Restructuring professional organizations
The study of professionals in organizations and the organization of professionals has a long and distinguished history (Hinings, 2004). Initially the emphasis was on the potential for conflict for professionals working in bureaucratic organizations, reflecting the interest in the 1960s in the development of bureaucracy (Hall, 1968). This was followed by an emphasis on the jurisdictions and power of professions and their impact on organizational and societal labour markets (Freidson, 1986). In the 1980s and 90s, a further stream emerged (which had its origins in the 1960s and 1970s (Scott, 1965)) that emphasized the changing nature of professionals, acknowledging a variety of professional and organizational locations (Greenwood et al., 1990). Abbott (1988) had developed the idea of continuous competition and jurisdictional disputes between professional groups at the level of the professional system. Thus, professions and organizations, professionals in organizations, and professional organizations have been an ongoing set of issues for both organization and management theory and the sociology of organizations and professions for more than 50 years.
The last 25 years or so have seen a revival of interest in the professional organization, per se. In particular there has been a concentration on organizations that are primarily owned, staffed, and run by professionals, the professional service firm (PSF). There has been an argument that this is a distinctive form of organizational design (Brock et al., 1999; Greenwood & Empson, 2003; Empson et al., 2015). This chapter is both a review of the models and an explanation of the distinctive form of design characteristics of professional firms, centring on the professional partnership. It also addresses the ways in which these are changing, and looks at new ideas for the analysis of restructuring, including the impact of new forms on the status and work of professionals. It aims to synthesize the common threads running through the literature on restructuring.
Models of the professional firm that will be discussed include work on the differences between professional and bureaucratic/corporate forms of organization and the extent to which they are both present in PSFs; the notion of the archetype form of professional firm and how this is nested within neo-institutional theories of organization form and change. An important aspect of this is differences between professions, something that has been addressed quite recently (Malhotra & Morris, 2009; von Nordenflycht, 2010). There is a developing literature on both professional and national differences. In many respects, the systematic examination of difference is a recent development and requires a more thorough incorporation into work on PSF restructuring.
These issues lead to the central question of the restructuring of professional organizations. How can the observable changes in the organizational design of many professional firms be explained? Both institutional theory and contingency theory can provide answers to this question and, in particular, the ways in which institutional and contingent aspects of restructuring interact. In terms of institutional theory, this means examining the ideas of archetypes and archetype change which have been central to discussions of the restructuring of professional organizations. The archetype approach has to be balanced with the impact of historical contingent factors such as increasing size and specialization, and the increasing use of information technology. Also considered are the processes by which change in professional firms occurs, including the impact of broader economic factors and labour-market dynamics on changes in professional work.
There are a further set of issues that are important in answering the question of why change is occurring. The globalization of professional service firms is happening; there are changes in the nature of ownership as jurisdictions allow these firms to move away from the professional partnership. The chapter considers how these issues can be theorized within the context of professional organization restructuring from both an institutional and contingency perspective. Also to be noted is how, as professional firms grow and diversify, they are portfolios of expertise-based practices that may require differing designs.
As well as providing a summary of what we know about the restructuring of professional organizations, the chapter ends by identifying the gaps that exist in our knowledge and proposes an agenda for further research on restructuring.
Professional organizational design and restructuring: a review of the models
The origins of a concern with the supposed uniqueness of professional organizations come from a concern with the nature of a profession. There were early attempts to define the structural and value characteristics of a profession. Thus, structural aspects such as a certification system, a professional association and a code of ethics were emphasized, together with the idea of a professional culture that was built on vocation, self-regulation and autonomy, peer reference and a public service ethos. As Brock et al. (1999, p. 4) put it, ‘the common thread is a set of professional values, beliefs and aspirations woven into the very fabric of professional firms and organizations’.
Early work by Scott (1965) suggested two models of professional structuring. One, the autonomous professional organization, was what has essentially come to be called the professional organization or the professional service firm as it is where professionals design and manage the organization. Examples are law firms, medical clinics and architectural practices. Authority rests with professionals and autonomy and collegiality are emphasized. Administrative staff are subordinate to professionals. The heteronomous professional organization is one where professionals perform the core service but are subordinate to a managerial system. Examples are universities, health systems and social work. The extent of professional autonomy is less in these organizations.
This model was taken further and systematized by Mintzberg (1979) with his idea of the professional bureaucracy. Professionals are at the operating core of the organization but within a wider bureaucratic framework. In this model, while professionals strive for autonomy and collegial control in their work, they are subject to authority systems and control instituted by either non-professionals or other professionals. Of course, Mintzberg is dealing with an ideal type: in reality, there are variations between professions. In healthcare, physicians retain high degrees of autonomy over their work and much authority. In engineering, engineers are often under the control of non-professional managers.
For three decades through the 1960s, 70s and 80s, the primary approach to understanding professional organizations was by contrasting it with bureaucratic organizations, drawing on the work of Scott (1965). This concern arose from theorizing bureaucracy as the dominant form of organization which posed a threat to professional ways of organizing. As a result, much work centred on the response of professionals to working in bureaucratic settings. Such was the centrality of theories of bureaucracy that settings where professionals worked in independent practice were ignored; there was no model for understanding such organizations. As Hinings (2004, p. 406) put it, ‘the neglect of professional service firms is particularly striking in the light of the fact that the independent professional organizational setting was considered to be very important as the preferred, archetypal work environment for an autonomous professional practitioner’.
Beginning in the late 1980s and accelerating in the 90s (Greenwood et al., 1990; Brock et al., 1999), there was a rediscovery of the professionally based, private practice organization, the professional service firm or the archetype professional organization. There has been a transformation of the professional–bureaucratic distinction into professionalism and managerialism. A considerable stream of work has been generated that encompasses accounting, law, management consulting, engineering consulting and architecture, and much of this work has derived from the ideas of Greenwood et al. (1990) and Cooper et al. (1996).
Greenwood et al. (1990) started from the neglect of autonomous professional organizations by organization theorists. They argued that these organizations, exemplified by the professional service firm, had distinctive characteristics, which they labelled the P2 archetype. This framing is within institutional theory and as such connects meaning, structures and systems. Archetypes are located in organizational fields (Greenwood et al., 2002; Pinnington & Morris, 2003), in this case, that of professional services. The concept of archetypes captures the idea of the relationship between institutional logics and organizations. ‘An archetype is thus a set of structures and systems that consistently embodies a single interpretive scheme’ (Greenwood & Hinings, 1993, p. 1055). Archetypes are comprised of structures, systems, practices and activities bound together by an institutional logic. This concept adds the very important dimension of interpretive schemes or institutional logics (Greenwood & Hinings, 1993); in doing that it also emphasizes the important dimension of professional logics and the professional field.
Indeed, historical formulations have emphasized the professional partnership archetype (Abbott, 1988; Greenwood et al., 1990; Greenwood & Empson, 2003), highlighting the differences from corporations in organizational structure, systems, power and politics because of the logic of professionalism (Pinnington & Morris, 2003). Logics have both symbolic and material elements; the symbolic aspects refer to meaning and beliefs, the material to structures and practices, and the two are intertwined and constitutive of one another. Indeed, Thornton et al. (2012) delineate two separate institutional orders at the level of society (amongst the six in total), the profession and the corporation with their own specific logics, legitimacy, norms, control systems, etc. In the context of PSFs, Cooper et al. (1996) identify the symbolic aspect of the professional logic as encompassing beliefs in peer control (collegiality), representative democracy, authority resting with the professional, and, consequentially, minimum hierarchy. Materially, this means that there is low differentiation, low integration, few formal rules and procedures and few levels (Malhotra et al., 2006). This P2 archetype is located in an institutional field which legitimates this particular way of organizing through the regulatory bodies responsible for professions (Greenwood et al., 2002).
However, a major development in the study of professional organizations has been the idea that an alternative archetype for PSFs has become important, what Cooper et al. (1996) called the managed professional business (MPB). It represents the rise of a managerial/corporate logic in the professional sphere (Malhotra et al., 2006). This logic emphasizes effectiveness, efficiency, productivity, the separation of professional and managerial roles, and growth. Materially, there are formal managerial structures and systems, hierarchies, explicit targets and the devolution of decision-making to executive teams which may include non-professionals. Thus, the logic of professionalism is de-emphasized. Greenwood et al. (2002) and Greenwood and Suddaby (2006) show how this alternative archetype became legitimated within the accounting institutional field. The MPB is akin to Scott’s (1965) heteronomous professional organization or Mintzberg’s (1979) professional bureaucracy.
So, these two models, the P2 and the MPB, represent the tension between professional autonomy and bureaucratic control. However, more recent work has suggested that the tension is overdrawn; that there is ‘a creative adaptation of leadership roles and identities in the newly globalized firm in which traditional professional values and technical expertise (are) integrated with managerial and business skills’ (Greenwood et al., 2006, p. 10). Studies carried out by Fenton and Pettigrew (2006) and Empson and Chapman (2006) both show adaptation in PSFs. Indeed, in terms of some of the contemporary themes of institutional theory, this suggests that logics do not necessarily compete but may be complementary, separated or combined in some way, producing a hybrid organization (Thornton et al., 2012; Battilana & Lee, 2014).
Much of this literature has begged the question of what constitutes a professional organization in order not to get bogged down in the kinds of debates that dogged the discussion of professions for so many years (Abbott, 1988). But a definition is needed. Empson et al. (2015) suggest that there are four defining characteristics. These characteristics allow for heterogeneity among PSFs and for the fact that there are hybrid professional organizations.
1.The primary activity is the application of specialist knowledge to clients’ problems through the creation of customized solutions.
2.The key assets of PSFs are the specialist knowledge of the professional members, together with their in-depth knowledge of clients.
3.Governance is exercised through extensive individual autonomy as the core producers own or control key assets. As a result, managerial authority is contingent.
4.There is a special identity where the core producers recognize each other as professionals and are recognized as such by clients and competitors.
(Empson et al., 2015)
These characteristics differ from those of Mintzberg’s (1979) definition of a professional bureaucracy because of his concern with structuring and Empson et al.’s (2015) with a more comprehensive notion of organizational governance and design. Mintzberg emphasized classic bureaucratic dimensions rather than assets, identity and governance.
Pressures and processes of restructuring
The basic theme, then, of the past 25 years of study of professional organizations is that of the encroachment of corporatism or managerialism on professionalism, seen as two logics competing for dominance (Malhotra et al., 2006). And this is a more modern form of the debate that goes back to the 1950s and 70s about the relationship between professional values and practices and bureaucratic forms of organization. Historically, this has been formulated as an ‘internal’ issue, arising from the evolution and dominance of large-scale, bureaucratic organizations. But a number of ‘external’ reasons for the pressures to restructure from professional to corporate organizational models have been articulated.
Greenwood and Hinings (1996), in examining radical, archetype change, suggested that there are two generic pressures for change, market and institutional, each of which covers a number of elements. There is a sense in which market pressures are derived from a contingency theory approach while institutional pressures are from institutional theory.
Pressures to restructure: markets
Greenwood et al. (2002) outlined four aspects of market context: overall growth in business services; changes in the number and demands of clients; degree of competition; and globalization. These elements can be found also in the work of Greenwood and Empson (2003), Malhotra et al. (2006), Hinings (2004) and Empson et al. (2015).
There has been considerable growth in the demand for professional services in accounting, law, management consulting, engineering consulting, etc. This is a reflection of the modern economy moving from a manufacturing to a service base. As an adjunct to a concern with professional organizations, per se, there has been an increasing interest in the idea of the knowledge organization because of the centrality of knowledge to the modern, post-industrial economy. Sharma (1997, p. 758), in examining knowledge, states ‘without PSFs, business as we know it, would come to a grinding halt’. In particular, there has been a shift in the demand for more complex advisory and consulting services.
The increasing demand for professional services also reflects changes in the number and demands of clients. Because clients are themselves increasingly knowledge-based and have a greater understanding of the services offered by PSFs, more is demanded by those clients (Malhotra et al., 2006). There are two aspects to this: one is the idea of ‘one-stop shopping’ for professional services, with the expectation that the professional organization will provide a wide array of services (Cooper et al., 2007). This has led to a large number of mergers and acquisitions with PSFs cutting across jurisdictional lines, accounting firms acquiring law firms, for example. The second is the client distinguishing between standardized, commodified services such as audit and services tailored to their specific needs (Malhotra et al., 2006). This produces price pressures on commodified services.
Increased demand for professional services has led to new entrants and heightened degrees of competition. A prime example is the move of IBM from a producer of computer hardware to a global business advisory firm. Indeed, IBM Global Services is the largest IT consulting firm (Greenwood et al., 2006).
Finally, there is the issue of globalization which is related, at least in part, to client changes. Rose and Hinings (1999, p. 43) argue that ‘Global Business Advisory Firms have become global in order to maintain their relationships with clients who themselves have been progressing along the path from multinational to international, to transnational enterprise…’. Morgan and Quack (2006) point to a process of legal globalization. Sako (2009) also examines how decisions are made about which services to retain within the firm and which to outsource or offshore in a global context. She has noted the influence of professional expertise and identity on organizational design and industry structure in law firms on the decision about which service to supply. Greenwood et al. (2006) point out that the very largest PSFs (e.g. PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst and Young) are some of the world’s most geographically complex with offices in nearly 150 countries and with the scale to match.
What are the consequences of these market changes for the restructuring of professional organizations? Here we draw on the insights of contingency theory. One ‘simple’ result of growth in services and globalization is an increase in the scale of PSFs in both sheer numbers and in services offered. And we know that increased scale is strongly related to more bureaucratic control (Donaldson, 2001). But underlying this ‘simple’ relationship is a more complex reality. In response to the demand for more services delivered in a global context, PSFs become more differentiated, which raises issues of integration (Rose & Hinings, 1999). Accounting, law, engineering, and management consulting firms provide a wider range of services, in more offices and more countries. Providing that wider range of services also means employing a wider range of professionals. So, there is more differentiation along functional and geographic lines.
In order to deliver a one-stop service there is a greater need for integration; there is a demand, internally, for the development of coordination mechanisms across the firm. Integration is required at a level that goes beyond previous experience (Greenwood et al., 2010; Boussebaa & Morgan, 2015). New integrative roles and activities are required. In particular, there is the appearance of stronger international headquarters, business unit structures and client management teams. These organizational developments are akin to what Nohria and Ghoshal (1997) call a differentiated network structure which has a high level of complexity. What has been happening in contemporary professional organizations is the current working out of the long-standing professional–bureaucratic tensions. This contemporary outworking is emphasizing the creative integration of professional values and technical skills with managerial and business skills in the globalized PSF (Greenwood et al., 2006).
Pressures to restructure: institutional
The second pressure for radical change in PSFs is that of institutional change (Greenwood & Hinings, 1996). Professions are highly institutionalized, being subject to forms of external regulation by the state and having their own internal controls through educational and certification processes controlled by professional associations (Abbott, 1988). But this institutional, regulatory context has been changing, some suggest quite radically. Leicht and Lyman (2006) argue that the emergence of neo-liberal ideologies challenges historical professional values; in other words, there is a clash of institutional logics. Indeed, the deregulation of professional markets and changes in government policy towards professional has been emphasized as part of the general literature on change in PSFs (Greenwood et al. 2006; Empson et al., 2015). Deregulation is based on a logic that favours consumers over producers; the centrality of markets; and competition as producing efficiencies (Leicht & Lyman, 2006). Indeed, Leicht and Lyman (2006, p. 40) say, ‘market logics have become institutionalized among significant actors and stakeholders in the provision of business services’.
The impact of deregulation and the logic of corporatism works both directly and indirectly on professional organization restructuring. Directly, it opens up the possibility to provide a wider range of services; the organization can become more functionally complex. Professional service firms have increased their range of services as they are allowed to move outside their particular jurisdiction. So, accounting firms and law firms merge; information technology firms move into management consulting, and so on (Quack & Schuessler, 2015). As a result, they become more differentiated. Indirectly, deregulation reinforces the trends in markets by opening up competition and, thus, has the same organizational effects as those outlined previously.
Because of deregulation, ownership of professional organizations has changed, with outside ownership and new, innovative business structures being introduced (Empson & Chapman, 2006; Greenwood & Empson, 2003). Accounting firms are providing legal services and there is a resurgent debate about multidisciplinary practices (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006). There is a renewed focus on shifting from service to process and business model innovation, producing entirely new service delivery models.
An important part of Greenwood and Hinings’ (1996) theorizing is that the impact of market and institutional pressures is not uniform across organizations. Restructuring may, or may not, take place. Indeed, there is considerable evidence to show that the attempt to restructure a professional organization to a more managerially based organization has been fraught with difficulties because of issues of legitimacy of the new model through its supposed clash with the logic of professionalism. It draws our attention to the underlying change in meaning or logics that is involved in any move from a P2 to an MPB form of organization.
Hinings et al. (1991, p. 390), in their study of an attempt to restructure to a more managerial organization, say, ‘the nature of the organizational change challenged the concept of partnership and ran counter to professional values’. A particular organizational element, changing the distribution of authority to a more centralized, corporate structure, was more than a ‘technical’ innovation: it was seen by partners in the firm as striking at the heart of what it meant to operate as a professional: collegiality, peer evaluation, autonomy, and informality of management. Similarly, Pinnington and Morris (2002) suggested that, in architectural practices, while there were elements of a managerial form of organization, the core elements of the traditional form of professional organization were not transformed. Thus, there was protection of the central elements of the professional logic.
Gardner et al. (2008) show that anything that challenges the professional logic is a radical innovation and therefore subject to considerable difficulty in successful restructuring. For Gardner et al. (2008, p. 1117), the ‘structural adjustment’ of ‘the creation of new subunits through which new domains can be pursued’ is a radical innovation. It is part of the attempt of PSFs to become more corporate. Innovation in service delivery involves moving away from the familiar and thus requires justification to those who are committed to the status quo. Establishing legitimacy for innovation involves multiple actors, such as individual professionals, partners and clients. However, the roles of these actors in establishing legitimacy varies according to the nature of the innovation. Incremental innovation can be legitimized through purely internal actors; radical innovation requires external legitimation of clients, regulators, professional associations. Greenwood et al. (2002) emphasize the role of theorization in legitimating new organizational forms.
In their study of law firms, Malhotra and Hinings (2015) show that organizational transformations occur through a process of continuity and change rather than disruptive upheaval. And, because of the particular organizational dynamics of commitment, logic clashes, power and internal competition, organizations respond in different ways. Because of this it is possible for continuity to overwhelm change, or for continuity and change to operate in a synthesizing manner, or for continuity and change to unfold in polarizing ways.
One specific area of innovation and restructuring is that of knowledge management. There have been attempts to codify knowledge for purposes of changing the business model to one of corporatism, where knowledge becomes a general resource of the organization. However, these restructurings run into the problems of the professional logic together with the fact that professional knowledge resides in individual practitioners. The professional emphasis on both individuality and collegiality means that schemes for organizational systems of knowledge codification are likely to be resisted. Empson (2001) shows that individual professionals fear ‘exploitation’ and ‘contamination’ when asked to share knowledge. Morris (2001) argues that, when faced with a knowledge-codification project, professionals may actually cooperate, but this is because they understand the real limits to the codification of their knowledge. ‘Professionals perceive that their true value to their clients (and their source of power within their PSF) derives from their unique combination of experiences and intuition. They recognize that this knowledge is not susceptible to codification’ (Empson, 2001, p. 814). Thus, the attempted restructuring often remains suspended between the two logics and their associated structures.
Professional organizations other than PSFs have been dealt with in the literature on new public management (NPM) (McNulty & Ferlie, 2002). These scholars point out that there are many tensions and paradoxes between corporate logics, as exemplified in NPM, and professional logics, especially between different principles of organizing and the attempted shift of boundaries between professions. All of these studies illustrate considerable resistance to organizational restructuring based on corporate logics and illustrate similar issues as those in the PSF literature. McNulty and Ferlie (2002, p. 362) conclude from their study of business process reengineering in healthcare, ‘there were some pockets of organization change, but no organizational transformation. Change was patchy, difficult, and took much longer than originally expected.’
In summary, there are considerable, intertwined, market and institutional pressures for professional organizations to restructure, away from a purely professional mode of organizing to a more corporate/managerial one. However, the fact that such restructuring represents a move away from one archetype to another suggests that the processes will not be straightforward. Professional organizations represent a highly embedded way of organizing and professional logics are quite resistant to some changes, especially those that emphasize more centralized authority and decreased participation/collegiality (Malhotra et al., 2006).
This work represents an interesting evolution of our understanding of restructuring in PSFs. The original formulation, deriving from the historical professional–bureaucratic conflict literature suggests a degree of mutual exclusion between the P2 and MPB archetypes. But two developments have taken place. One suggests that there is as much continuity as change in professional restructuring, including hybrid outcomes that contain elements of both archetypes. The other, which fits well with change theories, is that change from one archetype to another is hard and the outcomes of attempting to move to more managerial forms are fraught with difficulty. A major reason for this is that professionals protect their autonomy and their status in organizational change, and, from the evidence that we have so far, do that quite successfully.
Conclusions: the future agenda
It is 25 years since Greenwood et al. (1990) re-energized the study of professional organizations through the concept of the ‘P2’ archetype. The aim was to draw attention to a forgotten, important organization, the professional service firm, by specifying the ‘distinctive characteristics’ of professional partnerships. But, as this chapter has outlined, there has been considerable concern with the restructuring of professional organizations in response to interlinked market and institutional change. Because of all the pressures and changes that have been occurring, the question is raised of the continued distinctiveness of professional organizations.
The introduction of new organizational forms and business models (Gardner et al., 2008; Barrett & Hinings, 2015) introduces a series of questions about governance, organizational form, processes of organizational change and new practices. There is a question of whether there is still a distinctive archetype for the professional organization. This raises a number of questions for research on PSFs, examining them at three levels of analysis, the professional organization, the inter-professional, and the comparative.
All of the work cited here has been done at either the professional or inter-professional level. The professional level is where organizations of one professional jurisdiction are examined, e.g. law firms or accounting firms or engineering consulting firms. Work has centred on whether they are P2 or MPB, or some variant of those. In addition, there has been considerable work on the processes of change from one archetype to another. Malhotra et al. (2006, p. 197) suggest that ‘future work should more closely link changes in firms’ structures … with micro-level analyses of changes to professional work’ as there has been little focus on these issues. A particularly important area, because of the nature of partnership, is that of leadership (Denis et al., 2010; Empson & Langley, 2015). In addition, an issue for this level of analysis is that most studies have been of larger professional organizations. There is real room for analysis of differences between organizations within a particular professional jurisdiction.
At the inter-professional level, most work has been at the level of conceptualization (Malhotra et al., 2006; von Nordenflycht, 2010), attempting to define the basis of differences across professional jurisdictions. More systematic analysis is needed of inter-professional similarities and differences in order to establish what archetypes actually exist and whether there are similar pressures for change in different jurisdictions. For example, Greenwood et al. (2006, p. 3) show that, even when looking at the largest firms in six professional sectors, they range in size from 1,000 personnel (in architecture) to 190,000 (in management consulting). The largest law firm has 6,700 employees; the largest accounting firm, 130,000. Similarly, there are major differences in the number of countries in which they operate (6–160) and the number of offices that they have (18–771). Contingency theory tells us that such variations produce differences in organization structures and systems and for the processes of organizational restructuring. There are, of course, many other differences, for example in professional values, between professional organizations in different jurisdictions that have implications for organizational form and change. More work is needed to examine such differences.
At both the professional and inter-professional level, there is an important connection with contemporary institutional theory and the idea of institutional complexity (Greenwood et al., 2011). Their concern is with organizational responses when they face incompatible prescriptions from multiple institutional logics. This is the potential situation when professional organizations face both professional and corporate logics. Institutional theory has begun to theorize these situations through ideas of how organizations manage conflicting logics, suggesting that logics do not necessarily compete but may be complementary, separated or combined in some way (Thornton et al., 2012). These ideas have led to discussion of hybrid organizations that manage a variety of logics through structures, systems and practices that have elements of more than one logic (Battilana & Lee, 2014). Locating the discussion of professional organization restructuring in institutional complexity and hybrid organizations would open up a fruitful area of research.
Other work that has examined a range of professional organizations has been concerned primarily with demonstrating consistencies across those organizations rather than difference (Dougherty, 2004; Anand et al., 2007). These studies deal with service innovation and are very focused on the role of knowledge in developing new ideas and services. They argue that in professional organizations, knowledge is practice based and service innovation has to come from capturing that knowledge to create value for clients and by redesigning work, for instance into teams. Knowledge rests primarily with the individual professional and derives from the set of practices pursued by those individuals. There are some important issues to be followed up from this research. One is to look for difference as well as similarity (this is a problem with much of contemporary organization theory with the loss of a truly comparative perspective (King et al., 2009)). Another is for research on professional organizations to systematically deal with the role of knowledge in organizing. And a third is to take the idea of innovation seriously (Barrett & Hinings, 2015).
A truly comparative level of analysis would deal with a number of important issues. One is to come to grips with the idea of knowledge-based organizations. All definitions of professional organizations have knowledge as a central element. But there are organizations that are knowledge based that are not professional according to the definitions of Empson et al. (2015) and von Nordenflycht (2010). The taken-for-granted argument is that professional organizations are different from non-professional organizations. But in the modern economy, there is a convergence as many organizations (e.g. those in the high-tech sector) become more like professional organizations, and the latter become more like corporations, per se. The research question becomes: is there a distinctive professional archetype, because of professionalism, or are they, in fact, becoming similar to other types of organizations? Given the importance of professional organizations to business and government, are they truly distinctive? And what are the consequences of that distinctiveness?
Another issue in comparative analysis is related to the internationalization and globalization of professional organizations. Greenwood et al. (2006, p. 3) show the international nature of these organizations; but some are more heavily international than others. Some are more international than non-professional organizations. How do internationalization processes compare? For example, Malhotra and Hinings (2010) argue that the internationalization processes of the mass-production organization, the disaggregated production organization, and the project-based organization/professional organization differ. Each type of organization responds differently to the focus of entry, the degree of presence and the physical presence requirements in a foreign market. As a result, there are different approaches to organizing and operating in a foreign market. This is merely indicative of questions raised by the internationalization of professional organizations, especially when compared with non-professional organizations.
Similarly, Boussebaa and Morgan (2015) identify network, project, federal and transnational organizations as different forms of the internationalization of professional service firms. What research there is highlights change towards the transnational model from a federal model, but there is little evidence about implementation and the processes of change. Given the importance of internationalization in professional organizations, more systematic work is required. We need to know more about how, for example, law firms have achieved internationalization and with what organizational form and change processes. We need to compare those forms and processes across professional jurisdictions, and, following Malhotra and Hinings (2010) and Boussebaa and Morgan (2015), we need to examine similarities and differences between professional and non-professional organizations.
There is no shortage of research topics to take the study of professional organization restructuring forward. Perhaps the most important issue is to ensure that the study of these extremely important organizations does not become overly centred on professionals per se, but becomes more connected with the current theorizing and issues in organization theory. Essentially, the revival of interest in professional organizations and their restructuring has led to them becoming an object of interest in their own right (witness the new Journal of Professions and Organization). As a result, their difference from non-professional organizations has become taken for granted without being tested. Yet this is an empirical question. As organization theory more generally has become concerned with knowledge-based organization, network organizations and hybrid organizations, there are clear connections with professional organizations. Studying professional organizations and their restructuring in the context of these other kinds of organizations will provide a firmer base for establishing whether and in what way professional organizations are a unique type of organization (Kirkpatrick & Noordegraaf, 2015).
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