| Summary: | Professionals are a group of workers who have attracted scholarly interest for many years. More recently, interest has stemmed from the fact that their professional identity and traditional ways of working have been challenged, by changes in the environment in which they work, including the internationalisation of markets and the introduction of new policies and legislation at a national level (Evetts, 2011; Muzio and Kirkpatrick, 2011; Waring and Bishop, 2011; Hinings, 2005; Powell, Brock and Hinings, 1999). The professional identity of workers such as lawyers, doctors, accountants, social workers and teachers is argued to be deeply embedded (Ackroyd, 1996; Bloor and Dawson, 1994; Freidson, 1970), with attitudes and values being more in line with those of the profession and its associations than the employing organisation (Raelin, 1985; Gouldner, 1957). Traditionally, professionals have enjoyed considerable discretion over how they carry out their work, and have focused on delivering their service to their individual clients, rather than concern themselves to any great extent with clients in a collective sense and the management of their organisations (Evetts, 2003; Freidson, 1989; Raelin, 1985). This was enabled by management practices based on collegial decision making and informal processes, (Cooper et al, 1996; Greenwood and Hinings, 1993; Ackroyd, Hughes and Soothill, 1989; Mintzberg, 1979). The 1980s, however, saw a departure from this type of management practice. New, managerialist cultures were introduced in the public sector by policymakers, with certain private sector style practices such as management by objectives, performance indicators and outcome measures (O’Reilly and Reed, 2010; Hunter, 2008) being prioritised. Similar managerial change also evolved within professional service firms in the private sector (Ackroyd and Muzio, 2007; Sokol, 2007; Brock,2006, Hinings, 2005).
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