The Logic of Professionalism

Abstract

This book discusses common management and work practices in professional service organizations. The book opens important discussions on what it means to work, manage, and be managed in such professional organizations, casting light on classic conflicts. The author takes everyday work as a starting point and adopts a critical view that focuses on challenges and struggles in both public and private settings. The book begins with an exploration of the practices that uphold the logic of professionalism. It analyses the way in which the logic of professionalism is maintained in professional service organizations. It then shifts to focus on professional service work, and the work of managing professional service work. It discusses the concepts around professions and professionalism, and the abstract theory of institutional logics. The book investigates the common assumption about professional service work: that it is, by its nature, ambiguous, and that this inherent ambiguity has profound consequences for how professional service work is organized and managed. It suggests another view — that ambiguity is an outcome of the way in which professional service work is organized, just as much as it is a cause of it. It also elaborates on division of labour. The book moves on to investigate some of the most contested terrain in all of management and organization studies: leadership, and it thereafter details how the logic of professionalism is maintained, and what it is that is maintained. The author offers new perspectives and key insights for the future of professionalism. Providing a comprehensive overview of the field, the book is an important guide for understanding how professionalism is maintained in today’s organizations, and will of interest to those engaged in management and leadership.