ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the main theoretical frameworks which inform the analysis of the case-studies and the developing picture of a complex and contingent professionalism. It examines more recent theoretical advances, arising out of management studies, which place far greater importance on the organizational actor. The chapter analyses the organizations relationship to the traditional core of the profession. Magali Larson saw the existence of standardized knowledge as a specific resource element upon which professions were able to draw to further their collective mobility projects of market control and status gain. Andrew Abbott argues that, crucially, it is internal stratification provides the basic mechanism that keeps the public picture of professional life separate from the workplace one. Professional training and socialization also increasingly takes place within large corporate law firms. Kritzer further highlights the pressures facing traditional legal professions in responding to greater fluidity in the way expert knowledge is claimed and markets for expertise are regulated.
