This paper analyses the impact on the professions of changes in their institutional environment during the past two decades. A comparison is made between two professions -solicitors/advocates and pharmacistsin the contrasting institutional contexts of British and German society. It is suggested that, despite common pressures from the state and the market, there remains a signi cant degree of diversity in the way professions organize themselves in the two societies. A contrast is drawn between British modernizers and German traditionalists, but some convergence is also noted. In both Britain and Germany, professional authority and privilege can no longer be taken for granted but have to be earned by proven performance and enhanced accountability.
A tendency toward deskilling and deeper fragmentation of white-collar work emerged in the Federal Republic of Germany during the 1960s and early 1970s, fueling Marxist claims that skilled office and administrative workers faced increasing proletarianization. The authors' research on commercial and technical employees in large industrial enterprises suggests that deskilling tendencies were, in fact, a short-lived, exceptional phenomenon. Since the late 1970s, West German employers have increasingly adopted a skill-based modernization policy that shapes work in terms of high trust relations and responsible autonomy. This outcome is more than an employers' creation, however, for skilled administrative employees have used their occupational qualifications as a means of influencing the process of work redesign. In general, our findings point to nationally specific systems of vocational education as a factor that shapes emerging patterns of work redesign and work culture.
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