Professions have long provided a dependable body of expertise that organisations have relied upon to fulfil goals. Issues around equality and diversity alongside challenges to expert knowledge in the neo-liberal era have created profound challenges for this type of worker, even while creating opportunities for newer varieties of expert labour to establish themselves as professionals.

This shortform book provides a critical synthesis of the current state of the field from an international perspective. It highlights the key opportunities and challenges for the professions and professionalism within both the public and private sectors as a field of research, practice and policy. The first half of the book deals with the comparative history, theories and inequalities of the professions. This provides a basis for our understanding of how the professions have had to adapt and how governance, management and leadership have come to shape the emerging and evolving models of professions and professionalism. The book draws on case studies and through its analysis illustrates the organisational and sociological dimensions of the field.

This book will be of interest to scholars, academics and students in the fields of business, management and sociology, especially those conducting research and studies around the professions and professionalism.

"The book presents an overview of the field of professions and professionalism which is succinct yet remarkably comprehensive. As such, it offers a much-needed entry-point for researchers and students which should demystify the field and also, I hope, provoke further research in an era when knowledge and expertise face unprecedented challenges" Damian E Hodgson, University of Sheffield, UK

Mike Dent is Professor in the School of Justice, Security and Sustainability at Staffordshire University, UK.