Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YD, UK.
E-mail: ias@lancaster.ac.uk
Workshop: Professions, Knowledge Workers and the KBE
20-21 September 2006
Please note, this research programme has now concluded and these pages are maintained here as a record of the activities of the Institute for Advanced Studies.
Contacts: Daniel Muzio and Stephen Ackroyd
Background
There is widespread agreement over the importance of knowledge based occupations, which are seen to be key components of the emerging knowledge-based economy (KBE). These occupations enable, indeed in an important sense embody, the epochal shift from value being added by capital (in conjunction with physical labour) to knowledge as the principal factor of production of the new economic order. Knowledge workers, thus offer the possibility of innovation through knowledge, through the development of new forms of knowledge and are accordingly attributed a fundamental role in the reorganisation of contemporary economic as well as social and political systems.
And yet a significant number of knowledge occupations, the established professions, such as law and medicine have pre-modern historical origins and have not shown any significant tendency to move away from their traditional patterns of organisation. True, many have argued that this is to their detriment, and there are new kinds of knowledge-based occupation (management consultancy, public relations and advertising, information systems analysis, to name a few) that are not organised as professions, and these occupations set new standards of organisation and efficiency. As such they will pressure traditional professions to abandon their old ways, in favour of new patterns of flexible organisation and self-management. While there are some indications of traditional professions adopting more managed modes of organisation (though the extent of this is hotly debated), research also shows the professions can adapt themselves in remarkable and unexpected ways. In addition, there are some indications that new occupations are, especially in some areas and under some market conditions, adopting professional modes of organisation.
Programme
Professional Knowledge and its Organization
Lead discussion by
- David Cooper - 'The Management of Knowledge Work in Professional Firms: Law and Accounting'
- Mike Dent - 'Re-inventing Medicine and Medical Knowledge'
- Laura Empson - 'Professionals in Partnership: Continuity and Change'
- Gerry Hanlon - 'Learning from the professions: The Future of Work and Value'
Lawyering and the Legal Profession in Late Modernity
Lead discussion by
- Glenn Morgan - 'Constructing Markets: Law and Derivatives in Global Capitalism'
- John Flood - 'The Legal Profession in the Face of Commodification, Clementi and Charisma -(the UK Faces its Tsunami with Equanimity)?'
- James Marshall – 'Are Small Firm Lawyers Positivist about the Law
- Ashly Pinnington - 'Lawyer's Accounts of the Firm's Strategy and its Internationalisation -A Case Study'
New Model' Professional Occupations I
Lead discussion by
- Robin Fincham – 'Expert Labour, Business Services and the Puzzle of Occupational Ascendancy'
- Ian Kirkpatrick - 'Professionalism without Professions: the Case of Management Consultants'
- Timothy Clark - 'Consultants and Gurus as Knowledge Workers'
New Model' Professional Occupations II
Lead discussion by:
- Damian Hodgson - 'Knowledge, Professionalisation and Occupational Domination in Project Management'
- James Falconbridge - 'Professionalisation and Executive Search: Reality or Rhetoric?'
- Chris Mckenna - 'How Professional Firms Derailed the Professionalization of Management'
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