Chapter 3: Professionals’ Attempts to Manage Uncertainties and De-professionalization: The Case of Italian Accountants

Image and identity are critical aspects for professionals’ life and work, but what do professionals do in order to reach, hold on to, repair, or give up their identities?

We have deepened these issues in the first chapter of this book where, taking a broader perspective on all the types of professions, we highlighted possible coping strategies and behaviours as responses to identity threats. Also, the second chapter focused on three specific phenomena of great interest (de-professionalization, precarization, and proletarianization) as numerous factors, such as persisting economic recession, automation generated by technological advancements, and increased competition, are profoundly transforming the nature of professionals’ work, creating new threats and challenges for them who witness a deep transformation of their work.