Abstract

This article examines how professionals employed in professional organizations make sense of the disruption of their work. Based on a qualitative study of an Australian intellectual property (IP) law firm, we shed light on the ways in which the discursive practices of professionals may undermine change in professional organizations. We identify three defensive strategies of IP professionals (denial, regression, and projection) resulting from the inability to resolve conflicts between market-based pressures and their entrenched understandings of professional work. In doing so, we show how professionals can become ‘stuck’ in defensive responses that may further marginalize the role of professional organizations in society. These findings call into question overly deterministic, radical accounts of organizational change that do not take into account the contextual embeddedness of professional organizations.

中文翻译：

---

陷入防御性的专业精神：破坏一家知识产权律师事务所的组织变革

摘要

本文研究了受雇于专业组织中的专业人员如何理解其工作的中断。基于对澳大利亚知识产权（IP）律师事务所的定性研究，我们阐明了专业人员的话语实践可能破坏专业组织变革的方式。由于无法解决基于市场的压力与他们对专业工作的深刻理解之间的冲突，我们确定了IP专业人员的三种防御策略（拒绝，回归和预测）。通过这样做，我们展示了专业人士如何成为“卡在”防御反应中的人，这些人可能进一步边缘化专业组织在社会中的作用。这些发现使人们对确定性过高提出了疑问，