The 'knowledge economy' is now widely debated and economic geographers have made a significant contribution to understanding of the influences upon the production and dissemination of tacit knowledge within and between firms. However, the continued association of tacit knowledge with practices rooted at the local scale and suggestions of territorially sticky knowledges has proven controversial. Through examination of empirical material exploring the stretching of learning in advertising professional service firms, the paper argues that we need to recognise the use of two different epistemologies of organizational knowledge leverage-'knowledge transfer' in the form of best practice and 'the social production of new knowledge'-and their complementary yet differentiated roles in organizations and differing spatial reaches. This highlights the existence of multiple geographies of tacit knowledge and the need to be more subtle in our arguments about its geographies. In particular, the paper reveals that tacit knowledge can have global geographies when knowledge management practices focus on reproducing rather than transferring knowledge across space.

Are the challenges of globalization, technology and competition exercising a dramatic impact on professional practice whilst, in the process, compromising traditional notions of professionalism, autonomy and discretion? This paper engages with these debates and uses original, qualitative empirical data to highlight the vast areas of continuity that exist even the largest globalizing law firms. Whilst it is undoubted that growth in the size of firms and their globalization bring new challenges, these are resolved in ways that are sensitive to professional values and interests. In particular, a commitment to professional autonomy and discretion still characterises the way in which these firms operate and organize themselves. This situation is explained in terms of the development of an organizational model of professionalism, whereby the large organization is increasingly emerging as a primary locus of professionalization and whereby professional priorities and objectives are increasingly supported by organizational logics, systems and initiatives.

This article explores patterns of professionalization in a number of 'new' knowledge-based occupations: management consultancy, project management and executive headhunters. Against a general assumption in the literature that such occupations are unwilling and/ or incapable to professionalize, this article suggests how a professionalization project has indeed been in play within these occupational domains. Perhaps most interestingly, these occupations are developing a new pattern of 'corporate' professionalization which Current Sociology 59(4) 443-464 Downloaded from 444 Current Sociology Monograph 2 59 (4) departs in significant ways from established paths and which is more appropriate for the specific knowledge-bases, occupational characteristics and historical circumstances of these occupations. Using semi-structured interviews with key institutional protagonists, the analysis identifies some new features of corporate professionalization, which despite differences in occupational structure and history, are common to the three professions under review and which may be relevant to a broader range of knowledge-based occupations. These include: organizational membership, client engagement, competencebased closure and internationalization. The article then proceeds to compare and contrast these new professionalization strategies and tactics with the more traditional processes followed by the established professions. Corporate professionalization, it is then argued, may present the basis for a new pattern of collective mobility and for a new understanding of professionalism in the 21st century.

Globalization has significant implications for the professions, with the societies and the regulators around them changing and the realities of professional work in large organizations taking on increasingly transnational dimensions. However, while there is no lack of empirical studies of the globalization of individual professions and firms, the implications of processes of globalization, reregulation and governmental rescaling for neo-Weberian sociologies of the professions has not received the same attention. This article seeks to rectify this gap in knowledge by developing a transnational neo-Weberian sociology of the professions that takes account of the rescaling of the world that the professions inhabit and the important new research questions generated about the multi-scalar influences on the forms of regulation, power and legitimacy that underlie professional projects.

Sassen's identification of global cities as 'strategic places' is explored through world city network analysis. This involves searching out advanced producer service (APS) firms that constitute 'strategic networks', from whose activities strategic places can be defined. 25 out of 175 APS firms are found to be strategic and from their office networks, 45 cities out of 526 are designated as strategic places. A measure of 'strategic-ness' of cities is devised and individual findings from this are discussed by drawing on existing literature about how APS firms use specific cities. A key finding shows that New York and London have different levels of strategic-ness and this is related to the former's innovation prowess and the latter's role in global consumption of services. The strategic-ness of Johannesburg, Mexico City, Palo Alto, and leading Chinese and German cities are also discussed in terms of the balance between production and consumption of advanced producer services.