Risky Business. How Professionals and Professionals Fields (must) Deal with Organizational Issues

As professionals belong to occupational systems but also increasingly work inside organizations, new
linkages between occupational and organizational domains are required, but they are difficult to develop.
Occupational principles and professional standards are usually considered to be at odds with managerial
and organizational control principles. This generates academic and practical dualisms. Either a return to
professionalism is advocated in order to protect occupational spaces and ‘rescue’ professional work, or
there is a move beyond professionalism in order to restrict autonomies and discipline professional work.
This article argues that both stances are unsatisfactory and that new forms of organized professionalism are
called for. Changing circumstances force professional services to respond to external changes that call for
organizational capacities, also inside professional domains: (a) professionals develop new work preferences
and seek organized work conditions; (b) professionals face new cases, which are difficult to categorize and
call for well-organized multi-professional acts; (c) due to critical attention for case treatment and incidents,
professionals face new risks that have to be managed. The article shows how these realities are incorporated
in professional practices – albeit slowly – and it draws normative conclusions. Professionals must take
organizing and managing more seriously and will have to develop organizational capacities. In addition,
connective organizational standards must be established in order to strengthen the viability and legitimacy of
professional services in demanding times.