This paper examines how chief financial officer (CFO) role-identities evolve in contexts of increasing financialisation, how they are sequentially reconfigured over time, and how prior identities continue to shape the way new role-identities are enacted. The article thus develops a dynamic perspective on how CFOs experience and navigate role-identity transitions throughout their careers.
The study is based on 50 career narrative interviews with CFOs, respondents' résumés, observations and documents from the French national professional association of CFOs. The analysis combined constant comparison and narrative reconstruction to identify recurring role-identities and trace their evolution across career trajectories.
The analysis identifies six CFO role-identities and shows how they developed successively during the rise and intensification of financialisation. Prior identities often persist, shaping how subsequent roles are experienced. As a result, financialisation appears as an ambiguity-generating process whose effects may shift over time for the same individual and be experienced as opportunity or threat at different moments.
The paper offers a processual account of how CFO role-identities have evolved during financialisation. The study makes three main contributions: it advances CFO research by developing a trajectory-based understanding of role-identity evolution; it shows how financialisation generates differentiated identity outcomes across CFO careers, depending on the lingering influence of prior identities; and it enriches financialisation research by illuminating its micro-foundations through the lived experience of professionals and their career trajectories.
