ABSTRACT
The Companies Act was extensively updated after the series of financial scandals in the late 1980s and early 1990s, while the passing of the Insolvency Act in 1980 was said to have brought about “massive changes in professional practice”. Contemporary professional life was seen to be less enjoyable and less rewarding than in the past. In addition to the broad changes in their social environment, the practitioners in the six professions which form the subject of this enquiry have encountered a number of more specific sources of variation in the quality of their working lives. The phenomenon of continual change can be illustrated in hospital pharmacy by the emergence of new specialisms in radio diagnostics and psychiatric pharmacy; or in law by professional indemnity as a specialist area of civil litigation and by VAT law as an aspect of tax law.
