Professionalizing corporate professions: Professionalization as identity project

Abstract

Professional bodies have traditionally played a core role in professionalization, setting the ideals for professional identity, knowledge, and practice. However, the emergence of corporate professions has problematized the role of the professional body in contemporary professionalization. This article examines the role of the professional body and its ability to resonate with practitioners' professional identity construction through empirical analysis of public relations. The article introduces the concept of professionalization as identity project as another means by which to understand attempts at social closure in emergent corporate professions. For professionalization as identity project to be fully realized, the research suggests the blending of traditional discourses of professionalism with emergent discourses of entrepreneurialism is required. Consequently, the study highlights that corporate professionalization as identity project reflects the contemporary tensions and contradictions between the lived reality and orthodox ideology of 'being a professional'.

Professional Fluidity: Reconceptualising the Professional Status of Self-Employed Neo-professionals

“…While this weakness is foremost in corporate professionalism (Collins & Butler, 2019;Muzio et al, 2011b), our findings develop those from elsewhere that individuals are sceptical of membership and, indeed, it is no longer required (Reed, 2018;Reed & Thomas, 2019). As such, and at a wider level, this paper adds to the evidence of the waning control of professional institutions and professions (Butler et al, 2012;Reed, 2018;Reed & Thomas, 2019). There is a growing appreciation in the professions literature that new contexts and demands are changing the professional landscape further (Muzio & Kirkpatrick, 2011;Smets et al, 2017).…”

“…Traditional approaches proclaim unique characteristics (Brès et al, 2019): a position of public esteem and trust, abstract specialist knowledge mastered through study and socialisation, authority over clients, high degrees of autonomy, and altruistic tendencies based on explicit ethical codes (Leicht & Fennell, 2001). These characteristics establish legitimacy and credibility and provide a marker of quality to help users choose (Groß & Kieser, 2006;Kitay & Wright, 2007;Noordegraaf, 2007;Reed, 2018). Various attempts have been made to account for professionalism.…”

“…Underpinning this is the power of large organisations that have become a 'key interlocutor and reference point' (Muzio et al, 2011a, p. 448). Corporate professionalism challenges professional bodies given the co-production of legitimacy at the expense of corporate influence (Reed, 2018). Indeed, many individuals, alongside PSFs, are sceptical of membership (Muzio et al, 2011a;Reed, 2018;Reed & Thomas, 2019).…”

“…We now focus on consulting which is seen as a prominent corporate profession (Reed, 2018). Yet here professionalism is especially important as it confers credibility where there is no knowledge-base or central locus of control.…”

Exploring the use of virtues to facilitate identity construction among management students

“…Some even suggest that a divide between universities’ theoretical emphases and the demands of the “real world” have exacerbated unethical behaviors among professional managers ( Currie et al., 2010 ; Hühn, 2014 ; Painter-Morland, Sabet, Molthan-Hill, Goworek, & de Leeuw, 2016 , etc.). Of additional concern, the ever-increasing rate of change and heterogeneity among the skills and knowledge required of the management profession only seem to be accelerating this divide ( Barley, Bechky, & Milliken, 2017 ; Reed, 2018 ) . Surely, there must be something beyond basic knowledge and skills that educators can disseminate to channel and constrain prosocial professional behaviors given these overarching challenges.…”