– The purpose of this paper is to address the decreasing role of professional associations in governing the work of entrepreneurial, knowledge-intensive professions such as management consulting. It presents the example of an alternative path to traditional professional regulation. This organic professionalization path is introduced through the concept of dispersed institutional entrepreneurship.
– The paper builds on an in-depth qualitative investigation of professionals in the intercultural industry combining physical and digital ethnography in a multi-modal investigation.
– The findings illustrate how an ideological divide within the professional community prevents an emergence of the traditional, association-led professionalization path. Instead, the investigated community follows an organic, bottom-up route, with competing individual entrepreneurs developing converging strategies and products. This process is labelled dispersed institutional entrepreneurship.
– The findings indicate that current views on professionalization need to reconsider admission criteria and the professionalization paths that are generally assumed. Further research could focus on investigating organic professionalization paths among other professional groups.
– With an in-depth qualitative investigation of an aspiring professional community this paper contributes to an ongoing discussion on the process of professionalization. The findings show that independent agents’ efforts could be at the centre of the process. They can prevent the professional association from leading the professionalization project while enabling the organic development of synergies across the community.
