Money, Motivation and Morality: A Discursive Psychology analysis of how executives answer the question "Does money motivate you?"

Our analysis focuses on identifying the discursive devices (Mueller & Whittle, 2011) used by the executives to handle the moral accountability associated with the question. We discuss the role of the discursive devices we have identified in managing moral accountability in the context of the increasing public scrutiny of executive pay and the widening gap of income inequality (High Pay Commission, 2011; Rowlingson & Connor, 2011; Clarke, Jarvis & Gholamshahi, 2019), scrutiny which has intensified in the wake of the global financial crisis and the period of austerity that followed (Thomas, 2016; Kelsey et al., 2018). The findings are also contextualised as an example of the quest for legitimacy in the context of an occupational role that in recent years has experienced a rise in stigma and negative social evaluations (Phillips & Hardy, 1997; Vaara & Tienari, 2002; Erkama & Vaara, 2010; Stanley, MacKensie Davey & Symon, 2014).