Chapter 14: Intervening in Small Professional Enterprises: Enhancing Management Quality in French Notary Publics

In France, there are approximately 600,000 professional offices employing over 1 million people. All of these businesses are managed by someone holding a state-recognized qualification in a particular field of expertise and who bills fees for the services provided. Most of these companies are very small enterprises (VSEs) with less than 10 employees. These professional offices are also very diverse in terms of the expertise they offer, ranging from health care professionals (e.g., doctors, pharmacists, dentists) to legal representatives (e.g., lawyers, notary publics, bailiffs). Although these professions wield significant economic, social and political power in France and Europe, little academic or consulting-related research has been done on the management needs of these professional offices, beyond that required for any type of VSE (a notable exception is Maister, 1993, 1997). Similarly, university career paths leading to these professions offer little in the way of management training, as if it were unnecessary for a professional office to be managed at all (Altman & Weil, 1996; Boutall & Blackburn, 1998).