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.
