Accomplish change or causing hesitance - Developing practices in professional service firms

•We study a professional service firm using interviews and correspondence analysis.•We distinguish between professional and management practices.•Managers can change management practices without consideration to professionals.•Professionals can change professional practices without consideration to managers.•Managers changing professional practices, however, must negotiate with the professionals.

The scholarly proclaimed truce between professionals and managers in professional service firms (PSFs) is presently being threatened by changes in the business environment, calling for coordination superordinate to the single professions. The issue of managing professionals in PSFs consequently needs to be re-addressed. We do so by using correspondence analysis to explore the interrelatedness between change initiatives and responses to these changes, in an interview-based case study. Our results suggests that managers can successfully change management related practices without particular consideration of the professionals in the firm, but also that professionals can successfully change professional practices in an unassuming and “practice-like” fashion: with actions rather than with words. Managers who wish to change professional practices, however, need to negotiate the content, scope and purpose of the change initiative with the professionals in the firm.