Entrepreneurship, managerialism and professionalism in action: the case of the legal profession in England and Wales

Abstract

This chapter seeks to provide a historical background to contemporary studies of entrepreneurial professional service firms (PSFs) by looking back to the development of the nineteenth-and early-to mid-twentieth-century legal profession in England and Wales through a range of key concepts drawn from the sociology of work: professionalism, managerialism and entrepreneurship. The legal profession has been chosen as a case study insofar as it represents a long-established form of collegial professionalism (Johnson, 1972) against which other professional projects have often been benchmarked. Here traditional images, symbols and conceptions of professionalism are perhaps most pronounced, whilst at the same time many empirical studies (Abel, 1988, 2003; Brock et al., 1999; Empson, 2007; Faulconbridge & Muzio, 2008, 2009; Flood, 1995, 1996; Muzio & Ackroyd, 2005) alert us to the fundamental changes experienced by this profession.