Author:
Three dimensions for a vulnerable profession. The professionalism of Italian management consultants.
The aim of this paper is to analyze three concepts professionalism, entrepreneurship and self-employment in order to use them as analytical categories in studying management consultants, a particular type of professionals by some authors called knowledge workers. Far from identifying them as ideal-typical model of engagement into the labour market as in the Fordist systems, I will use them as dynamical tools to highlights different aspects of the discourse of professions and the transformation on work as it has been witnessed by these professionals. Thanks to a mixture of narrations and visual methods, I will offer some insights on immateriality, key-concept of their everyday working lives and their professional identity, trying to explain what does it mean to be a professional in a context in which work is slightly losing body, structure, memory and place.
The paper, reporting the results of 55 interviews to management consultants in Italy, will presents their narratives and positioning on professions and identity: the focus on Italian case is particularly interesting, due to a strong cleavage in the public regulation between high institutionalized professions and the vulnerable groups of non regulated-professionals (e.g. consultants), which deal with an unsettled environment and makes their professional identity and positioning even more complex.