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Sub-theme 27: Inequality and the (Un)changing Rules of Professional Life and Work - [Hybrid]

Convenors:
Stefanie Gustafsson
University of Bath, UK
Sumati Ahuja
University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Andrew Sturdy
University of Bristol, UK

Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

Professions are pillars of modern societies, organizing knowledge, status, and social relationships across various sectors (Abbott, 1988). They help structure who is recognized as an expert, who gains access to resources, and whose voice carries authority in shaping organizational futures. Professional work can offer a pathway to upward mobility, act as a resource for identity work, and carry moral purpose (Ramarajan & Yen, 2024). Yet, professions also embody systems of exclusion and power. Their boundaries are protected by formal licensing regimes, credentialing, and cultural codes that define competence, appropriate demeanor, and social belonging (Karunakaran, 2022).

These mechanisms create opportunity but also sustain inequality. Gender, class, ethnicity, and geography still shape who plays and who succeeds in professional life (Ahuja & Weatherall, 2022; Ashley et al., 2023; Cameran et al., 2025). For example, studies show that women and minority professionals contend with various forms of exclusion, from informal networks to cultural norms of professionalism that mask bias (Ahuja & Weatherall, 2025; Haynes, 2012; Tomlinson et al., 2018). Professional hierarchies also extend globally, as elite firms and institutions in the cities of the Global North dominate knowledge production and professional standards (Boussebaa, 2015). Professions are thereby entwined in the reproduction of privilege and unequal opportunities, even as they claim meritocratic ideals and commitment to EDI agendas (Clarke et al., 2024).

However, the conditions of professional work are changing. Disruption from digital technologies, including Generative AI, and new ways of working are (re)shaping professional life and futures (Faulconbridge et al., 2025; Pemer & Werr, 2025; Rahman, 2024). As the arenas of professional work shift, so do the rules of participation and success where professionals are experimenting with alternative ways of working. Across sectors, professionals are questioning historic hierarchies and inventing new principles of collaboration, work-life balance, and social responsibility (Noury et al., 2017). Feminist consulting, sustainable client practices, and community-based law illustrate efforts to reshape professional work in more caring, responsible, and equal ways (Blanchard, 2021). Through experimentation, such practices have the potential to challenge traditional rules and invite new ways of understanding professionals and their work, as activists for example (Hug et al., 2025; Sturdy, 2025). These emerging forms may also be modes of resistance and reimagination.

The metaphor of “the game” captures the structured yet dynamic nature of professional life. It draws attention to the implicit rules, tacit skills, power plays, and performances that define belonging in professional groups. Who sets the rules and whose interests do they serve? Can professionals rewrite them to create fairer, more caring, and more sustainable forms of work? In the context of uncertainty, political polarization, and technological change, professions are renegotiating both their legitimacy and their rules of operation (Reed & Reed, 2022). Understanding how professionals navigate, contest, reinvent, or reproduce the rules of their game has the possibility to offer new insight into the evolving nature of professional work, careers, and identities.

We invite conceptual and empirical contributions that explore how professional life is organized, what its shifting rules reveal about inequality, and how professionals and policy makers might reshape their worlds for more (or less) equitable futures for us all.

Some possible questions include:

  • How do professions organize exclusion through formal rules and informal games of belonging? In what ways do professionals and those aspiring to become professionals learn or subvert the rules of the game?

  • How do digitalization, AI, and globalization transform the nature of expertise, status, and success in professional organizations and work?

  • Who governs the rules of professional conduct and accountability in an era of disruption and a “crisis of expertise”? What happens when the rules themselves become contested or unstable?

  • How can professions open up space for experimenting with new professional identities and practices? When does play enable inclusion, and when does it reproduce inequality?

  • What happens to traditional career trajectories when professional work becomes fragmented or temporary? How do early-career professionals navigate changing professional games?

  • What alternative professional practices are emerging, from feminist and decolonial approaches to networked and community-based models of expertise, and how might they challenge dominant systems of power?

  • How should organizations and professions be governed to support more equitable work relations and more ethical services, nationally and globally?


References
  • Abbott, A. (1988). The system of professions: An essay on the division of expert labor. The University of Chicago Press.
  • Ahuja, S., & Weatherall, R. (2022). “This boys club world is finally getting to me”: Developing our glass consciousness to understand women’s experiences in elite architecture firms. Gender, Work & Organization, 30(3), 826–841. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12921
  • Ahuja, S., & Weatherall, R. (2025). Space and (in)visibility practices in elite architecture firms in Australia. Journal of Professions and Organization, 12(3). https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joaf004
  • Ashley, L., Boussebaa, M., Friedman, S., Harrington, B., Heusinkveld, S., Gustafsson, S., & Muzio, D. (2023). Professions and inequality: Challenges, controversies, and opportunities. Journal of Professions and Organization, 10(1), 80–98.
  • Blanchard, S. (2021). Feminism through the market? A study of gender-equality consulting in France. Gender, Work & Organization, 29(2), 443–465. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12770
  • Boussebaa, M. (2015). Professional service firms, globalisation and the new imperialism. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 28(8), 1217–1233. https://doi.org/10.1108/aaaj-03-2015-1986
  • Cameran, M., Campa, D., Gabbioneta, C., & Pettinicchio, A. (2025). Do ethnic minority audit partners face discrimination? Evidence from the Australian audit market. Journal of Accounting, Auditing & Finance, 40(4), 1583–1612.
  • Clarke, J., Hurst, C., & Tomlinson, J. (2024). Maintaining the meritocracy myth: A critical discourse analytic study of leaders’ talk about merit and gender in academia. Organization Studies, 45(5), 635–660.
  • Faulconbridge, J., Sarwar, A., & Spring, M. (2025). How professionals adapt to artificial intelligence: The role of intertwined boundary work. Journal of Management Studies, 62(5), 1991–2024.
  • Haynes, K. (2012). Body beautiful? Gender, identity and the body in professional service firms. Gender, Work & Organization, 19(5), 489–507.
  • Hug, K., Chudzikowski, K., & Gustafsson, S. (2025). Navigating professional careers and internal activism: A Bourdieusian lens. Academy of Management Proceedings, 2025(1), Article 11432.
  • Karunakaran, A. (2022). Status–authority asymmetry between professions: The case of 911 dispatchers and police officers. Administrative Science Quarterly, 67(2), 423–468.
  • Noury, L., Gand, S., & Sardas, J.-C. (2017). Tackling the work-life balance challenge in professional service firms: The impact of projects, organizing, and service characteristics. Journal of Professions and Organization, 4(2), 149–178.
  • Pemer, F., & Werr, A. (2025). Defusing digital disruption through creative accumulation: Technology-induced innovation in professional service firms. Journal of Management Studies, 62(5), 1945–1990.
  • Rahman, H. (2024). Inside the invisible cage: How algorithms control workers. University of California Press.
  • Ramarajan, L., & Yen, J. (2024). Defining who you are by whom you serve? Strategies for prosocial–professional identity integration with clients. Administrative Science Quarterly, 69(2), 515–567.
  • Reed, C., & Reed, M. (2022). Expert authority in crisis: Making authority real through struggle. Organization Theory, 3(4), Article 26317877221131587.
  • Sturdy, A. J. (2025). Responsible management consultancy? Implications for critique. Academy of Management Proceedings, 2025(1). https://doi.org/10.5465/AMPROC.2025.55bp
  • Tomlinson, J., Valizade, D., Muzio, D., Charlwood, A., & Aulakh, S. (2018). Privileges and penalties in the legal profession: An intersectional analysis of career progression. The British Journal of Sociology, 70(3), 1043–1066. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12375



Stefanie Gustafsson is Associate Professor at the School of Management at the University of Bath, UK. Her work focuses on the experiences of professionals and their careers, those working at the margins of elite professional institutions and professional change. Her research has been published in journals such as 'Organization Studies', 'Human Relations' and 'Journal of Vocational Behaviour'.
Sumati Ahuja is Associate Professor of Management at University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. Her research focuses on contemporary transformations of professional work and organizations, as well as the experiences of professional workers. Her research has been published in journals such as 'Journal of Management Studies', 'Organization' and 'Journal of Professions and Organization'.
Andrew Sturdy is Professor of Management and Organisation at the University of Bristol, UK. He has a research and policy interest in the use and governance of management consultancy and professions more widely. He is a co-editor of the 'Oxford Handbook of Management Ideas'.