Abstract
This study responds to the call for research on how different and often conflicting discourses co-exist in professionals’ everyday work experiences. The paper explores how professionals respond to sales management in the context of two professional service firms (PSFs). Based on a qualitative study of employees’ experiences of sales, our findings suggest that the professionals respond to sales management by engaging in strategic compliance, i.e., adhering to rules and expectations to achieve goals of professional advancement (financial, status, autonomy), which, in turn, reinforces their membership of the profession. We identified three modes of strategic compliance: career-, integration-, and survival-mode. This conceptual framework contributes with a deepened understanding of the complex relationship between professional work and sales management. Specifically, our study suggests that while strategic compliance may help professionals navigate the tensions between professional- and sales-ideals, it is also associated with struggle and normalizes sales as a part of professional work.
Highlights
This study responds to the call for research on how different and often conflicting discourses co-exist in professionals’ everyday work experiences
Despite indications that the practice and discourse of sales play a significant part in contemporary work in professional service firms (PSFs)—and that, as firms, PSFs are more explicitly exposed to market mechanisms—there is a paucity of research on how professionals within PSFs experience and respond to sales management control
We draw on a qualitative study with empirical data from 28 professionals and pose the research question: How do professionals respond to sales management in the context of professional service firms? The professionals in our study are lawyers and accountants working at two different PSFs based in Sweden, where the initiation and use of sales management control are part of their everyday work
Summary
This study responds to the call for research on how different and often conflicting discourses co-exist in professionals’ everyday work experiences. One consequence of this is that sales and promotion enter the professionals’ work, forcing professionals in PSFs to navigate a highly commercialized context with sales management efforts, including explicit sales goals, participation in sales courses, and increased focus on client relationships (Empson, Muzio, Broschak, Hinings, 2015) This development is not limited to firms and the business context. This research is still limited and mainly conceptualizes reactions to commercialism in terms of resistance and does not focus on how the professionals experience sales management control and struggle to combine pressure to sell with ideals of professionalism, which is the focus of this paper Through this focus, we respond to calls for research on how different and often conflicting discourses co-exist in professionals’ everyday work experiences (Alvehus, 2018). We draw on a qualitative study with empirical data from 28 professionals and pose the research question: How do professionals respond to sales management in the context of professional service firms? The professionals in our study are lawyers and accountants working at two different PSFs based in Sweden, where the initiation and use of sales management control are part of their everyday work
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