Accounting professionals’ legitimacy maintenance of modern slavery inspired extreme work practices in an emerging economy

It is well-established in the human resource management literature that high intensity and excessive workload can cause undesirable physiological, psychological, behavioural, and social outcomes. However, there is a need to theorise the process by which extreme work has been legitimised and embedded among professionals. In this paper, we view extreme workers as those professionals who contribute to their works beyond acceptable contractual obligations, either voluntarily for personal rewards or involuntarily due to the menace of penalty, or both. We chose to investigate how accounting professionals in India legitimise extreme work in their workplaces using exploratory qualitative research methods and applied economies of worth theoretical framework. Our findings demonstrate that senior accounting professionals with the assistance of professional associations can play an important role in mobilising professional and organisational resources to tackle extreme work in their accounting firms and the industry.