Abstract
Abstract Growth in the internationalization of economic activity has favoured an increase in institutional control at a supranational level. A typical example of such institutions that wield this control is corporate professions such as Project Management (PM). Attempting to replicate the successful strategies of the collegial professions but embracing advantages presented by global markets, corporate professions is confronted by the dilemma of how to reconcile the demands of stakeholders at both national and global levels. This research investigates an international corporate profession, PM, and its development within Italy using a historical case study. Results shows an increase in the number of regulations faced by international corporate professions as they attempt to satisfy a number of different institutions (and their competing agendas) while attempting to colonize a national context. This we define as ‘professional regulatory entanglement’. It concludes that what was once a simple bargain involving two actors, the state and the profession, with a long established, commonly agreed and mutually beneficial agenda is now a much more complex system involving multiple actors and a number of competing agendas and this results in the homogenization of professional practice across the globe.
Highlights
The intensification of international competition, in the last 30 years, and the growing internationalization of economic activity has favoured the increase in forms and instances of economic control at supra-/inter-national level (Hodgson and Paton 2016; Breitmeier 2016; Gronau and Schmidtke 2016; Chimni 2004)
We argue the Italian ‘institutional thickness’ in the professional context is a necessary condition for the ‘professional regulatory entanglement’ to happen
We focused on the Italian context as it exhibits a substantial degree of Project Management (PM) activity and it exists within a continental model of professionalism (Micelotta and Washington 2013; Faulconbridge and Muzio 2016), that is historically dominated more directly by the state than equivalent AngloSaxon models
Summary
The intensification of international competition, in the last 30 years, and the growing internationalization of economic activity has favoured the increase in forms and instances of economic control at supra-/inter-national level (Hodgson and Paton 2016; Breitmeier 2016; Gronau and Schmidtke 2016; Chimni 2004). This phenomenon has stimulated the growth of industrial coordination across borders driving convergence of previously separate management systems and institutions.
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