A professionalization framework to understand the structuring of work Sylvain Bureau a , Jean-Baptiste Suquet b, * a ESCP-EAP, 79 avenue de la Re ´publique, 75543 Paris cedex 11, France b Reims Management School, 59 rue Pierre Taittinger, 51100 Reims, France KEYWORDS System of professions; Professionalization; Service management; Information system management; Human resources man- agement; Sociology of professions; Abbott; Work studies; Organization studies Summary The notion of professionalization is widely used both by managers and researchers. This use questions the traditional definition of profession. This paper reviews a book published in 1988 – The System of Professions – written by a sociologist, A. Abbott. Though this book had a strong impact in the field of the sociology of professions, it has remained unknown by many researchers in management science. His pragmatic approach to the concepts of profession and professionalization helps achieve better understanding of work structuring and as a consequence can be useful to address issues such as human resources management, organizational control or even the management of information systems. ª 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction Professionalization, professionalism, professional: these words are more and more used by managers (Evetts, 2003). In management science, the professions are not an object of research per se. Researchers tend to use a com- mon representation of what a profession is. This definition was conceptualized in the field of the sociology of profes- sions (Dubar and Tripier, 1998; Freidson, 2001; Menger, 2003). It is grounded on a specific perspective: the trait ap- proach (Carr-Saunders and Wilson, 1933; Etzioni, 1969; Greenwood, 1957). A profession is in this perspective char- acterized by a certain number of traits, six in the original definition proposed by Flexner (1915): ‘‘professions involve essentially intellectual operations with large individual responsibility; they derive their raw material from science and learning; this material they work up to a practical and definite end; they possess an educationally communicable technique; they tend to self-organization; they are becom- ing increasingly altruistic in motivation’’. This approach is idiosyncratic to a certain context – that of Anglo-Saxon countries – and tends to be obsolete owing to organizational and technological evolutions (Freidson, 1994; Paradeise, 1988; Vollmer and Mills, 1966). These transformations lead to an increasing number of profession- als. According to several empirical studies, people belong- ing to professions are more and more numerous (Bishop, 1997; Silvestri and Lukasiewicz, 1991): 0263-2373/$ - see front matter ª 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.emj.2009.02.001 * Corresponding author. E-mail address: jean-baptiste.suquet@reims-ms.fr (J.-B. Suquet). European Management Journal (2009) 27, 467– 475 journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/emj