reported during these interviews in 2008. In learning terms,
critical educators might view this as problematic: workers who had learned very well
how to comply with and even reproduce oppressive work arrangements but not the
apparent capacity to question or challenge their underpinning structures.
Yet these older professionals seemed to successfully negotiate certain discourses of
new capitalism. They refused to become caught up in relentless information overload,
asserting their right to choose and control what they learned. They also were strenuously
resistant, if only vocally, to annual audits of their professional ‘learning’ required for
continuing licensure by the professional association, viewing this as inappropriate
infringement on their autonomy and lack of trust. Most refused to accumulate work-
related knowledge for its own sake, opting instead to ‘deepen’ and ‘focus’ rather than to
expand and innovate.
In new capitalist criteria, an apparent choice to stand still rather than push forward
presumably would be heretical, and its proponents subject to dire consequences affecting
employment. Yet at least for the majority of these interviewees, personal occupational
security was not a concern. Indeed, they appeared confidently articulate about prioritiz-
ing strategic learning to manage these pressures: learning to refuse excessive intensifica-
tion and external demands, learning to manoeuvre in and around changing structures
whilst maintaining focus, and learning to position themselves within work organizations
as patient and judicious amidst discourses of impatience and dynamism. Most interview-
ees expressed contentment with their own choices, if also some tension and a recognition
of sometimes standing against the tide.
An obvious question then might be, ‘How successful were these strategies?’. But
for these older professionals, the operative criteria for judging ‘success’ in learning
appeared to have less to do with advancement and income than with exercising some
control in negotiating their terms of engagement. Most also very much desired, and felt
that they obtained, respect in their occupational circles. Explicit age discrimination
rarely appeared as an employment issue in their practice as ‘older’ workers, and not at
all as a learning access issue. It may be, as some suggested, that their managerial and
financial competence is particularly valued by organizations regardless of age. Yet
some evidently also felt the pressures of youthful discourses, which they did not
acknowledge as a form of ageism. This dynamic may echo Weller’s (2007) finding that
older workers feel compelled to perform a self that projects vitality and attractiveness,
although the accountants’ youthful presentations were not clearly linked to employa-
bility. However, many did compare themselves with their younger colleagues, high-
lighting their distance and their own distinct knowledge contribution. We can see how
ageism functions as an ambivalent energy throughout these scenarios. This ambiva-
lence may emanate from what Ainsworth (2006) characterizes as contradictory organi-
zational rhetoric about older workers’ experience. But perhaps, more broadly, what we
are seeing is a simultaneous differentiation among the worth accorded to particular
knowledge, learning approaches and ways of being circulating in the workplace.
Certain dominant ‘new capitalist’ values may be embedded in work arrangements and
performance expectations, but different groups – including those differentiated by age
and generation – also enact diverse and sometimes contradictory knowledge values

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Fenwick 1017

that mutually influence each other’s positioning and interactions with others. This state
of affairs is closer to Doogan’s (2009: 10) characterization of new capitalism discourse
as a confluence of multiple narratives and exaggeration rather than as a set of identifi-
able forces producing unmitigated transformation. There are contradictions and ambiv-
alences that emerge simultaneously, offering spaces for unexpected manoeuvres that
may be successful strategies for survival:

The most important learning is figuring out ways to use the system. (Woman, operational
controller, oil producer corporation, 52)

Naturally, the importance of difference among these older professionals must be

underlined when considering these broader themes. Their career paths moved among a
wide diversity not only of industrial sectors and specialisms, but also size and form of
organization. These included large multi-national corporations and public sector bureau-
cracies, small and medium enterprises, project teams, professional accounting firms, and
even higher education institutions – all of which no doubt influenced very different
forms of practice and professional knowledge. Further, the older professional interview-
ees encompassed different stages (mid to late) and orientations to career, and different
generations: these individuals entered working life between about 1963 and 1978, and
may indeed reflect the influence of different work-life values, structures and knowledge
forms circulating at these different periods.
Overall, this study yields more than a simple counter-narrative to the perceived prob-
lem that older professionals are not participating sufficiently in learning to adapt to the
new demands of innovation and technology in a global knowledge economy. First it
shows that, instead of more policies, courses and audits to increase older professionals’
learning, we need to appreciate more their actual orientations and approaches to learning
in different professional occupations and contemporary changing work arrangements.
How do they conceptualize and value work knowledge in these contexts, and how do
they position themselves as knowers with respect to colleagues and work activities?
Second, perhaps more fundamentally, the study suggests the multi-faceted and contra-
dictory ways in which older professionals engage with discourses and values associated
with new capitalism. In their orientations to learning they enact, partially enact and even
perpetuate, some energies, while they resist or ignore others. Mainly they focus on learn-
ing as strategy, as approaches to getting what they need and want out of the system, and
protecting for themselves what is important. In this respect, perhaps they are the ultimate
subjects of new capitalism as its long inhabitants: smart and savvy enough as what Casey
(2011) calls ‘active worker-subjects’ to resist subjugation. However, these subjects fash-
ion resistance in practical terms, oriented to personal survival. Their ‘active’ learning has
little to do with the lofty learning ideals for worker-subjects that Casey and other critical
writers envision towards transforming workplaces. But they have been successful in gen-
erating some personal spaces for decent work conditions.

Acknowledgements
Two research assistants were invaluable in assisting with the data collection and analysis: Tara
Gibb of the University of British Columbia, Canada, and Terri-Lynn Thompson of Athabasca

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1018 Human Relations 65(8)

University, Canada. The Authors would like to thank the reviewers whose detailed comments on
an earlier draft have strengthened this article.

Funding
This work was supported by funding from the Canadian Council on Learning CCL/CCA, Canada,
2007–2009: Informal Learning and the Older Professional Worker: Learning Practices, Challenges
and Supports.

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Tara Fenwick is Professor of Education at the University of Stirling in the UK. Her current research
and teaching focus on the complexities of professionals’ changing work, knowledge strategies and
responsibilities, working in particular with various sociomaterial theories. She founded and is now
Director of ProPEL, an international network for research in Professional Practice, Education and
Learning at the University of Stirling (www.propel.stir.ac.uk). She serves on seven journal

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1020 Human Relations 65(8)

editorial boards, including Management Learning, Adult Education Quarterly and Studies in the
Education of Adults. Her most recent books include: Actor-Network Theory in Education
(Routledge, 2010) with Richard Edwards; Knowledge Mobilization and Educational Research:
Politics, Languages and Responsibilities (Routledge, 2011) with Lesley Farrel; Emerging
Approaches in Educational Research: Tracing the Socio-Material (Routledge, forthcoming) with
Richard Edwards and Peter Sawchuk; and Educating the Global Workforce (Routledge, 2007)
with Lesley Farrell. [Email: [email protected]]

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