ABSTRACT
Professional work and the professionals that do it have faced increasing pressure to submit to markets in order to reform overall service delivery and increase efficiency. The relatively new emphasis on market efficiency has occurred in tandem with several other cross-cutting developments – well publicised financial scandals. It involves new entrepreneurial roles for professionals and the cultural shifts accompanying ‘the end of expertise’ and its most recent manifestations, the Brexit vote and the election in the United States of Donald Trump. The chapter looks at developments then tie those developments to broader long-term trends that have changed the nature of professional work. Cultural developments spell trouble for professional groups who occupy institutional niches based on expert claims. The challenges of the ‘war on expertise’, post-modern scepticism, and neoliberalism point to the continual need to revisit the status of professional work and the prerogatives and arrangements that come with it.
