Professional responsibility in the borderlands: Facing irreconcilable accountability regimes in veterinary work

(Dutch) veterinarians have increasingly been confronted with conflicting accountability regimes, related to data-driven, networked accountability systems, to decrease the use of antibiotics in veterinary practices. Based on our longitudinal ethnography (2012–2020), we propose a conceptual model that illustrates how professionals intra-actively become positioned in different accountability regimes, yet which is continually diffracted by the recalling of their responsibilities to proximal and distant others. By taking an agential realist approach, we contribute to recent critical perspectives on accountability by showing how veterinary professionals become positioned as specific accountable subjects and yet how such positioning simultaneously produces the ‘borderlands’ – a space of indeterminacy in which the accounting practices of the professional are continuously weighed in light of incommensurable responsibilities. Based on our results, we show how conflicting accountability regimes are—as often argued—not to be ‘fixed’ through commensuration, nor are they dysfunctional. Rather, they create the very condition of indeterminacy, opening up the possibility for professional responsibility. We offer suggestions for how to further investigate this appreciation of the borderlands, for example, by focusing on how the account holder can draw from other responsibilities to counter a dominant accountability regime, and how governing authorities can become positioned as responsible for keeping professionals in the borderlands

Explaining career motivation among female doctors in the Netherlands: the effects of children, views on motherhood and work-home cultures

The gender imbalance in senior medical positions is often attributed to an alleged lack of motivation on the part of female doctors, especially those with young children. Some researchers argue that an unsupportive work-home culture in the medical workplace also plays a role. This study investigates whether having children (and the age of the youngest child) affects female doctors’ career motivation and whether this relationship is mediated by views on motherhood and the supportiveness of the work-home culture. Cross-sectional data collected on 1070 Dutch female doctors in 2008 indicates that neither having children nor the age of the youngest child significantly affects the career motivation of female doctors. However, views on motherhood and a supportive work-home culture do affect female doctors’ career motivation. Governmental and organizational policies aimed at maternal employment and improving the work-life balance are discussed in terms of their effectiveness in supporting highly educated working women.career motivation; female doctors; having children; motherhood ideology; work-home culture