دانلود رایگان مقاله عرصه بدن حرفه ای: ورزش، استقلال و جاه طلبی در شرکت های خدمات حرفه ای

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the interplay of sport, the professional body and the self in professional service firms. We draw on qualitative data collected at two large international management consulting firms to show how individuals use sport to construct and enact themselves as autonomous and ambitious professionals, as well as to escape from frustrations arising in their everyday work life. We develop how this turn to sport can be viewed as an attempt to deal with the conflicting discourses of autonomy and ambition prevalent in professional service firms. In so doing, the paper seeks to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the significance of the professional body for understanding the management and control regimes of professional service firms.

6. Discussion

The empirical analysis has shown how sport in the two professional service firms we studied matters as a practice for constructing a professional body that is both ambitious and autonomous. Being a professional requires displaying and enacting a particular professional body performance and image. The discourse of professionalism includes elements that mobilize the disciplining of the professional body towards one that is fit, enduring and skillfully performed. This article has suggested that sport discourses and practices are central here. Sport is directly concerned with the disciplining of the professional body as it carries an array of connotations, such as fitness, strength, challenge, competition and performance. Through sport the professional body can become a marker of and is marked by the discourse of professionalism. This explains both why professional service firms, such as LunaCon and ConsultStar, appear so interested and supportive of the sport activities of their members, and why professional workers themselves turn to sport, which allows them to enact and spell out their professional selves with their own bodies. Interestingly, our empirical analysis has also shown that professionals understand their turn to sport in a different manner, namely as a way to escape from the professional service work environment. Here, sport is not only considered as a legitimate excuse to leave work early, but also as a way of coping with the frustrations arising from the high-pressure work environment. It is in exercising that the consultants felt to be regaining a sense of autonomy, one that is constantly compromised by the pressures of everyday work life.