• account for the central characteristics of professional work according to classic sociological theoretical definitions of professions;
• identify and discuss specific challenges for managing and organizing professional work, in comparison to e.g. traditional bureaucratic organizations, based on current societal developments;
• apply recent developments within management studies to the analysis of management of professional work, in relation to work practices, identities, and institutions;
• reflect upon and discuss contemporary and future developments for managing professional work;
• explore and analyse concrete cases of managing professional work, based on the theories and debates applied in the points above.

Professional work is undergoing significant changes, due to a number of reasons. The globalized economy, the emergence and spread of new digital and network technologies, the recession of the welfare state have important consequences for professional workers in terms of work practices, identity, and institutional arrangements. The traditional definition of professions, building on an exclusive bulk of knowledge, autonomy of work, and public service mission, is under challenge. While a lot of professions used to operate within well-defined boundaries and their professional practices were identified and recognized by peers with the same educational training, the exclusiveness of such professional expertise is now being questioned. As new areas of expertise emerge, and new roles for clients are being shaped, the very definition of existing professions changes, their boundaries are blurring, and new identities and institutional arrangements are forming. Questioned by digital technology, the distinction between experts, who used to be the professionals, and non-experts, who used to be their clients, is no longer trivial.  
These changes imply a number of management challenges. The professional autonomy might conflict with the need of management control. The source of power might be contested between professional legitimacy and management achievements. Leadership, thus, becomes a complex issue, as it is often shared between the professionals themselves and executive managers.
Building on the teachers’ expertise, the course will particularly focus of the work and management of three traditional professions: accountants, architects, and journalists. The course invites students in open discussions around changes in professional work and unfolding management challenges.
As an integrated part of the course examination, the students will conduct a mini-project, in which they investigate a specific profession and its challenges in terms of management, organization and identity issues. 

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Further reading:
Bévort, F. (2012), Making sense of management with logics. An ethnograghical study of accountants who become managers, CBS PhD-series 17.
Raviola, E. (2010) Paper Meets Web. How the Institution of News Production Works on Paper and Online. Jönköping: JIBS Dissertation Series n. 65.