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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Daniel Muzio
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
The professionalisation of certain management occupations, such as Project Management and HRM, has been neglected in recent debates on professions, which instead focus upon the de-regulation of collegial professions or the failure or unwillingness of new expert occupations to professionalise. Project management represents one of a handful of ‘management professions’ which confound this interpretation, explicitly pursuing a ‘corporate professionalisation’ project with some degree of success in the US, UK and elsewhere. This article focuses on the strategic activities of the principal British professional association in this field, the Association for Project Management (APM), as it effectively negotiates a path between exploiting established sources of legitimacy and exploring a novel conception of professionalism. In the process, the association manipulates collegial and corporate logics of professionalism, in terms of its relationships with key stakeholders, its global orientation, its knowledge base and strategies of occupational closure. Drawing on interviews with APM officials and broader documentary analysis, this article analyses the conditions which have produced this hybrid model of professionalism, highlighting the pragmatic management of tensions through the combination of distinct, even contradictory, professionalisation logics.
Author(s): Hodgson D, Paton S, Muzio D
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: British Journal of Management
Year: 2015
Volume: 26
Issue: 4
Pages: 745–759
Print publication date: 01/10/2015
Online publication date: 06/05/2015
Date deposited: 20/01/2015
ISSN (print): 1045-3172
ISSN (electronic): 1467-8551
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12105
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12105
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