‘Hollow from the start’? Professional associations and the professionalisation of tourism

Something Old, Something New?: Competing Logics and the Hybrid Nature of New Corporate Professions

“…Many researchers have taken this up by focusing on contemporary processes of professional formation and development, driven by the realization that ‘those professional occupations that have more recently emerged […] structure themselves so as to accommodate corporate patterns’ (Dacin et al ., 2002, p. 49). Accordingly a growing body of work (Kipping, Kirkpatrick and Muzio, ; Muzio et al ., ; Paton, Hodgson and Muzio, ; Sturdy, Wylie and Wright, ; Thomas and Thomas, ) has developed the concept of ‘corporate professionalism’ to characterize new professional projects, such as management consultancy and indeed project management. Whilst clearly an ideal type which has primarily heuristic value, corporate professionalism brings together characteristics of Reed's organizational professionalism and knowledge work categories.…”

“…Our analysis above seeks to clarify the essential duality within contemporary professional projects (Kipping, Kirkpatrick and Muzio, ; Muzio et al ., ; Thomas and Thomas, ) as exemplified by the case of project management. Professionalization here is pursued through a strategy composed of various tactics, each reflecting particular logics.…”

“…Thus, there is continuity between their vision for project management and established patterns of professionalization, centred in particular on the model of chartered engineering. We identify a competing logic, which following the literature (Kipping, Kirkpatrick and Muzio, ; Muzio et al ., ; Paton, Hodgson and Muzio, ; Thomas and Thomas, ) we define as one of ‘corporate professionalism’. This is still emergent and not as clearly articulated as the previous one but it signals aspirations for innovation and departure from established models of professionalization.…”

“…Despite all of this, the cachet of the title of ‘professional’ seems to retain attraction for a number of specialist managerial disciplines. Striving for the legitimacy that traditional professions like medicine and law enjoy (or have enjoyed in the past), several contemporary management occupations are staging their own professionalization projects (Kipping, Kirkpatrick and Muzio, ; Muzio, Ackroyd and Chanlat, ; Muzio et al ., ; Sturdy, Wylie and Wright, ; Thomas and Thomas, ).…”

“…In this context, we analyse the novel and distinctive professionalization strategies deployed by the dominant association for this occupation in the UK, the Association for Project Management (APM). We do so by engaging with the literature on corporate professionalism (Muzio et al ., ; Paton et al ., ; Thomas and Thomas, ) which we develop by highlighting how contemporary professionalization projects are not so much characterized by a shift from collegial to corporate logics but by the ability to opportunistically draw on and recombine elements of these distinctive logics to create a hybrid form of professionalism. As such, rather than reproducing idealized models of professionalism (Fincham, ), this research highlights the work required to balance and reconcile competing logics of professionalism and the competing interests of key stakeholders (Kodeih and Greenwood, ), in particular those of the large corporations who are the main employers and consumers of specialist managerial expertise including project management (Paton, Hodgson and Muzio, ; Veldman, ).…”