You have found out something: The hand that knows his business won't be toldTo work better or faster -those two things. Robert Frost, Collected PoemsNow you see it, now you don'tThere is little that more graphically indicates the normative character of much social science than its handling of misbehaviour. There is a great deal of evidence, particularly gathered from ethnographic research, indicating that misbehaviour at work is prevalent at all levels and amongst all types of employment (Fleming and Spicer, 2007). Research has revealed tendencies to misbehave -and especially for employees to innovate non-sanctioned ways of responding to work and of evading attempts to control what they do. Yet, at the same time, there are also tendencies amongst social scientists and others to overlook such behaviour or to minimize its importance.

It is often assumed in the literature on public management reforms that radical changes in values, work and organization have occurred or are under way. In this paper our aim is to raise questions about this account. Focusing on three services in the UK, each dominated by organized professions -health care, housing, and social services -signifi cant variations in the effectiveness of reforms are noted. The available research also suggests that these outcomes have been inversely proportional to the efforts expended on introducing new management practices. The most radical changes have been in housing, where, paradoxically, successive UK governments focused least attention. By contrast, in health and social services, management restructuring has been less effective, despite the greater resources devoted to it. This variation is attributed to professional values and institutions, against which reforms were directed, and the extent to which different groups became locked either into strategies of resistance or accommodation.Stephen Ackroyd is in the Lancaster University Management School, University of Lancaster . Ian Kirkpatrick in the Leeds University Business School . Richard M. Walker is in the

Though perspectives underpinning research may have differed sharply, industrial sociology at its best has been able to uncover the variety of workplace resistance and misbehaviour that lies beneath the surface of the formal and consensual. The paper argues that this legacy is in danger of being lost as labour is taken out of the process and replaced by management as the active and successful agency. While there are a number of practical and theoretical forces shaping this trend, the paper identifies the growing influence of Foucauldian perspectives. It goes on to develop a critique of the way in which such theory and research overstates the extent and effectiveness of new management practices, while marginalising the potential for resistance.

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Professions in the United Kingdom have been periodically marginalized and their growth suspended, but they have shown considerable capacity to adapt. The evolution of 'new model' professions at the end of the last century and the beginning of the present one, which occurred without governmental regulation or patronage, was associated with the development of an effective and independent form of occupational organization for professional groups. This organization combines control of the labour market with informal cooperation and control within employing organizations, and is identified as a form of occupational 'double closure'. It is characteristic for occupations organized in this sort of way to become encapsulated groups or quasi organizations within formal organizations. This argument is developed in the body of the paper through a consideration of the contemporary situation of professionals in manufacturing industry and the public services, where new model professions have established themselves firmly in the present century, and where there are some very similar informal structures. The influence of current social and economic change on these forms of professional organization is then discussed, and it is argued that although they are clearly embattled in some of the areas of their traditional strength, because of their developed organizational attributes, professional groups are likely to persist. Contemporary management of professional services is not without difficulty in these circumstances; and, in areas where professions are well-established, re-organization is taking place round encapsulated professional groups rather than by re-constructing them. Despite some superficial similarities, therefore, the management of services is different between traditional professional services and newer commercial ones. Moreover, if the account of professional self-organization developed here is a reliable guide, in the longer term we may expect it to extend to new services, despite current differences in their organization and forms of managerial control.