‘Putting on a Professional Performance’: Performativity, Subversion and Project Management

In contrast to the traditional view of professionalism as a position of significant status and autonomy, hard-earned and jealously guarded by occupational groups, critical perspectives have emphasized how professions act as ‘the institutionalised form of the control of occupations’ (Johnson, 1972: 38), enacting the ‘responsibilization’ (Grey, 1997) of expert labour. In this paper, I examine the complexity of employee responses to professionalization initiatives in light of work that develops a broader understanding of non-conformity in the face of similar disciplinary practices in the contemporary workplace (Kondo, 1990; Kunda, 1992; Fleming and Sewell, 2002; Collinson, 2003). I do so by relating Judith Butler’s concept of ‘performativity’ to an analysis of the professionalization of a particular sub-discipline of management: project management. I argue that performativity provides insight into the simultaneous attraction, insecurity and antipathy that professionalization arouses in employees, and offers a persuasive account of the potential of parody to subvert professionalization initiatives.