Professional closure regimes in the global age: The boundary work of professional services specializing in mergers and acquisitions

Contemporary transnational professional service firms are challenging the traditional models of professions by highlighting new forms of professional closure. The professionalism these firms claim to embody is not legally recognized nor certified by nation states, and does not guarantee the professionals any monopoly on their activities. The present article contributes to this line of research, dealing with the issue of closure regimes rescaled by transnational professional service firms. By critically engaging with Abbott’s insights, it examines a kind of closure regime based on the boundary work performed by global professions at a transnational level to delineate their jurisdictions, defend them against outsiders, and legitimize their monopolies. To analyse this boundary work, the article investigates a transnational professional service in the financial merger and acquisition (M&A) area. A major empirical investigation of M&A services in Paris, London, and New York highlights that the kind of closure regime used by M&A professional service firms relies on boundaries that are more normative than legal. To establish its jurisdiction, this global profession performs threefold boundary work: First, it gains recognition of symbolic and social boundaries through the establishment of sophisticated knowledge certified by impersonal judgement devices (rankings). Secondly, it shapes and masters a professional ethos to strengthen these boundaries. Thirdly, it relies on an exclusionary process based on its professional knowledge and ethos to populate the ecology of clients with former M&A professionals, who are already convinced of the legitimacy of the profession and participate in the reinforcement of the boundaries. The article concludes with contributions to, and implications for, the transnational sociology of professions literature.