Professional Fluidity: Reconceptualising the Professional Status of Self-Employed Neo-professionals
通过对50名独立顾问的访谈，研究发现自雇新专业人士采用“职业流动性”策略，通过与客户和合作者的关系而非组织来获取合法性和地位，挑战了传统以组织为基础的专业主义定义。
Current debates and definitions of professionalism are primarily grounded in organisations, either as employing bureaucracies or service firms, that control and structure expert labour. This is problematic as it neglects the many neo-professionals that are self-employed. We draw on interviews with 50 independent consultants and find that, outside of organisational boundaries, they pursue a strategy of professional fluidity. This is a relational and market-driven approach that requires a multiplicity of roles and chameleon-like tactics. As opposed to notions of collegial, organisational and corporate professionalisation, professional fluidity is a co-constructed and agentic approach where validity and legitimacy are achieved primarily through relations with clients and collaborators rather than institutions or employing organisations. Through professional fluidity we contribute to a more holistic understanding of professionalism that is sensitive to the employment mode rather than knowledge domain and develops existing notions of who is a professional. This is important for wider debates on the current and future state of professions.