ABSTRACT
It has been observed that an increasing number of occupations are striving towards professional status (Freidson, 1977). Occupations designated as professional and technical do in fact constitute a growing proportion of total employment in the United Kingdom (DE, 1981), in Western Europe as a whole (Evans, 1979) and in the United States (Collins, 1979). It has, however, also been remarked that we live today in a ‘society of organizations’ (Perrow, 1978), and relatively more members of professional occupations are coming to be employed in organizations. These developments are of considerable interest because of the long-standing assumption that conflict is endemic to the relationship between professional employees and the managers of employing organizations. The conflict is seen to derive from the tension between two contrasting principles of work organization.
