ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the notion of professions and their organizational setting. The contemporary research area of professions and organizations can be considered as a branch both of the sociology of professions and of the organizational theory that studies the managerial aspects of professional work. From the standpoint of sociological theories of professions, the field of professions and organizations was heavily based on work from the United States, with a range of contributors spanning from Talcott Parsons at Harvard University to Eliot Freidson at New York University. The neo-Weberian perspective on professions is based on the concept of exclusionary social closure drawn from the work of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century social theorist Max Weber. In drawing on the pivotal work in the United States of Abbott, there are potential theoretical pitfalls in examining the interplay between professions, professional service firms, multinational corporations and the state from an ecological perspective.
