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This paper aims to provide a synthesis of theoretical and empirical work related to the professionalization of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from a knowledge-based perspective.

A systematic literature review consisting of three major steps of planning, conducting and reporting is conducted. Papers are identified, selected and deductively coded. Quantitative and qualitative methods are used to analyze the papers. The finalized list includes 78 papers and 48 journals, with the oldest paper published in 1980 and the most recent papers published in 2022.

The findings showed that the empirical works (n = 69) outnumbered the conceptual works (n = 9). Most papers focused on the organizational level of analysis and identified causal conditions, modes, intervening conditions and consequences. A multidimensional characteristic of professionalization emerged inductively as an additional attribute.

This paper provides a synthesis of the current literature and offers a research agenda to academics and practitioners interested in the professionalization of SMEs from a knowledge-based perspective.

The purpose of this research is to study the influence of professionalization on Moroccan family businesses and the challenges that hinder its success.

The design is based on exploratory qualitative approach based on semi-directive interviews with 15 CEOs of unlisted Moroccan family businesses to gain a better understanding of CEOs' perceptions of management professionalization.

This research work gives rise to a result that professionalization helps family businesses cope with their competitive environment, improve the quality of strategic decisions and thus increase their performance. However, successful professionalization process requires certain cognitive, managerial, cultural and emotional skills that allow the overcoming of socio-emotional barriers and guarantee the efficacious implementation of change.

This paper guarantees the identification of the mechanisms to be put in place to overcome the challenges that prevent the success of this professionalization by implementing a new professional culture inspired by family values and standards while respecting the conditions of economic profitability.

The originality of this paper lies in the analysis of the influence of professionalization on the family businesses' in the Moroccan context and the proposal of professionalization tracks to align with market requirements and strengthen the competitiveness of the company. Thus, this paper guarantees the identification of the mechanisms to be put in place to overcome the challenges that prevent the success of this professionalization by implementing a new professional culture inspired by family values and standards while respecting the conditions of economic profitability.

The first purpose of this study is to respond to Matthews’ (2017) criticisms of Larson's (1977) professional project and accounting historians' past use of Larson (1977) when researching public accountancy professionalization. The second purpose is to use the response to Matthews (2017) as the foundation to construct a model of socio-economic closures of potential use for research and study.

In order to respond to Matthews (2017), the study provides an interpretive review of Larson (1977) and analyses historical professionalization research published in leading accounting journals over three decades. The review and response, together with prior theory contributions, form the foundation for the proposed model of closures.

Matthews’ (2017) criticisms of Larson (1977) and accounting historians' past use of Larson (1977) are, with some exceptions, not well-founded. Larson's (1977) professional project is an ideal model of professionalization and has been used appropriately by accounting historians to introduce and explain rather than a model or test public accountancy professionalization. The analyzed data from research journals are consistent with Larson (1977) in terms of identifiable historical phases of and specific closures actions in the professionalization process.

The study analyses peer-reviewed studies in selected accounting research journals over a defined period.

The study provides a nuanced review of Larson (1977), clarifies evidence of the past use of Larson (1977) by accounting historians, challenges criticism of this use, identifies primary research that focuses on socio-economic closures and proposes a model of such closures for future research and study.

The study contains a comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed research of public accountancy professionalization and proposes a model of closures inductively derived from empirical evidence and prior theoretical contributions.

Although it has been implicitly or explicitly assumed that family business professionalization is indeed a multidimensional construct, there has been a tendency to confine it to the employment of nonfamily managers and delegating authority in academic research. Dekker et al. (2013) have made an impressive work in untangling the multidimensional structure of family business professionalization. This paper aims to introduce a more comprehensive multidimensional approach and a framework to understand and study family business professionalization by identifying additional dimensions.

The conceptual framework relies on insights derived from the literature on family business professionalization, occupational professionalism and organizational professionalism to reveal the broader multidimensionality of family business professionalization.

The proposed framework extends the definition of family business professionalization and offers additional dimensions which were grouped under five overarching headings: professionalization of management, professionalization of organizational structure, processes and operations, professionalization of family's relationship with business, professionalization of employees and professionalization of work environment and culture.

This paper contributes to the literature by providing a wider approach for the understanding of family business professionalization. It presents a new way of thinking about family business professionalization, underlining the importance of employees and organizational culture for the professionalization process in family firms.

The purpose of this paper is to address the decreasing role of professional associations in governing the work of entrepreneurial, knowledge-intensive professions such as management consulting. It presents the example of an alternative path to traditional professional regulation. This organic professionalization path is introduced through the concept of dispersed institutional entrepreneurship.

The paper builds on an in-depth qualitative investigation of professionals in the intercultural industry combining physical and digital ethnography in a multi-modal investigation.

The findings illustrate how an ideological divide within the professional community prevents an emergence of the traditional, association-led professionalization path. Instead, the investigated community follows an organic, bottom-up route, with competing individual entrepreneurs developing converging strategies and products. This process is labelled dispersed institutional entrepreneurship.

The findings indicate that current views on professionalization need to reconsider admission criteria and the professionalization paths that are generally assumed. Further research could focus on investigating organic professionalization paths among other professional groups.

With an in-depth qualitative investigation of an aspiring professional community this paper contributes to an ongoing discussion on the process of professionalization. The findings show that independent agents’ efforts could be at the centre of the process. They can prevent the professional association from leading the professionalization project while enabling the organic development of synergies across the community.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether sheltered employment centers (CEEs) which have a higher rate of professionalization of their managers have better economic returns than those that have a lower one.

A questionnaire has been drawn up for their managers. After collecting the answers, an index of professionalization classifies the CEEs with managers of high, medium and low levels of professionalism. This index is then correlated with the main financial ratios of companies.

The results show that companies with the highest level of managers’ professionalization, on average, have higher economic returns than companies with medium and low rates, although the difference is not very high. This study is an important contribution to academic literature, as it is the first to examine the professionalization of CEE managers.

Finally, this paper is not short of limitations. The number of responses is small but there are similar studies with similar response rates. Additionally, the scarcity of responses may suggest that there is a lack of interest about the utility of professionalization by some CEEs managers because, perhaps, they do not have the necessary competences to understand its importance in management.

This study has some main implications for stakeholders: first, CEEs must pay more attention to the professionalization of their management team, because professionalization can lead to meeting its goals and guaranteeing the firm’s growth. Second, training programs in skills and attitudes should be designed to strengthen these competencies. Moreover, managers of social firms should know that the establishment of strategic plans will be useful to identify new opportunities in the market.

Given the important role of these social firms for the employment of people with disabilities, training programs should be promoted by government in order to ensure the professionalization of these companies.

This research is an important contribution to the literature on this subject because there are no studies about the level of professionalization of CEEs, companies that represent an important value for the economy of a country.

This study aims to broaden the multidimensional conceptualization of family business professionalization, and to investigate how professionalization influences the financial performance of family firms, in the context of private family firms.

Taking a quantitative research approach, the study empirically examines the effect of professionalization on family firm performance, using a sample of 111 privately held Turkish family firms. The hypotheses were tested using regression analysis and the independent samples t-test.

The results indicate that the professionalization of family businesses has a positive effect on their financial performance, and the professionalization of employees is the prominent dimension of professionalization in this effect.

This study advances the understanding of how professionalization influences family firm performance by providing additional empirical evidence regarding the positive influence of multifaceted family business professionalization on financial performance.

The professionalization framework depicted in this study helps owners, managers, or consultants of family businesses assess the professionalization level of their firm and understand the performance effects of each of the family business professionalization dimensions on financial performance. It can also serve as a roadmap for family firms to professionalize and achieve better performance.

Unlike previous studies, this study incorporates employees, organizational culture and work environment, often neglected in the family business literature, into the multidimensional family business professionalization construct, thus extending previous research. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of the relationship between family businesses professionalization and firm performance.

The purpose of this paper is to identify types of professionalization in Swiss national sport federations (NSFs) and analyze organizational characteristics associated with specific types of professionalization. Such types reveal common patterns among the increasingly complex organizational designs of NSFs and thus contribute to the understanding of professionalization in NSFs.

An online survey of all Swiss NSFs was conducted to identify types of professionalization in these organizations using hierarchical cluster analysis, based on a multi-dimensional framework of professionalization.

The analysis revealed four types of professionalization: formalized NSFs managed by paid staff, NSFs managed by volunteers and a few paid staff off the field, NSFs with differing formalization and paid staff on the field, and moderately formalized NSFs managed by volunteers. The types differ in terms of the NSFs’ organizational characteristics, in particular, size, financial resources, Olympic status, and performance.

Applying factor and cluster analysis is a new approach to analyzing professionalization in NSFs that makes uncovering distinctive organizational patterns among a large number of NSFs possible. These results lay the foundation for understanding the professionalization of NSFs, counseling NSFs on their organizational development, and conducting future research on the design types of sport organizations.

This paper aims to provide empirical evidence of the association between audit committee characteristics and internal audit quality through internal audit professionalization.

The investigation of the research question was based on 45 usable responses that were received from a survey of chief audit executives from firms listed on the Athens Stock Exchange and combined with publicly available information from annual reports.

The results indicate that audit committee characteristics (independence, diligence through frequent meetings and interaction with internal audit through valuation) influence internal audit professionalization. In addition, they demonstrate that internal audit professionalization is also influenced by CEO duality and firm’s external auditor.

The findings of this study have implications for audit committees wishing to improve their overall effectiveness, by identifying areas with substantial impact on internal audit quality. Moreover, regulators of corporate governance bodies can also benefit from the results to strengthen audit committee’s efficiency regarding internal audit function oversight.

The results add to the literature on the discussion of internal audit professionalization and complement the work of other researchers in the field of audit committee’s impact on internal audit quality/effectiveness. This study attempts to fill a gap in the literature on the effect of audit committee characteristics on internal audit professionalization, an element introduced from an institutional theory perspective.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to assess the impact of the 1999 Special Issue on Professionalization in Asia in the Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal (AAAJ); and second, more generally to review research on this topic post-1999.

The paper starts with a discussion of the research articles of the Special Issue. It then identifies research that has cited papers in the Special Issue and which focusses on professionalization in Asia to identify relevant subsequent research. In addition, a literature search is conducted to locate post-1999 work that has not cited papers from the Special Issue but has investigated the same topic area. Analyzing both sets of work enables an integrated review of the field and aids the identification of future research opportunities. The study covers published research articles and books on professionalization projects in Asia from 1999 to 2018. In this paper, reference to Asia focusses on East Asia (including countries such as China and Japan), South Asia (including countries such as Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka), and South East Asia (including countries such as Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam). Given the elapsed time of near 20 years, there has been sufficient time for research to be published. Therefore, the review focusses on published output only and does not discuss unpublished theses, conference proceedings nor working papers.

First, the Special Issue of AAAJ in 1999 generally adopted a critical lens and studied professionalization as projects of market closure and collective mobility. The corporatist framework of Puxty et al. (1987) provided a useful framing to analyze the influence of states, markets and communities on professionalization. Second, the Special Issue has helped to spur interest in understanding professionalization in the region. Post-1999, there are studies of countries not covered in the Special Issue. Third, the themes identified in the Special Issue continue to be relevant and are examined in post-1999 work: the active role of the state, the legacies of colonization, the activities of transnational accounting bodies; and to a lesser degree, the influence of transnational accounting firms. Finally, future research could usefully focus on: the distinctive and more expansive role of Asian state agencies; the conduct of deeper comparative research; the role of accounting firms in the region; and the impact of transnational agencies such as the International Federation of Accountants and the World Bank.

There are three limitations. First, the review of literature omits unpublished research such as PhD theses and working papers. Second, it focusses only on research published in English. As a result, some work may be excluded. Third, it assesses the contribution of a single issue (i.e. the 1999 AAAJ Special Issue) and does not discuss work that preceded 1999.

This paper is aimed at assessing the impact of the 1999 Special Issue but also presents a wide-ranging analytical review of published research on accounting professionalization in Asia since 1999. The paper identifies several areas for future research and proposes a modified model of state-market-community-profession relations. In particular, the paper emphasizes the large and distinctive roles of Asian state agencies and the activities of transnational actors (both those within the profession as well as those that are external).