Introduction: Professions and organizations - a conceptual framework

This collection seeks to reconnect two separate streams of work on professional organizations and professional occupations. In particular the articles collected here identify two key themes: (1) the challenges and opportunities that professional organizations pose for established and emerging professionalization projects and (2) the extent to which professional organizations create, institutionalize and manipulate new forms of professionalism and models of professionalization. To this effect, this collection brings together a number of articles from a broad range of disciplines (sociology, management, healthcare, accountancy, law and geography), theoretical backgrounds and national contexts which explore the complex connections between professional occupations and organizations.