Integrating professional expertise in professional service firms (PSFs) is a key
strategic challenge in the contemporary economy and individual firms. Previous research
has pointed out that the governance of key aspects of PSFs, including knowledge
integration, is shifting from a professional to a managerial logic, a shift that is often
pictured as conflict laden based on the incompatibility of the two logics. Based on a
study of knowledge integration in an engineering consulting firm, the current paper shows
how managerial and professional logics interplay in shaping knowledge integration
practices. We identify both aspects in which the logics reinforce each other in enabling
knowledge integration and tensions that threaten knowledge integration. We conclude that
the professional logic is a key driver of knowledge integration, but that the managerial
logic, including its formal HR practices, may support knowledge integration through
secondary effects if applied in a thoughtful way.
AbbottA.
(1988). The system of professions.
Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
2.
AckroydS.
(1996). Organization contra organizations: Professionals and
organizational change in the United Kingdom. Organization
Studies, 17(4),
599–621.
3.
BrooksI.
(1999). Managerialist professionalization: The destruction
of a non-conforming sub-culture. British Journal of
Management, 10,
41–52.
4.
CooperD. J.HiningsB.GreenwoodR.BrownJ. L.
(1996). Sedimentation and transformation in organization
change: The case of Canadian law firms. Organization
Studies, 17(4),
623–647.
5.
CosteaB.CrumpN.AmiridisK.
(2008). Managerialism, the therapeutic habitus and the self
in contemporary organizing. Human Relations,
61(5),
661–685.
6.
DentM.
(2003). Managing doctors and saving a hospital: Irony,
rhetoric and actor networks. Organization,
10(1),
107–127.
7.
DoolinB.
(2002). Enterprising discourse, professional identity and
the organizational control of hospital clinicians. Organization
Studies, 23(3),
369–390.
8.
FlemingP.SturdyA.
(2011). ‘Being yourself in the electronic sweatshop: New
forms of normative control. Human Relations,
64(2),
177–200.
9.
FreidsonE.
(1984). The changing nature of professional
control. Annual Review of Sociology,
10, 1–20.
10.
GoodrickE.ReayT.
(2011). Constellations of institutional logics changes in
the professional work of pharmacists. Work and
Occupations, 38(3),
372–416.
11.
GouldnerA.
W. (1957). Cosmopolitans
and locals: Toward an analysis of latent social roles, I.
Administrative Science Quarterly, 2(3),
281–306.
12.
GrantR.
M. (1996). Prospering in
Dynamically-competitive environments: Organizational capability as knowledge
integration. Organization Science,
7(4),
375–387.
13.
HaasM. R.HansenM. T.
(2007). Different knowledge, different benefits: Toward a
productivity perspective on knowledge sharing in organizations.
Strategic Management Journal, 28(11),
1133–1153.
14.
HanlonG.
(1998). Professionalism as enterprise: Service class
politics and the redefinition of professionalism.
Sociology, 32(1),
43–63.
15.
HargadonA.
B. (1998). Firms as
knowledge brokers: Lessons in pursuing continuous innovation.
California Management Review, 40(3),
209–227.
16.
HargadonA. B.BechkyB. A.
(2006). When collections of creatives become creative
collectives: A field study of problem solving at work.
Organization Science, 17(4),
484–500.
JohnsonT.
J. (1972). Professions and
power: London:
Macmillan.
19.
KuhnT.
(2009). Positioning lawyers: Discursive resources,
professional ethics and identification. Organization,
16(5),
681–704.
20.
KärremanD.AlvessonM.
(2004). Cages in tandem: Management control, social
identity, and identification in a knowledge intensive firms.
Organization, 11(1),
149–175.
21.
LanderM. W.KoeneB. A.LinssenS. N.
(2013). Committed to professionalism: Organizational
responses of mid-tier accounting firms to conflicting institutional
logics. Accounting, Organizations and Society,
38(2),
130–148.
22.
LarsonM. S.LarsonM. S.
(1979). The rise of professionalism: A sociological
analysis: Univ of California
Press.
23.
LeichtK. T.FennellM. L.
(2001). Professional work: A sociological approach.
Blackwell Publishing.
24.
McGivernG.FerlieE.
(2007). Playing tick-box games: Interrelating defences in
professional appraisal. Human Relations,
60(9),
1361–1385.
25.
McMurrayR.
(2011). The struggle to professionalize: An ethnographic
account of the occupational position of Advanced Nurse Practitioners.
Human Relations, 64(4),
801–822.
26.
McPhersonC. M.SauderM.
(2013). Logics in action managing institutional complexity
in a drug court. Administrative Science Quarterly,
58(2),
165–196.
27.
MerkleJ.
(1980). Management and ideology: The legacy of the international
scientific management movement. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
28.
MeyerR. E.HammerschmidG.
(2006). Changing institutional logics and executive
identities: A managerial challenge to public administration in Austria.
American Behavioral Scientist, 49(7),
1000–1014.
29.
MinbaevaD.FossN.SnellS.
(2009). Bringing the knowledge perspective into
HRM. Human Resource Management,
48(4),
477–483.
30.
NewellS.TansleyC.HuangJ. C.
(2004). Social capital and knowledge integration in an ERP
project team: The importance of bridging and bonding. British
Journal of Management, 15(1),
S43–S54.
31.
PacheA.-C.SantosF.
(2013). Embedded in hybrid contexts: How individuals in
organizations respond to competing institutional logics.
Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 39(part
B), 3–35.
32.
PinningtonA.MorrisT.
(2003). Archetype change in professional organizations:
Survey evidence from large law firms. British Journal of
Management, 14(1),
85–99.
33.
RaelinJ.
A. (1985). The clash of
cultures: Managers and professionals. Boston:
Harvard Business School Press.
34.
ReayT.HiningsC. R.
(2009). Managing the rivalry of competing institutional
logics. Organization Studies,
30(6),
629–652.
35.
RichterA.DickmannM.GraubnerM.
(2008). Patterns of Human Resource Management in consulting
firms. Peronnel Review,
37(2),
184–202.
36.
RobertsonM.HammersleyG. O.
M. (2000). Knowledge
management practices within a knowledge-intensive firm: The significance of the people
management dimension. Journal of European Industrial
Training, 24(2–4),
241.
37.
RobertsonM.SwanJ.
(1998). Modes of organizing in an expert consultancy: A case
study of knowledge, power and egos. Organization,
5(4),
543–564.
38.
SandbergJ.
(2005). How do we justify knowledge produced within
interpretive approaches?Organizational Research Methods, 8,
41–68.
39.
ScottW.
R. (2008). Lords of the
dance: Professionals as institutional agents. Organization
Studies, 29(2),
219–238.
40.
ShenhavY.
(1999). Manufacturing rationality. The engineering foundation of
the managerial revolution. Oxford & New
York: Oxford University
Press.
41.
StraussA.CorbinJ.
(1994). Grounded theory methodology. In
DenzinN.
K.LincolnY. S.
(Eds.), Handbook of qualitative methods (pp.
273–285). Thousand Oaks:
Sage.
42.
SuddabyR.VialeT.
(2011). Professionals and field-level change: Institutional
work and the professional project. Current Sociology,
59(4),
423–442.
43.
SwartJ.KinnieN.
(2003). Sharing knowledge in knowledge-intensive
firms. Human Resource Management Journal,
13(2),
60–75.
44.
SwartJ.KinnieN.RossenbergY.YalabikZ. Y.
(2014). Why should I share my knowledge? A multiple foci of
commitment perspective. Human Resource Management
Journal, 24(3),
269–289.
45.
ThorntonP.
H. (2002). The rise of
the corporation in a craft industry: Conflict and conformity in institutional
logics. Academy of management journal,
45(1),
81–101.
46.
WerrA.
(2012). Knowledge management and management
consulting. In ClarkT.KippingM.
(Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Management Consulting (pp.
247–266). Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
47.
Von
NordenflychtA.
(2010). What is a professional service firm? Toward a theory
and taxonomy of knowledge-intensive firms. Academy of Management
Review, 35(1),
155–174.
