Ideal worker norms and narrative contradictions in a Big4 consulting firm: an intersectional analysis of project-based work during the pandemic

This article investigates how ideal worker norms were sustained and reshaped in a Big4 consulting firm during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on 25 longitudinal narrative interviews–conducted across three waves between 2020 and 2021 with partners, directors, managers, and analysts–the study examines how organizational actors experienced the shift to remote and hybrid work arrangements. While the firm’s ‘official message’ emphasized flexibility, inclusion, and work-life balance, interviewees described intensified project deadlines, heightened digital visibility, and expectations of constant responsiveness. By distinguishing between manifest narratives articulated in corporate communications and latent narratives embedded in everyday work practices, the analysis reveals how pandemic-induced digitalization reconfigured instead of disrupted ideal worker assumptions. Career progression continued to reward ‘hyper-availability’, informal network access, and participation in high-profile projects, disproportionately disadvantaging women, younger professionals, and employees in lower hierarchical positions. Integrating Acker’s theory of inequality regimes with scholarship on project-based organizing and intersectionality, the article demonstrates how project temporalities and client-driven demands create ‘exceptional’ spaces in which equality commitments are symbolically affirmed nonetheless practically suspended. The study contributes empirically by providing rare qualitative longitudinal evidence from an elite consulting context and advances theoretical debates on how inequality regimes are discursively sustained through narrative contradictions.