Tutorial Debate

In order to understand the topic in a better way we need to make a brief explanation about the archetype of a Professional Service Firm. The archetype concept has recently been used to explain change in professional organizations, for example, accounting, architects, hospitals, and law firms. So, an organizational archetype is ‘‘the set of structures and systems that reflects a single interpretive scheme.’’

We think that identifying organizational archetypes is an important step in understanding patterns of organizational change, because although individual organizations may try to adopt new structures and systems from time to time, sustaining that change in the face of an unchanging organizational archetype is likely to be very difficult. For this reason, it is suggested that students of organizational change need to be aware that not all change efforts succeed; and that there are multiple change tracks. Some organizations fail to sustain their change momentum and revert to their prior states, because the latter are more consistent with the archetype; others get caught between the original and an emergent archetype in an apparently confusing state. Changing the archetype itself is very difficult as it reflects deeply held beliefs and values about how organizations should be structured and operated.

So what can we conclude about the state of our current understanding?

We think that more research needs to be done on the way professional fields are being restructured, the emergence of new occupational groupings, the development of new organizational forms, and changes in organizational-professional relationships.

The profession may be increasingly attentive to its own management but this is a by-product of the reorganisation of the profession, itself undertaken by the professional elites in pursuit of their own advantage. There is little evidence here of the development of an autonomous managerial organization. On the contrary, there is every indication that the...