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This chapter asserts the theoretical importance of a relational approach for examining the historical development of civil rights for people with intellectual disabilities. A relational approach examines contestations over rights as embedded within and across various groups, settings, and times. Through this approach, we see, first, that struggles over rights are primarily struggles over “relational visions,” or the desired relational structure across groups. Second, rights for people with disabilities intersect with rights for other minority groups, and therefore, we must examine the broader stratification and relational structure. Third, rights developed differently depending on relational setting. Finally, rights have been used as “technologies of power,” requiring “normative” behavior for inclusion. Overall, a relational approach provides a set of concepts and a theoretical framework that furthers our understanding of citizenship for people with intellectual disabilities as it transformed through time and as it developed alongside citizenship for other populations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the operation of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland's (ICAI) complaint process from the complainant's perspective. The findings are interpreted drawing on key elements of Parker's private interest model of professional accounting ethics, particularly the private interest roles of professional authority and professional insulation.

The primary evidence used is drawn from numerous sources. These include: extensive “private” documentation comprising original correspondence between the complainant in the case examined (or his advisors) and various representatives of the ICAI spanning a five‐year period; detailed supporting documentation included with this correspondence; Independent Experts' Reports on the complaints submitted; and in‐depth interviews with the complainant prior to, during, and post the examination of the documentary evidence.

The paper reveals how high levels of professional authority and professional insulation worked in tandem to prevent complaints entering the complaint process and deny the complainant reasons for decisions taken. It demonstrates how a key structural barrier in the complaint process, the screening role of the professional accounting body's secretary, created a complainant impression of a process concerned primarily with protecting members' interests. Subsequent to complaint process changes, an erosion of professional insulation is unveiled. However, this proves fleeting and, in response to persistent complainant challenges to heightened demonstrations of professional authority, the degree of professional insulation intensifies further.

The paper focuses on a specific case where the complainant was dissatisfied with the ICAI's procedures. It reveals the extent to which complainants using professional body complaints procedures may, often by virtue of the structures in place, feel that profession protection motives are overriding purported concerns for society protection.

The paper extends and advances the literature examining professional accounting body disciplinary and complaint procedures. Prior research investigating the operation of these procedures has neglected to examine complaint processes in depth to inform their evaluations, particularly from the perspective of potential users of these processes.

The purpose of this paper is to characterize issues related to head nurses’ decision making when managing ethical dilemmas.

The study is qualitative descriptive, in which researchers stay close to the data. The data were collected in the format of unstructured written reflections. Inductive conventional latent qualitative content analysis was applied to the data.

The issues of head nurses’ management of decision making in ethical dilemmas relate to the following aspects: taking risks in deviating from the formalities, balancing power and humaneness, maintaining the professional hierarchy, managing resistance to change, managing with limited options, and experiencing the decline of nurse’s professional and/or human dignity.

Reflections in written form were preferred to semi-structured interviews and the researchers were unable to contact the participants directly and to ask additional questions. All the reflections were produced in a language other than English.

The issues of head nurses’ management of decision making in ethical dilemmas reveal the gap between societal expectations and the opportunities to improve nursing leadership in health care organizations.

The issues of head nurses’ decision making when managing ethical dilemmas are related to contexts that reflect the attitudes of society and health care system toward nursing management.

The study adds to the understanding of issues of the management of decision making in ethical dilemmas. It is an ongoing systematic process that encourages head nurses to learn from practice and manage the quality of care by empowering themselves and nurses to take responsibility for leadership.

The small accounting practice, despite being the most numerous part of the profession by number of firms, remains largely under-researched. Part of the reason the small practice category remains elusive is that researchers find it difficult to precisely define the object to study, and yet, this may be precisely the reason for studying it. Envisaging how this category is “represented” in institutionalized settings, constitutes a rich agenda for future research as it allows the small practitioner world to be connected to the issue of intra-professional segmentation. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper proposes reinvigorating research around Bucher and Strauss’ (1961) conceptualization of professions as “segments in movement”. At the same time as advocating a better investigation of the small practitioner segment itself, it suggests to take the latter as an example to further explore the vision of professions as segments “more or less delicately held together”. To this end, there is a potential for cross-fertilization between Bucher and Strauss’ research programme and a range of other theoretical frameworks.

The discussion points towards how small practice, as a segment whose history and characteristics reflect the different struggles that have led to the creation of the professional accounting body and marked its subsequent evolution, is far from insignificant. Segmenting the profession in categories related to “size” offers an opportunity to deal with an under-investigated aspect of professions’ sociology and history, which encapsulates its inherent diversity and hierarchy. Whilst the professional body may replicate the hierarchy that structures broader society, the meaning of small itself, within a hierarchy of organizations, is also a relative concept. It is politically charged, and must be delicately managed in order to maintain harmony within the polarized professional space.

The small practitioner has been much overlooked in the accounting literature, and the literature on the professions has overemphasized aspects of its cohesiveness. The authors contribute a revitalized agenda for researchers to explore the dynamics of heterogeneity and unity in the professional body, by focusing a lens on the small practice and extending the “segments in movements” premise beyond the functional division of professions.

Professional work is facing significant forces for change which, as suggested by futurists, threaten the dominance of professionals in our lives. The paper examines the extent to which professional associations in the UK are responding to changes and preparing their members for the future. The nature of professional power and status is explored before an analysis of findings is presented. It is argued that while many professional associations have begun discussions about their plans for the future, a more purposeful and strategic approach is required, based on a re‐view of their status as learned societies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the way gender may be used as an instrument to avoid New Public Management (NPM) potential processes of deprofessionalisation in nursing.

In total, 83 nurses with managerial duties were interviewed in autonomous and corporate public hospitals in Portugal.

Nurses used gender as an argument to legitimate their presence in management, and in this way, to keep their control over the profession. Gender stereotypes were used to legitimate their position in two different ways. Firstly, nurses reproduced and reinforced gendered inequality by supporting their male colleagues careers. Secondly, they valorised their feminine skills sustaining that women were in better position to manage hospitals as an extended role from the private domain.

The paper uses a sample from only one country and care must be taken when extrapolating conclusions to the wider population.

Acknowledges the way NPM reinforces gender stereotypes and contributes to redefine professionalism.

Recognition of the complexity and diversity of gender issues in the organisational context and in the structuration of professional legitimacy.

The new “agenda of choice” in public services emphasises service users' needs and agency. The ideals of consumerism and user involvement have set new challenges for professionals. This paper aims to explore the effects of consumerism and user involvement at the level of day‐to‐day service delivery, looking at the encounters between professionals and service users.

The paper applies an ethnographic approach. Observation data were collected at two Finnish drug treatment institutions: a needle exchange and health counselling service, and a specialised maternity clinic for pregnant women. Data from each institution consist of seven to 12 months of participant observation notes, which were subsequently systematically coded and analysed comparing the two institutions.

The promotion of new ideals does not automatically result in the empowerment of service users or the erosion of professional power. The two institutions differ greatly: institutional context and gender shape the everyday realisation of the new ideals. In both institutions, however, professionals have adopted new practices and rethought their role. The cultivation of service users' choice and agency can become valuable professional capital, a new kind of “know how” that can also be used by the professionals to justify the importance of their work.

The paper provides a nuanced and contextualised insight into “how” the ideals of consumerism and user involvement are translated into everyday encounters between service providers and users.

This paper considers the notion of consumer empowerment across the financial, legal and medical service sectors in the UK. Although the advent of the internet is generally seen as potentially enabling consumer empowerment, theoretical papers divide on the question of efficacy. On the one hand, it is argued the much‐vaunted internet opportunity must not be simply taken as evidence of change in the consumer‐producer relationship. On the other the change must not be unquestioningly be taken as advantageous to the consumer.

Empirical data were generated through ten consumer focus groups and eight interviews with professionals.

The paper supports the contention that empowerment is partial and unevenly distributed among consumers. It is argued that characterisations of consumer indifference and producer discipline as preventing effective empowerment are too simplistic. Additionally, any taboo restraining the questioning of professional judgement is largely absent from the assumption of choice and of recognition/respect among the consumers participating in the research.

Focus group research does not enable a judgement about the prevalence or distribution of empowerment assumptions among consumers.

It is inevitable that in the broader consumer market professionals will be required to respond to a complex of consumer assumptions and these will include an assumption of empowerment.

Much of the services research in marketing has been set within the service recovery paradigm; given information, consumer power is an implied function of the market. In this paper, we see consumer empowerment as a process of negotiation partially facilitated by information.

Examines the role of the personnel function in the selection of doctors. Reveals a “clerk of works” role, marginal to the decision‐making process. Considers the implications of such a role for effective and fair selection practice. Develops a model of “weak” personnel management which illustrates the factors limiting the power and influence of personnel specialists, both in recruitment and in other areas. Considers the impact of an interface with professional staff on the nature of personnel roles.

This chapter explores archetypal change in the context of professional service firms. To understand recent and ongoing changes in professional service firms, we briefly show how the professional archetype has evolved since the 1960s. We then present four theoretical models to describe processes by which institutionalized archetypes can change, and possibly coexist in the same field. Three professional archetypes are described, each in the context of historical development and the change model described earlier. At the one extreme is the traditional professional partnership; at the other the larger, multidisciplinary, corporate, global professional network, or GPN; in between is the “Star” form – relatively specialized, flatter structure, resisting significant growth, with fixations on excellence, and being the leader in a professional niche.