Blueberries are a rich source of polyphenols, widely studied for the prevention or attenuation of metabolic diseases. However, the health contribution and mechanisms of action of polyphenols depend ...on their type and structure. Here, we evaluated the effects of a wild blueberry polyphenolic extract (WBE) (Vaccinium angustifolium Aiton) on cardiometabolic parameters, gut microbiota composition and gut epithelium histology of high-fat high-sucrose (HFHS) diet-induced obese mice and determined which constitutive polyphenolic fractions (BPF) was responsible for the observed effects. To do so, the whole extract was separated in three fractions, F1) Anthocyanins and phenolic acids, F2) oligomeric proanthocyanidins (PACs), phenolic acids and flavonols (PACs degree of polymerization DP < 4), and F3) PACs polymers (PACs DP > 4) and supplied at their respective concentration in the whole extract. After 8 weeks, WBE reduced OGTT AUC by 18.3% compared to the HFHS treated rodents and the F3 fraction contributed the most to this effect. The anthocyanin rich F1 fraction did not reproduce this response. WBE and the BPF restored the colonic mucus layer. Particularly, the polymeric PACs-rich F3 fraction increased the mucin-secreting goblet cells number. WBE caused a significant 2-fold higher proportion of Adlercreutzia equolifaciens whereas oligomeric PACs-rich F2 fraction increased by 2.5-fold the proportion of Akkermansia muciniphila. This study reveals the key role of WBE PACs in modulating the gut microbiota and restoring colonic epithelial mucus layer, providing a suitable ecological niche for mucosa-associated symbiotic bacteria, which may be crucial in triggering health effects of blueberry polyphenols.
•Students are attracted to Big 4 for the opportunities, the fun, and the prestige.•The recruitment illusio of students often blinds them to other career choices.•Students develop strategies to play ...the game, which highlights their performance.•Being rejected by Big 4 fosters students’ reflexivity and weakens their illusio.•Several successful students expressed a sense of dissonance following the process.
Using Bourdieu’s sociology, this study investigates students’ experience of the public accounting recruitment process. It is based on interviews with Canadian undergraduates, observations made at recruitment events, and an examination of the recruitment information on the websites of student accounting clubs. The findings show that accounting students’ recruitment illusio—their belief in the seriousness of the recruitment game—is centered on the desire to obtain a Big Four position and that three main factors facilitate the construction of this illusio: the attraction of the career opportunities offered by the Big Four firms, the appeal of the fun and excitement of a Big Four career, and the desire for the social recognition that comes with such a career. This illusio often blinds students to other career choices. However, the findings also show that while students are playing the recruitment game, they evaluate their position in the recruiting field and act strategically to win a position of prestige. Points of disjuncture, such as being rejected by Big Four firms or having a pause from the recruitment game, can allow them to adopt a reflexive stance that weakens their recruitment illusio. The study contributes to the debate on the place of reflexivity in Bourdieu’s sociology, to the literature on the socialization of auditors, and to the literature on the commercialization of public accounting.
Researchers have examined the socialization of auditors at various stages of their professional development, but they have done little or no work on the continued effects of this socialization after ...auditors leave the firms. Put simply, they have not explored the ways that ex-auditors remember their past. Drawing on the literature in social memory studies and on 37 semi-structured interviews with ex-auditors who used to be employed at large Canadian accounting firms, we perform memory work to examine how ex-auditors transform their audit experience into cultural memory. The narratives of past audit experience elicited during the interviews reveal that ex-auditors develop a complex contemporary representation of this experience. When they solicited their communicative (individual) memories, our participants remembered multiple conflicts between their self-identity and the normative work environment during their time at the firms. However, when they reflected on the impact of their audit experience on their new careers, an alternative and much more collective version of this past emerged. Cultural memories with an elitist and class work dynamic that maintained and justified claims of professional and social superiority began to predominate. We argue that communicative and cultural memory are connected because it is communicative memory that allows cultural memory to take on social forms and exercise cultural domination. Our study makes three important contributions. First, it broadens the socio-temporal perspective of auditing research by highlighting the continued effects of the professional identity of auditors after they change careers. Second, it shows that representations of the past provide ex-auditors with a powerful means to promote their professional interests and structure power relationships within organizations. Third, it introduces the use of reflexive memory work as a rigorous methodological approach in accounting and organizational research.
ABSTRACT
Auditees can play an active role in influencing staff auditors' professional judgment and skepticism. Yet, although it constitutes one of the main threats to auditor independence, very ...little is known about the means and extent of auditees' power during the audit engagement. To address this knowledge gap, our study focuses on a specific category of auditees, namely, auditees who have worked as auditors in large accounting firms. We interviewed 36 of these auditees and triangulated our findings with 11 interviews conducted with auditors. At the theoretical level, we conceptualize auditees' influence over auditors as intentional and active through the notion of “social power.” Overall, our analysis shows that the efficacy of auditees' power during the engagement materializes through the mobilization of two main power resources developed during their time at the firms: (i) expert knowledge of auditing techniques and (ii) social capital. On the one hand, relying on their cognitive authority, auditees' employ three different power strategies to constrain staff auditors' operational independence: stage‐setting, teaching, and questioning. On the other hand, auditees' social capital can support the use of two additional strategies: attracting and monitoring. Our triangulation analysis confirms our findings and suggests that auditors may be aware of the threats to independence that auditee expertise and social capital pose. By focusing on auditees' agentic capabilities—that is, individuals' capabilities to consciously exert influence over the course of events—we reinterpret the pressures exerted by clients on auditors as the product of strategic actions and discuss substantive consequences for independence risk.
RÉSUMÉ
Lorsque le client est un ex‐auditeur : l'expertise et le capital social des audités comme menaces à l'indépendance opérationnelle des auditeurs juniors et seniors
Les audités peuvent intervenir activement dans les missions d'audit en exerçant une influence sur le jugement professionnel et l'esprit critique des auditeurs juniors et seniors (appelés « staff auditors »). Or, bien que cette influence soit l'une des principales menaces à l'indépendance de l'auditeur, on connaît encore très mal les moyens utilisés par les audités pour exercer leur pouvoir durant la mission d'audit et la portée de ce pouvoir. Pour combler cette lacune, les auteurs se penchent sur une catégorie particulière d'audités, soit ceux qui ont exercé les fonctions d'auditeurs dans de grands cabinets comptables. Ils s'entretiennent avec 36 de ces audités et procèdent à la triangulation de leurs constats avec les observations tirées de 11 entrevues réalisées auprès d'auditeurs. Sur le plan théorique, ils conceptualisent l'influence des audités sur les auditeurs comme étant intentionnelle et active à l'aide de la notion de « pouvoir social » Globalement, leur analyse montre que l'efficacité du pouvoir des audités durant la mission se concrétise grâce à la mobilisation de deux principales sources de pouvoir cultivées dans l'exercice de leurs fonctions en cabinet : i) l'expertise des techniques d'audit et ii) le capital social. D'une part, en s'appuyant sur leur autorité cognitive, les audités ont recours à trois différentes stratégies d'exercice de leur pouvoir pour limiter l'indépendance opérationnelle des auditeurs juniors et seniors : la mise en scène, l'enseignement et le questionnement. D'autre part, le capital social des audités peut faciliter l'usage de deux stratégies supplémentaires : l'attraction et la surveillance. L'analyse de triangulation confirme les observations des auteurs et indique que les auditeurs peuvent être conscients des menaces à leur indépendance posées par l'expertise et le capital social des audités. En se concentrant sur les capacités d'agent des audités—c'est‐à‐dire leurs capacités à exercer consciemment une influence sur le cours des événements—les auteurs réinterprètent les pressions exercées par les clients sur les auditeurs comme étant le produit d'actions stratégiques et traitent des répercussions importantes de ces actions sur le risque lié à l'indépendance.
The Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) concept has been proposed to explain the influence of environmental conditions during critical developmental stages on the risk of diseases in ...adulthood. The aim of this study was to compare the impact of the prenatal vs. postnatal environment on the gut microbiota in dams during the preconception, gestation and lactation periods and their consequences on metabolic outcomes in offspring. Here we used the cross-fostering technique, e.g. the exchange of pups following birth to a foster dam, to decipher the metabolic effects of the intrauterine versus postnatal environmental exposures to a polyphenol-rich cranberry extract (CE). CE administration to high-fat high-sucrose (HFHS)-fed dams improved glucose homeostasis and reduced liver steatosis in association with a shift in the maternal gut microbiota composition. Unexpectedly, we observed that the postnatal environment contributed to metabolic outcomes in female offspring, as revealed by adverse effects on adiposity and glucose metabolism, while no effect was observed in male offspring. In addition to the strong sexual dimorphism, we found a significant influence of the nursing mother on the community structure of the gut microbiota based on α-diversity and β-diversity indices in offspring. Gut microbiota transplantation (GMT) experiments partly reproduced the observed phenotype in female offspring. Our data support the concept that the postnatal environment represents a critical window to influence future sex-dependent metabolic outcomes in offspring that are causally but partly linked with gut microbiome alterations.
More than a year has passed since the first reported case of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) infection in the city of Wuhan in China’s Hubei Province. Until now, few ...antiviral medications (e.g., remdesivir) or drugs that target inflammatory complications associated with SARS-CoV2 infection have been considered safe by public health authorities. By the end of November 2020, this crisis had led to >1 million deaths and revealed the high susceptibility of people with pre-existing comorbidities (e.g., obesity, diabetes, coronary heart disease, hypertension) to suffer from a severe form of the disease. Elderly people have also been found to be highly susceptible to SARS-CoV2 infection and morbidity. Gastrointestinal manifestations and gut microbial alterations observed in SARS-CoV2–infected hospitalized patients have raised awareness of the potential role of intestinal mechanisms in increasing the severity of the disease. It is therefore critically important to find alternative or complementary approaches, not only to prevent or treat the disease, but also to reduce its growing societal and economic burden. In this review, we explore potential nutritional strategies that implicate the use of polyphenols, probiotics, vitamin D, and ω-3 fatty acids with a focus on the gut microbiome, and that could lead to concrete recommendations that are easily applicable to both vulnerable people with pre-existing metabolic comorbidities and the elderly, but also to the general population.
This review explores potential nutritional strategies that involve the use of known modulators of the gut microbiome, namely polyphenols, probiotics, vitamin D, or ω-3 PUFAs, to mitigate COVID-19 disease outcomes.
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