Dear colleagues and friends of the Oxford SAID Professional Service Firm Hub,
With apologies for cross-posting, please find below and attached our call for papers for the 2018 Oxford Conference on Professional Service Firms.
The theme of the conference will be "Re-imagining the System of Professions"
We look forward to your submissions!
Best wishes,
Michael
Dr Michael Smets
Associate Professor in Management and Organisation Studies
Convenor of the DPhil in Management Research
Saïd Business School
Governing Body Fellow
Green Templeton College
University of Oxford
T +44 (0)1865 614849
Publications | Profile | College | @michael_smets
Saïd Business School, Park End Street, Oxford OX1 1HP
www.sbs.oxford.edu
CALL FOR PAPERS
OXFORD SAÏD ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON PROFESSIONAL SERVICE FIRMS
8-10 July, 2018
Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Re-imagining the System of Professions
2018 marks the 30th anniversary of Andrew Abbott (1988) outlining the "System of Professions" and providing us with one of the definitive texts on professions, professional service firms and the "Division of Expert Labor" more generally. The Business History Review (2006) celebrated Abbott's work among "Books that made a difference". With now over 10,000 citations in Google Scholar, this was clearly not an overstatement. In his review, Chris McKenna feared that "anyone seeking to study the professions after reading it had difficulty imagining they could say anything new that this book had not already covered" (p.141). 30 years on, it appears that this comprehensiveness is a blessing rather than a curse for today's academic community. We do not need to worry about "imagining" new things to say, as we witness the System of Professions being re-imagined before our very eyes.
Abbott's seminal work provides us with the blueprint for charting how technological disruptors, new players, incumbents, clients and professionals are re-imagining the System of Professions. Which of Abbott's views still hold, which are being re-imagined, and which have been overturned wholesale?
Loosely following the structure of Abbott's work, we therefore welcome contributions – both empirical and theoretical – which examine questions such as those in the non-exclusive list below:
· What is the future of 'expert' labour? In a time when public and policy-makers are increasingly sceptical of experts and professional expertise is increasingly complemented – even replaced – by technology (Smets, Morris, von Nordenflycht, & Brock, 2017), how do professions maintain their privileged status? To what extent is technical expertise still the basis of professional diagnosis, source of competitive advantage, and basis of power (Freidson, 1986; Malhotra & Morris, 2009) as Abbott (1988) proclaimed?
· How do professions retain jurisdictional boundaries and authority over their domains? Professional work is increasingly inter-disciplinary, but also disaggregated among professionals, non-professionals and technology (Sako 2016). As new entrants disrupt the sector and established ways of working (Thomson Reuters, 2016), how does this affect professional control and jurisdictional boundaries (Freidson, 1984; Harrits & Larsen, 2016)? What skills are needed to thrive in this new "system" of professions?
· What does the future of professional autonomy and self-regulation look like? The social purpose of professional firms appears to take a back seat as instances of professional misconduct accumulate (Gabbioneta, Prakash, & Greenwood, 2014; Greenwood, Hinings, & Prakash, 2017)? Changing client demands and the liberalization of professional service sectors put pressure on professional autonomy and self-regulation (Adams, 2017; Spence, Voulgaris, & Maclean, 2017). Who is in charge?
· What's the nature of the "division of expert labor"? Technological disruption, career preferences, gig economy and ecosystem modes of service delivery fundamentally challenge who still forms part of the "professionalized workforce" that characterizes PSFs (von Nordenflycht, 2010)? These changes raise a number of critical questions: How are increasing numbers of technology specialists and other non-fee earners accommodated in professional career structures (Malhotra, Morris, & Smets, 2010)? How do increasingly popular freelance workers fit into what were originally strictly internal labour markets (Smets et al., 2017)? How do new ways of working affect retention and work-life balance (Noury, Gand, & Sardas, 2017)?
· How do professionals manage their identities? What toll do the increasingly paradoxical demands take on the individuals how manage and deliver professional services (Ahuja, Nikolova, & Clegg, 2017; Bevort & Suddaby, 2016)? What new opportunities surface?
· How does the system of professions reinvent itself? At an organizational level, how do PSFs innovate their services (Fu, Flood, & Morris, 2016; Kvålshaugen, Hydle, & Brehmer, 2015; Noordegraaf, 2015)? At an institutional level, how do professionals re-shape the rules of the game (Harrington, 2015; Smets, Morris, & Greenwood, 2012)?
· Finally, which issues are fundamentally new in the System of Professions in 2018?
Submissions
Please send an abstract of no more than 1000 words to PSFconference@sbs.ox.ac.uk by 6 March, 2018. Abstracts will be reviewed and decisions made in March 2018.
Timing and Venue
The conference will be held on July 8-10 2018 at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. It starts with an informal dinner on Sunday, July 8 and ends with lunch on Tuesday, July 10.
The Journal of Professions and Organization
The conference will once again partner with the Journal of Professions and Organization (JPO), launched in 2013 by Oxford University Press to further research on professionals and their organizations. As in past years, the PSF Hub at Oxford is sponsoring JPO's Best Paper Award, and the winners will be recognized during a short ceremony at the Conference.
Additional Information
There is no fee for registration, accommodation, or meals for those who are invited to attend, but all delegates will be expected to cover their own travel costs. Further information will be made available to participants via the conference website once decisions on papers have been made.
In the first instance, please send an abstract of up to 1000 words to PSFconference@sbs.ox.ac.uk.
Deadline for submissions is 6 March 2018.
Michael Smets, Tim Morris, Mari Sako
Abbott, A. D. 1988. The system of professions: An essay on the division of expert labor. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Adams, T. L. 2017. Self-regulating professions: Past, present, future. Journal of Professions and Organization, 4(1): 70-87.
Ahuja, S., Nikolova, N., & Clegg, S. 2017. Paradoxical identity: The changing nature of architectural work and its relation to architects' identity. Journal of Professions and Organization, 4(1): 2-19.
Bevort, F. & Suddaby, R. 2016. Scripting professional identities: How individuals make sense of contradictory logics. Journal of Professions and Organization, 3(1): 17-38.
Freidson, E. 1984. The changing nature of professional control. Annual Review of Sociology, 10(1): 1-20.
Freidson, E. 1986. Professional powers: A study of the institutionalization of formal knowledge. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Fu, N., Flood, P., & Morris, T. 2016. Organizational ambidexterity and professional firm performance: The moderating role of organizational capital. Journal of Professions and Organization, 3(1): 1-16.
Gabbioneta, C., Prakash, R., & Greenwood, R. 2014. Sustained corporate corruption and processes of institutional ascription within professional networks. Journal of Professions and Organization, 1(1): 16-32.
Greenwood, R., Hinings, C. R., & Prakash, R. 2017. 25 years of the professional partnership (p2) form: Time to foreground its social purpose and herald the p3? Journal of Professions and Organization, 4(2): 112-122.
Harrington, B. 2015. Going global: Professionals and the micro-foundations of institutional change. Journal of Professions and Organization, 2(2): 103-121.
Harrits, G. S. & Larsen, L. T. 2016. Professional claims to authority: A comparative study of danish doctors and teachers (1950–2010). Journal of Professions and Organization, 3(2): 154-169.
Kvålshaugen, R., Hydle, K. M., & Brehmer, P.-O. 2015. Innovative capabilities in international professional service firms: Enabling trade-offs between past, present, and future service provision. Journal of Professions and Organization, 2(2): 148-167.
Malhotra, N. & Morris, T. 2009. Heterogeneity in professional service firms. Journal of Management Studies, 46(6): 895-922.
Malhotra, N., Morris, T., & Smets, M. 2010. New career models in UK professional service firms: From up-or-out to up-and-going-nowhere? The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 21(9): 1396-1413.
McKenna, C. D. 2006. Books that made a difference: The system of professions and the division of expert labor. The Business History Review, 80(1): 141-144.
Noordegraaf, M. 2015. Hybrid professionalism and beyond: (new) forms of public professionalism in changing organizational and societal contexts. Journal of Professions and Organization, 2(2): 187–206.
Noury, L., Gand, S., & Sardas, J.-C. 2017. Tackling the work-life balance challenge in professional service firms: The impact of projects, organizing, and service characteristics. Journal of Professions and Organization, 4(2): 149-178.
Smets, M., Morris, T., & Greenwood, R. 2012. From practice to field: A multilevel model of practice-driven institutional change. Academy of Management Journal, 55(4): 877-904.
Smets, M., Morris, T., von Nordenflycht, A., & Brock, D. M. 2017. 25 years since 'p2': Taking stock and charting the future of professional firms. Journal of Professions and Organization, 4(2): 91-111.
Spence, C., Voulgaris, G., & Maclean, M. 2017. Politics and the professions in a time of crisis. Journal of Professions and Organization, 4(3): 261-281.
Thomson Reuters. 2016. Alternative legal service providers: Understanding the growth and benefits of these new legal providers. London: Thomson Reuters.
von Nordenflycht, A. 2010. What is a professional service firm? Toward a theory and taxonomy of knowledge-intensive firms. Academy of Management Review, 35(1): 155-174.