On being a professional in a "Big Six" firm

Material from an extensive qualitative case study of a "Big Six" firm is used to argue that being a professional in the firm is understood - by professionals themselves - as being more to do with ways of conducting oneself than with possession of technical knowledge or being certified to practise. Using documentary and interview materials, the complexities and tensions of these ways of conducting oneself are explored, as is their relationship to issues of fairness, physical appearance, gender, sexuality and hierarchy. The operation of concepts of the "firm type" and "the client" in mediating some of the tensions and paradoxes of being a professional are also explored. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.