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Professional Regulatory Entanglement 
The Curious Case of Project Management in Italy 
 
Abstract 
Growth in the internationalization of economic activity has favoured an increase in institutional control at a 
supranational level. A typical example of such institutions that wield this control are corporate professions such 
as Project Management. Attempting to replicate the successful strategies of the collegial professions but 
embracing advantages presented by global markets, corporate professions are confronted by the dilemma of how 
to reconcile the demands of stakeholders at both national and global levels.  
This research investigates an international corporate profession, Project Management, and its development within 
Italy using a historical case study. Results shows an increase in the number of regulations faced by international 
corporate professions as they attempt to satisfy a number of different institutions (and their competing agendas) 
while attempting to colonize a national context. This we define as ‘professional regulatory entanglement’.  
It concludes that what was once a simple bargain involving two actors, the state and the profession, with a long 
established, commonly agreed and mutually beneficial agenda is now a much more complex system involving 
multiple actors and a number of competing agendas and this results in the homogenisation of professional practice 
across the globe. 
Keywords 
Corporate profession, professional regulatory entanglement, project management, supranational institutions, 
professionalization. 
 
 
  
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Introduction 
The intensification of international competition, in the last 30 years, and the growing internationalization of 
economic activity has favoured the increase in forms and instances of economic control at supra/inter-national 
level (Breitmeier, 2016; Chimni, 2017; Gronau & Schmidtke, 2016; Hodgson & Paton, 2015). This phenomenon 
has stimulated the growth of industrial coordination across borders driving convergence of previously separate 
management systems and institutions.  
Accompanying this has been the growth in one form of supranational institution: the corporate profession. 
Attempting to gain the legitimacy and profile that the collegial professions like medicine and law benefit from, 
several contemporary management occupational sub-disciplines are staging professionalization projects 
(Hodgson, 2007; Kipping et al., 2006; Sturdy et al., 2013; Thomas & Thomas, 2014). Though achieving mixed 
outcomes, HRM (Wright, 2008), strategy (Noordegraaf, 2011; Whittington et al., 1999), consulting (Collins & 
Butler, 2019; Sturdy, 2011), marketing (Enright, 2006; Walker & Child, 1979), and project management 
(Hodgson, 2002; Wideman, 1995) have all made clear moves towards professional self-organisation and the 
achievement of some form of professional recognition. While occupational legitimacy in the form of 
professionalization is desirable in itself, the wider practical benefits to global economic organisation that 
professional enclosure affords, such as standardisation of process and practice, and regulation of practitioner 
provision, are also attractive.  
However, the professionalization journeys of these managerial occupations are not straightforward (Brès et al., 
2019; Faulconbridge & Muzio, 2012; McKenna, 2007; Morris et al., 2000). The plurality of the context they 
inhabit (e.g. see Nicklich et al. (2020) for the German context) and most particularly the complexity of the 
international stakeholder environment brings a number of tensions, therefore new occupations “forge new ways 
of relating to their work, to their colleagues, to their clients, and to the organizations that increasingly dominate 
their working lives” (Gorman & Sandefur, 2011, p. 276). One such tension is that between, on one hand, the 
economic pressure to create a homogeneous global professional system by standardising process and practice 
across nations and, on the other, the cultural and regulatory pressures to create a more heterogeneous professional 
system by customising process and practice to the requirements of a specific national context.  
This problematic is evidenced most acutely in the Italian context where, rather than working primarily to fulfil 
market needs, the “professionalization projects are more likely to be coordinated from above by the visible hand 
of the state” (Sabini & Muzio, 2017, p. 833): a state whose approach to profession is characterised historically by 
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a binary divide between ‘regulated’ (established) - and ‘non-regulated’ (emerging) professions. Here the 
idiosyncratic relationships between stakeholders such as the agents of national Government and the public sector, 
professional associations, the European Union and the global corporations that draw on professional management 
services have heavily influenced, and in some cases obstructed, the development of the professions. Consequently, 
it is unclear how corporate professions navigate between the local and global contexts as they develop in their 
professionalization journeys.  
The capacity of local incumbent institutions to influence their context in presence of global challenger institutions 
is well-known in neo-institutional theory as ‘institutional thickness’ (Amin & Thrift, 1995). We argue the Italian 
‘institutional thickness’ in the professional context, is a necessary condition for the ‘professional regulatory 
entanglement’ to happen. 
One of the management sub-disciplines that has arguably been most successful in its international 
professionalization journey is project management (Hodgson et al., 2015). Though achieving many of the artefacts 
of professional status, such as standardised bodies of knowledge (see Morris et al., 2006) and a level of 
professional regulation, and while attaining a degree of coherence, the relationships between national institutions 
and those institutions that operate across national boundaries have made this journey problematic.  
The objective of this research is to characterise how the complex interplay1 between national and transnational 
stakeholders affected the evolution of this corporate profession and to understand what this case can tell us about 
corporate professions in general. This will be done by exploring how the Italian state regulates the project 
management profession. This understanding will inform future analysis of wider corporate professionalism as it 
develops globally. 
Our analysis highlights that the interweaving of multiple considerations drawn from multiple stakeholders active 
in the context combines to form a complex, and we would argue, suboptimal outcome for all parties. The result 
of these conflicting tensions is the production of ‘professional regulatory entanglement’ that we define as the 
increase in the number of regulations faced by international corporate professions when attempting to colonize a 
national context. The implication of this entanglement is the creation of a composite set of regulations that result 
from the necessary compromises made and this represents a suboptimal outcome for all parties.  
 
1 Here we define ‘complex interplay’ as the set of interactions national and international institutional actors have 
while pursuing their interests and implementing their agenda. 
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The contributions toward the debates on professionalization are (1) the acknowledgment that professionalization 
projects have become quite complex involving multiple actors with different and often competing agendas; (2) 
the homogenisation of professional practice at international level, and (3) the influence States (in State regulated 
contexts) is diminishing in favour of incumbent professional institutions maintaining their own influence. 
The article is organised as follows. First, we explore current understandings of corporate professions, (Kipping et 
al, 2006; Muzio et al, 2011; Paton et al, 2013), we then describe contemporary Project Management (PM) before 
focusing on its emergence as a case study example of a corporate profession. Then, by drawing on the historical 
case, we explore the dynamics of professionalization within the Italian context and present its defining 
characteristics.  
Literature Review – Professions and the State 
Corporate professionalism 
Original studies of professionalization were mainly conducted in Anglo-Saxon contexts and focused on the 
‘collegial’ professions of law and medicine (Macdonald, 1995). Initial work by Johnson (1972) noted that 
professionalism was defined not by the nature of any individual occupation but was characterised by a “peculiar 
type of occupational control” (1972, p.45). Traditionally, professionalization has two key aspects. First the 
regulation of production by producers, which refers to attempts to control how services are produced and 
consumed, and second the regulation of the production of producers which refers to attempts to regulate the 
production of professionals themselves (Abel, 1988). These aspects, in effect, represent a monopolisation strategy 
where an occupational group seeks to have exclusive authority over both an area of expertise (Murphy, 1988) and 
those that have the right of access to it. Here, right of access usually relies on a combination of mastery of a body 
of formal knowledge and completion of a period of vocational training whereupon the practitioner is then 
considered worthy to be admitted to the professional community. 
While professions are generally associated with ‘traditional’ occupations such as medicine and law, globalization, 
deregulation and the rise of large professional service firms in the late 20th century (Powell et al., 1999) and the 
appearance of new expert occupations (Fincham, 2012) have resulted more recently in a broader range of 
occupations such as Management Consultancy (Sturdy, 2011), Human Resource Management (Wright, 2008) and 
Project Management (Hodgson et al., 2015) seeking the benefits of professionalization. Though adopting the 
strategies of knowledge enclosure and control of access established by the collegial professions these, what have 
become known as, corporate professions (Kipping et al., 2006; Muzio et al., 2011; Paton et al., 2013; Thomas & 
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Thomas, 2014) differ from the collegial professions in that they are to a large extent reliant on corporations as 
consumers of their services. This close association with corporates provides corporate professions with three 
distinct features that differentiate them from collegial professions (Paton et al., 2013). 
First, corporate professions often offer organisational membership where companies are certified in exchange for 
their commitment to operate within professional codes of conduct. This differs from collegial professions where 
the main concern is with the individual practitioner. Second, corporate professions have developed enclosure 
mechanisms with more emphasis on competences and industry knowledge and experience’ (Muzio et al, 2011: 
451). This differs from collegial professions where the main emphasis is on mastery of a body of formal 
knowledge proven by traditional examination. Third, corporate professions display an inherently global dimension 
that reflects the nature of many of the firms and supply chains that use the services of these corporate professionals. 
This differs from collegial professions that are more often nationally bound. 
It has been argued that these features represent a form of, what has been termed, corporate capture (Paton et al., 
2013) and indicates corporate professionalism is increasingly weighted towards the interests of employer 
organisations at the expense of the individual practitioner. Indeed there is a tacit acknowledgement that 
corporations may now constitute the key sites and vehicles for this type of professionalization (Dacin et al., 2002; 
Suddaby et al., 2007).  
This symbiotic relationship, though diluting the independence of the practitioner and indeed the profession 
(Empson & Chapman, 2006; Faulconbridge & Muzio, 2008) from the employing organisation, offers in return a 
convenient and lucrative marketing opportunity as it provides professional associations a direct route to the 
significant number of potential recruits within these corporations. Similarly, although more firmly bound within 
the corporate model, the practitioner still enjoys, albeit enacted in a different way, the traditional professional 
benefits of some form of occupational enclosure and collective mobility. Furthermore, the global nature of multi-
national companies brings corporate professions mobility on a much larger scale than collegial professions have 
previously been accustomed to. 
Global Professionalism 
Globalization, operating mainly through the medium of international firms and supranational professional bodies, 
heavily influences the shape of corporate professionalism. It exerts a strong push for unification and 
standardization of professional activity across national boundaries (Faulconbridge and Muzio, 2008) while 
providing a larger market for professional services. Therefore, for global corporations and corporate professions, 
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the focus is very much on transcending the boundaries of the nation-state to develop transnational standards, 
qualifications and codes of practice. While this complicity is mutually beneficial, it to some extent ignores the 
longstanding involvement of nation-states in the development of professions. This involvement plays out along 
two dimensions.  
First, some professions, generally the collegial, emerged within nation-states developing specifically to fit that 
contextual niche. This trajectory led to identifiable degrees of difference in their practice when compared across 
separate countries. Therefore, the development of transnational governance regimes results in a process of 
homogenization where different forms of each profession found within separate countries are forced to harmonise 
as they venture internationally. There are other outcomes though. Research carried out within the EU indicated 
that due to expedience, the more practical outcome is that “professional institutions within individual member 
states have to tolerate practitioners who have not necessarily been trained in the ways required for the 
achievement of professional status in that country” (Neal & Morgan, 2000, p. 22). Furthermore, there is a growing 
tendency of professionals to exploit these new opportunities by qualifying in particular member states that are 
thought to offer an easier entry route, before transferring back into their country of origin (Marraffino, 2009). 
Second, some professions (generally the corporate) emerged within industries dominated by global firms with an 
inherently international outlook. As part of their ‘one firm’ strategies (Boussebaa, 2009; Muzio & Faulconbridge, 
2013) these firms develop globally aligned structures, practices and codes of conduct, integrated training and 
socialization programmes (Faulconbridge & Muzio, 2012) and as a consequence of this are inclined to recruit 
professionals with homogeneous skills, values and cultural orientations (Spence et al., 2015; Spence & Carter, 
2014). This path tends to lead to an inherently more homogenous professional practice. In this context therefore, 
global corporations and supranational professional associations are replacing the national professional association 
and nation-state as the principal sites ‘where professional identities are mediated, formed and transformed’ 
(Cooper & Robson, 2006, p. 416). Corporate professions, nurtured by large corporations then, in effect, colonise 
different national contexts: for example, the US-based Project Management Institute (PMI) sells more ‘Project 
Management Professional’ certificates in India and China than in the US. 
Furthermore, large corporations themselves have also been active in challenging national professional regulations 
(Arnold, 2005) and qualification frameworks (Suddaby et al., 2007) in attempts to create a global market (Muzio 
et al., 2013). Czarniawska & Joerges (1996), suggest that ideas and institutions, and we argue also professions, 
do not simply homogenise when colonizing a new field or environment. It is more of an active process of 
transformation where they are “translated as they are embedded into new settings” (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996; 
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Djelic & Sahlin-Andersson, 2006, p. 22). The act of grounding these professions into different nation-states 
therefore follows idiosyncratic processes as they encounter diverse national institutions with different priorities 
and forms of influence. 
While these tensions play out in many professional arenas, it is clear that the entry of supranational institutions 
and the development of transnational governance regimes has diluted the role of the nation-state in influencing 
professionalization initiatives replacing it with new agents operating globally. While the role of global 
corporations is significant, they are not the only international agents in play. Others that are beginning to exert 
some influence include, for example, supranational organisations such as the European Union (EU), or regulatory 
bodies such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)(Olechowski et al., 2016). Whatever their 
nature, these organisations can serve to undermine, circumvent or supersede national regulatory systems. For 
instance, the EU ‘Directive on Professional Qualifications’ (2005/36/EC) legislates for the mutual recognition of 
national qualifications across the European Union and for the development of common deontological standards. 
Therefore, in summary, when professions grow in the global context, nurtured by supranational professional 
associations and supported by corporations they will work with a number of other global actors during their 
professionalization journeys. However, they will at some point encounter the interests of national institutions as 
they seek to gain national legitimacy. 
Adopting the opposite perspective, to cope with challenges presented by corporate professions, national 
institutions may develop different reactions. Some may embrace bodies of knowledge, certifications and 
accreditation systems bought from the ‘outside’ while others, such as the case we present here, may react in a 
more protectionist way. Ultimately, the type of reaction will depend on the balance of power between  the 
supranational professional association and the national stakeholders that will attempt to influence the path of the 
professionalization of new occupations (Spence et al., 2016). 
Ultimately characterising these dynamics may provide evidence of a shift in the “historical regulatory bargain 
between professional associations and nation-states.” (Suddaby et al., 2007, p. 334) as it is replaced with an 
alternative regulatory bargain that includes supranational institutions and global corporations.  
Therefore the concern of this paper is to explore, using the case study corporate profession of Project Management, 
the dynamics that exist when corporate professions, fashioned in the global context, develop within the context of 
the nation-state. 
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Methodology 
To meet our research objective we adopted a historical research method (Suddaby et al., 2014), which is deemed 
to be the most suitable to interpret, analyse, and evaluate institutional change (Suddaby & Greenwood, 2009) in 
a given organizational field (Scott & Christensen, 1995). Here the scope of the research is set as the evolution of 
the Project Management within Italy in the last 20 years. Hence, we set the ‘organisational field’, as the 
methodological unit of analysis, defining it as “a community of organizations that partakes of a common meaning 
system and whose participants interact more frequently and fatefully with one another than with actors outside 
the field” (Scott & Christensen, 1995, p. 56). 
In this sense, “history provides the longer perspectives, accounts for the complex causal patterns, and incorporates 
the contingent events that short-term process research has difficulty studying” (Wadhwani & Decker, 2017, p. 
122). Therefore, this method allows us to extend the insight gathered from the organizational field and make 
grounded assumptions. 
To build this historical case study we undertook an extensive analysis of archival data (with the intention of 
reconstructing events) and semi-structured interviews with people involved in this professionalization process 
(with the intention of comprehending the motives of their actions). Combining these two types of data allows 
judgments on actors’ behaviour and evaluations of the historical case study to be made in relation to the theory of 
corporate professions and professional regulation. Its construction followed a two-step approach.  
The first step consisted of two data-gathering activities; 1) a keyword search using the phrases ‘Project 
Management’ and ‘Italian Project Management’ was performed on the archives of the main Italian newspapers 
(Corriere, Sole24Ore, LaRepubblica); 2) relevant material was sought on the websites of the PM professional 
associations and “lobbies” (PMI, IPMA, ISIPM, ASSIREP, CNEL, COLAP). These searches produced the returns 
depicted in Table 1. This stage allowed us to chart in detail the historical development of the PM profession in 
Italy through identification of key events and initiatives and, more importantly, to identify the key actors involved. 
This archival data was stored and organized in NVivo10.  
Insert Table 1 here – Empirical Data Structure (Archival) 
In the second step, from 2012 to 2015 we conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with key actors identified in 
stage 1 all holding key positions within a number of stakeholder organizations as listed in Table 2. All interviewees 
(but one) were Italian nationals. The interviews followed a standard protocol lasted between 30 minutes, and one 
and half hour and were recorded, transcribed, anonymised and stored into NVivo10. 
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Insert Table 2 here – Empirical Data Structure (Interviews) 
The actors in this story include individual professionals, professional associations, employers (both corporate and 
public-sector), government (Italian and EU) pressure groups and other public bodies. We focused on the Italian 
context as it exhibits a substantial degree of project management activity and it exists within a continental model 
of professionalism (Faulconbridge & Muzio, 2015; Micelotta & Washington, 2013), that is historically dominated 
more directly by the state than equivalent Anglo-Saxon models. 
In all, we aligned this research with the four elements of Runciman (1983) description of methodology for 
historical cases: reportage, explanation, understanding, and evaluation. Indeed, the systematic collection of data 
based on archival documents has focused on the historical reconstruction of main events and semi-structured 
interviews served to (a) triangulate data and (b) understand the interpretation given by the actors involved. 
Therefore, through reconstruction of primary sources, we assembled the reportage in the section, ‘Historical 
Perspectives’. This reportage then serves as a basis on which to contextualize assumptions on how ‘professional 
regulatory entanglement’ is created (explanation and understanding). In particular, we built our narrative by 
organizing past events into coherent periods (see ‘Analysis of Intervention’) that we use to test causal explanations 
(i.e. incumbent institutions, legitimacy of the corporate profession, and state attitude toward new occupations as 
an antecedent for the creation of a ‘professional regulatory entanglement’). We complete the analysis by making 
an ‘evaluation through hindsight’ (Wadhwani & Decker, 2017) in the ‘professional regulatory entanglement’ 
section, where we pass judgement on the behaviour and events described.  
Historical Perspectives: Professions, Project Management and the Italian 
Context 
Professions in Italy  
The relevance of the Italian context as a legitimate arena for researching professions and specifically their 
relationship with the state is considerable. Historically the Italian professional landscape has exhibited a binary 
divide between ‘regulated’ (also called ‘state-sanctioned’) professions such as law, medicine, and engineering  
known as ‘Ordini’ (guilds) and ‘non-regulated’ professions such as IT and management (Micelotta & Washington, 
2013).  
The structure of the regulated professions in Europe originates from the medieval guilds. Typically these were 
associations created around the 12th century in many European cities to regulate and protect the activities of 
members within an occupational category. However, as time passed, and with the rise of the free market ideology, 
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many of the European nation-states, “viewed guild power as the enemy, and the limitation of production [of 
professional services] as a plot against the consumer” (Krause, 1996, p. 6). In addition, more recently, the capitalist 
view of efficiency became less sympathetic to the professional form of market enclosure leading to challenges to 
the monopolies created by the professions.    
In Italy, after the unification occurred on the 17th of March 1861, the first profession to be formally regulated by 
the state was the legal profession. This was done in June 1874 with the passing of law n.1938. Subsequent to this, 
other occupations followed leading to the current position where there are thirty one state-sanctioned Ordini.  
An Ordine can be thought of as “a public entity, indissolubly professional and institutional, territorially diffused, 
compulsory, formally distinct, and (relatively) autonomous, enjoying the power to regulate itself and to represent 
the entire professional group” (Olgiati & Pocar, 1988, p340). This professional system mandates that in order to 
practice, in some specific roles within the public-sector, for example doctors working in hospitals and architects 
supervising certain categories of public projects, an individual must register to be part of an ‘Ordine’. Joining an 
Ordine is subject to several requirements, such as passing a state exam, possessing specific educational 
qualifications and taking an oath of observance of a deontology. Membership of an ‘Ordine’  brings a significant 
employability advantage as in 2016 the Italian public sector employed 3,356,691 people, representing 14.74% of 
total employment in Italy (ISTAT, 2016). 
However, closer scrutiny of this system reveals something of a compromise because with these advantages come 
attendant disadvantages as “professional codes of conduct specifically prohibit the use of contingency fees, the 
negotiation of compensation, the advertising of professional services, and the creation of multidisciplinary 
practices” (Micelotta and Washington, 2013, p1143). So, although reinforcing the benefits of professionalism 
such as knowledge enclosure, perceived legitimacy, and access to enclosed markets, the Italian system, and 
specifically the presence of these institutionalised norms, also imposes some restrictions on their professional 
autonomy and their ability to freely market their services. This has contributed to a general sentiment that 
competition is not being achieved in the Italian professional service sector (Pammolli et al., 2007; Sterlacchini, 
2002) rather, it could be argued that, professionalism is very much in control of the visible hand of the state.  
It is notable that since the creation of the Ordini the Italian state has done little to reform them (Krause, 1996) 
therefore they possess much the same characteristics as they did when they were initially established (see 
Micelotta & Washington, 2013). This leaves the Ordini with control of bodies of expertise, state sanction and a 
historically embedded position gained in the century and a half since their formation. These factors bring them 
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considerable power to defend themselves against outside interference (Sabini, 2014, 2015) even as those who 
champion free market ideals see them as less necessary than in the past (Crompton, 1990). 
In addition to the pressures created by the free market (and as something of a consequence of it), more recently, 
the European Union with EU Directive 2005/36/EC (recognition of professional qualifications) demanded an 
immediate reform of professions aimed at promoting competition and liberalizing professional services across its 
member states. Within Italy the implementation of this directive initiated a decade of activity where reforms to 
liberalize the standard arrangements and counter-reforms to preserve them were brought forward (Deiana & 
Paneforte, 2010; Sabini, 2019, 2013).  
Eventually, at the beginning of 2013, as part of the process of implementing this directive Italy confirmed that 
knowledge-based occupations not currently within the ‘Ordini’ system could be organized into professional 
associations. This confirmation was the main action that initiated the activity analysed here as project management 
is a model example of a new knowledge-based occupation. 
The Project Management Profession 
According to Daly & Heywood (1999), hunting and gathering was humanity's first and most 
successful adaptation. The Oxford Modern English Dictionary defines a project as ‘a planned undertaking’ 
therefore the first projects implemented by Homo Sapiens around 200,000 years ago may have been those 
undertaken to find food. As groups grew in size and complexity to form societies, projects did the same. By 
Neolithic times, construction began to dominate as the main type of project. Simple buildings such as longhouses 
gave way to more complex structures such as Stonehenge (3000 to 2000 BC) and the Great Pyramid of Giza (2600 
BC). About the same time another type of project, the military campaign, appeared as the Assyrian Empire began 
to take shape. However, construction remained the dominant expression of the project until more recent times.  
It is difficult to argue that these early construction projects were managed in any way that could be associated 
with today’s system of project management and certainly the imperatives to meet a defined schedule at a specific 
cost would not have been present in their current form. So although projects have existed for thousands of years, 
project management has not. 
It is impossible to put an exact date on the first appearance of the system of project management that we recognise 
today as the methods of which it is composed emerged over time. However it is generally agreed that around the 
15th century codified knowledge of rudimentary engineering science began to inform building work more directly 
than the previously dominant craft experience and skill. The main issue in early building work was the inability 
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to separate the activity of design from the activity of construction, with building work generally done as a process 
of trial and error. Garel (2013, p.665) suggests that “project management made a major step forward when men 
were equipped with tools offering an intellectual representation of a future creation” and in the 15th century, one 
of the first to clearly separate design and execution was Italian architect Filippo Brunelleschi. Working on the 
Florence Cathedral dome, he used models and drawings to coordinate project tasks making it possible to move 
from a process of improvisation to a process of planned action by conceptualising in great detail the final form of 
the building. While drawings may have been used well before this, it is during this period that their use began to 
follow a recognisable system that evolved into what we now recognise as engineering design practice. 
By this time, other complex structures such as ships were being designed and built, indeed the Venetian Arsenal 
was the largest, pre-industrial revolution, manufacturing complex (Davis, 2007). Here again scientific principles, 
governing for example hull design, were beginning to emerge and to be of use these needed to be deployed within 
a more systematic process of management that applied to the entire endeavour. 
By the mid-18th Century, the first professional engineers were beginning to gain control of major construction 
projects and, as part of this, the separation of the conception of the project, the planning, and the execution of the 
project, the construction, became standard practice. This, it could be argued, was the main methodological 
adoption that facilitated future advances in project management. 
The industrial revolution brought new vigour to the development of infrastructure and in the late-19th and early-
20th centuries construction work increased at a prodigious pace and, significantly, economic imperatives created 
the need to more rigorously consider time and cost as well as the final form and function of what was built. The 
system that was to become contemporary project management with its focus on the achievement of objectives in 
relation to time, cost and scope began to emerge.  
Most agree that the first recognisable artefact of contemporary Project Management was the Gantt Chart 
developed by Henri Gantt at the Frankford Arsenal in 1917 for the US Army. Originally used for routine 
production scheduling and associated at the time with F.W. Taylor’s system of Scientific Management (Taylor, 
1911), the Gantt Chart also proved a very useful tool for controlling the non-routine work of projects. The use of 
rudimentary project management tools such as this, spread during the 1920s and 1930s across emerging industries. 
The 2nd World War and endeavours such as Operation Overlord and the Manhattan Project are often cited as 
examples of project management. However, while some project planning and scheduling tools were used it is 
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difficult to argue that the complete and integrated system that we know today was present. Another form of activity 
and another imperative was required for this to be developed.  
Following the 2nd World War this imperative was found when engineering companies, working primarily in 
defence and aerospace, began to develop larger scale and more complex technical systems than ever before. 
Therefore while project management was born in civil engineering and enjoyed it’s infancy in the major 
construction projects of the early- to mid-20th century the standard narrative suggests that it reached maturity 
during the development of defence and aerospace systems in the 1950s and 1960s (Garel, 2013), such as the Atlas 
and Polaris missile systems, which brought the first formalised project manager role and the Program Evaluation 
Review Technique (PERT). So, despite its rather lengthy history, project management as an integrated system, 
and indeed the term project management itself, seems to have appeared only in the early-fifties (Morris, 2013). 
Today Project Management continues to develop adopting the latest in modern management theory and embracing 
the latest innovations in information technology as more productive ways to deploy the toolsets and methodologies 
are found (Morris, 1997).   
Modern project managers take responsibility for delivering packages of work on-time, to budget and within 
contractual scope. More recently project management has enhanced its standing as an expert occupation (Reed, 
1996) due to its inclusion in the group of so-called emerging corporate professions (Hodgson et al., 2015). Further 
it has found increased utility as non-routine work has become more ubiquitous within project-based organisations 
(Hobday, 2000). Project management has been successful in defining a formal body of knowledge and setting up 
routes of access (Morris, 2011). Other tropes of professionalism such as academic and practitioner publications, 
conferences and seminars also feature. 
Therefore, project management represents something of a showcase for corporate professionalism. The 
professionalization journey has been driven mainly by professional associations operating both nationally and 
globally. The largest global association is the US-based Project Management Institute (PMI), which began in 1969 
in the USA and now boasts over 2.9 million members. The PMI, though centrally controlled and managed very 
much from the top-down, is organised as a collection of national ‘chapters’. The other significant association 
operating globally is the International Project Management Association (IPMA). Unlike the PMI, the IPMA 
manages from the bottom-up operating as an umbrella body for the independent national associations that form 
its membership. In addition, there are various national associations that are not affiliated to any larger global body.   
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More significantly, in some cases, corporate membership is also a key features of these associations. Here 
corporate professionalism departs significantly from more traditional forms of professionalism in that alliances 
have been formed between associations and employing organisations that facilitate the cross-fertilisation of 
information and influence. In general these relationships are seen as symbiotic with both parties gaining benefit 
(Hodgson et al., 2015). However, the involvement of corporate employers is one aspect that impinges on the more 
traditional, regulatory bargain between state and profession. 
Project Management: The Italian Perspective 
Italian participation in the development of early forms of project management in the construction and shipbuilding 
industries of 15th century was strong but it wasn’t until the mid-20th century that other work began to emerge 
initially in the form of publications describing modern project management tools and techniques. For example 
Professor Luigi Zignoli, of the Polytechnic University of Turin described project management in his textbook 
‘Reticular Planning’ (‘Programmazione Reticolare’) (Zignoli, 1955) as a way to organize complex tasks. Then, in 
1965, Mariano Ricciardi developed Analisi Livellamento e Tempificazione Automatica (ALTAI) which translates 
as ‘integrated levelling and automatic timing analysis’ (Ricciardi, 1965; Russo Frattasi, 1971), a methodology 
similar to the more famous Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) previously mentioned. 
By the mid-1970s, Italian industry was characterized by the presence of foreign firms, indeed “thirty-nine percent 
of the largest Italian… companies were subsidiaries of foreign multinationals” (Binda & Colli, 2011, p. 20). 
Therefore, from this period the practice of project management grew as it was imported through national 
subsidiaries of multinational corporations and their interactions with local Italian organizations within their supply 
networks. As a consequence of this, the professionalization of project management within Italy began and 
eventually three professional associations emerged.  
The PMI with three chapters; PMI-NIC (Northern Italy Chapter) set-up in 1996, PMI-RC (Rome Chapter) set-up 
in 1997 and the PMI-SIC (Southern Italy Chapter) set-up in 2004. These chapters were formed mainly as staff 
working for global corporations attempted to draw together communities of practice to promote project 
management methodologies. For example PMI-Rome grew from an initiative by professionals within the 
corporate university of the oil company Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi's. (Sabini, 2014, p. 41). 
The IPMA-Italy formed in 2012 when the Associazione Nazionale di IMPiantistica Industriale (ANIMP), 
translated as Italian Association of Industrial Plant Engineering, created a section with the aim of collating and 
15 
 
organizing the knowledge of project management acquired by its own member associations. This section later 
joined the federation of the IPMA under the name of IPMA-Italy (Sabini, 2014). 
Finally the ASSociazione Italiana dei Responsabili ed Esperti di gestione Progetto (ASSIREP), which translates 
as the Association for Expert Management of Projects, was founded in 2013. ASSIREP represents all those who 
wish to certify the professional quality of their Project Management services provided to consumers, in accordance 
with Italian laws (n.4/2013). ASSIREP differs from the PMI chapters and the IPMA – Italy as it is has no affiliation 
with a larger international professional body and is therefore considered more of a national association. 
It is important to note that all of these professional bodies exist outside the Ordini system and are therefore 
considered unregulated. In other words, rather peculiarly, project management (and all other new professions) 
existed within the country but were not recognised or regulated by the state. While these associations to a great 
extent developed within the boundary of the nation-state there is a much wider perspective that must also be 
considered. 
Project Management: The Global Perspective 
As part of the European Union (EU), Italy is subject to EU regulation of professions. The current interest of the 
EU in professional practice is directly associated with its wider and longer-standing aim in relation to the mobility 
of labour. This originates with the establishment of the original incarnation of the current European Community 
and the 1957 Treaty of Rome, within which Article 3 states: “The activities of the Community shall include. . . 
the abolition, as between Member States, of obstacles to freedom of movement for persons, services and capital.” 
More recently, this aspiration is captured in the EU Single Market Strategy and is embodied in the four freedoms 
of movement for goods, services, capital and people.  
To enable this strategy, mechanisms have been created to support these freedoms. In relation to professional 
practice, the EU implements this strategy by working to ensure the harmonization of regulations that govern 
professional practice within EU member states. Its overall aim is integration and this will be achieved when the 
regulations governing professionalism within all member states conform to a common regulation at EU level. In 
pursuit of this aim in 2005 the EU created directive 2005/36/EC - Recognition of Professional Qualifications in 
Practice (subsequently updated by directive 2013/55/EC). With this directive, by harmonising professional 
qualifications, the EU is attempting to enable the free movement of professional labour.  
Accompanying this directive is a list of professions governed by it. This list is currently limited to certain 
professions, generally those that are longer established such as medicine and those that are discrete and therefore 
16 
 
easier to classify such as mountain guiding. Though this list is incomplete at present, the stated aspiration is that 
regulation will be extended to include all professions. While this is a straightforward aspiration, due to the 
disconnected and fragmented way professions are structured across a diverse range of occupations, any list of 
professions by its very nature will always be somewhat arbitrary and, as professions emerge and disappear, will 
remain in a state of permanent transition.  
At present this leaves some professions regulated and others unregulated by the EU, a somewhat unsatisfactory 
situation that, rather ironically, closely mirrors that of the original Italian state system of ‘Ordini’. Notwithstanding 
these obvious shortcomings, in implementing this directive standardising professional qualifications and so 
enabling professionals to work freely across member states, the EU is, in effect, attempting to breach the national 
boundary that most professions had previously operated within. 
In addition, outside the European context, there is activity within the wider global level to consider. This activity 
relates to the work of The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), an independent, global body with 
a membership of 162 national standards bodies. Through these members, ISO brings together experts to share 
knowledge and develop voluntary, consensus-based, market relevant international standards that help to ensure 
quality, safety and efficiency. To date ISO has published 22342 international standards and related documents, 
covering almost every industry. 
In 2007, ISO began the development of an international standard for PM. The ISO technical committee dealing 
with PM, ISO/PC 236, was held by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Released in 2012, ISO 
21500 - Guidance on Project Management, was intended to provide generic guidance, explain core principles and 
what constitutes good practice in PM. Crucially for this analysis this ISO standard was informed by the PMI’s 
Book of Knowledge (PMBOK, 2008), a guide that had evolved over a number of years and had itself been 
influenced by a number of stakeholders within industry and academia.  
Therefore, it is clear that the environment within which corporate professions are evolving is both plural, with the 
existence of multiple actors and contested due to the existence of multiple agendas. 
The Shifting Nature of the Regulatory Bargain 
Italian State Intervention 
This changing landscape of professionalism led the Italian Government to acknowledge that something had to be 
done about their out-dated model of professional regulation. They appreciated the existing dichotomy in relation 
17 
 
to regulated (Ordini) and non-regulated (non-Ordini) professions and realised that this was being exacerbated by 
the emergence of new professions that, in effect, was serving to increase the numbers of non-regulated professions. 
Additionally it was becoming increasingly clear that the influence of external bodies could not be ignored. 
To remedy this situation, they decided to implement the following package of measures (see Appendix 1 for 
summarised activity timeline).  
First, at the beginning of 2013 the Italian parliament issued law n.4/2013 - ‘Provisions on professions not regulated 
by law’. This law is somewhat complex, but fundamentally it sets out guidance on how occupations not currently 
within the Ordini system can be organized into professional associations. In support of law n.4/2013, in February 
2014, the Ministero dello Sviluppo Economico (MiSE), translated as the Ministry of Economic Development, 
which performs functions concerning promotion of competition, liberalization and consumer protection produced 
a list of professional associations that represent the non-regulated professions. Interestingly, ASSIREP as the only 
national professional body, (i.e. one not affiliated to an international association either the PMI or the IPMA) was 
chosen for inclusion on the MiSE list. Due to its inclusion it enjoys the special status of the only project 
management professional association that can award its members the title of ‘professional project managers’ in 
accordance with law n.4/2013. 
In parallel, and again in accordance with law n.4/2013, specifically article 6 which states: ‘The qualification to 
provide a professional service must be based on the compliance with the technical norms of UNI and ISO’. UNI, 
(Ente Nazionale Italiano di Unificazione) the Italian National Committee for Unification and Standardization (the 
Italian equivalent of ISO), began the process of defining the boundaries of these new professions (see Appendix 
2 for further explanation of the role of UNI). 
The law, MiSE list and the associated UNI technical norm in effect created the regulatory framework within which 
professions that were not designated as part of the Ordini could be recognised by public-sector entities. Therefore, 
this is a critical enabler that might aid occupations, such as project management, to professionalise in Italy. This 
regulatory framework was then applied to the project management profession and in January 2017 UNI released 
the technical norm labelled UNI11648 that relates to project management.  
A few months later in October 2017, another public entity, the Anti-Corruption Agency (ANAC) became 
involved. The remit of ANAC is twofold; first, the prevention of corruption within public-sector procurement  by 
‘creating a collaborative network within public administrations…’; and second ‘…to increase efficiency in the 
use of resources… (ANAC, 2018). In this case ANAC’s purpose was to administer the rules for public 
18 
 
procurement of services in order to ensure the selection of best candidate project managers for employment in 
public projects. To meet this purpose ANAC issued further guidelines (based on the UNI technical norm) dictating 
that a project manager must possess ‘adequate competencies’ and a ‘successful training’.  To evidence this a 
project manager must either be a member of a state-sanctioned PM professional association, here state-sanction 
is defined as the association that is on the MiSE list (in this case ASSIREP), or be certified by passing an exam 
accredited by the Italian state accreditation body (ACCREDIA)a. 
With the establishment of this framework, for the first time in the Italian public context, the profession of project 
management was recognised by the state and more importantly ANAC had officially introduced, the label ‘project 
manager’ which, rather surprisingly, had not previously existed in the lexicon of public service terminology. This 
represented significant progress as the “lack of formal professional recognition for project management had 
precluded the Italian public administration from employing project managers or procuring their services” (Sabini 
& Muzio, 2017, p. 834). With these changes, the public sector could finally issue tenders for its procurement and, 
due to this new regulation, legitimately include the role of the project manager.  
It is worth stating at this point that the Italian State’s primary interest should always have been in clarifying the 
‘rules of the game’ for the sake of public good. In our following detailed analysis of the actions taken by the 
Italian government highlights the complex interplay between national and transnational stakeholders. It 
demonstrates how ‘professional regulatory entanglement’ has originated and reveals implications for project 
management and the wider collection of corporate professions.  
Analysis of Intervention 
At first glance, each action would appear to be a legitimate attempt at reform. However closer scrutiny indicates 
that each, in some way, resulted in a power struggle where professional associations lobbied in attempt to control 
the Italian public sector market for project management professionals. The outcome of this lobbying activity in 
each case was the retention of some form of state control of professional practice. 
Firstly, the establishment of the list of new professional associations by MiSE could be construed in two ways, 
either as a direct attempt by the Italian Government to clarify how new professions might fit into the public sector 
or as a direct attempt by the Italian Government to both retain control of the right to award an occupation with 
professional status and also the right to appoint the body that represents that profession (Law n.4/2013b). Rather 
ironically, this list aims to define and therefore ‘regulate’ the professions ‘not regulated’ by the historical ‘Ordini’ 
model and could be interpreted as a demonstration of the unwillingness of the Italian government to venture too 
19 
 
far from the traditional model of state sanction. With this action, which is effectively an extension of the ‘Ordini’ 
model, the state is attempting to continue to exert some control over the “production of producers” (Abel, 1988).  
Secondly, the development of the UNI technical standard UNI11648 seems, at first glance, a legitimate attempt 
to characterise the profession and define those able to practice it. However closer scrutiny of the process of its 
development suggests other, less straightforward, development. The process (labelled U83000780c) undertaken 
to create this technical standard, took a rather lengthy 18 months to complete and, through public consultation, 
allowed the participation of all interested PM professional associations. The principal point of contention that 
emerged, related to the method proposed for assessment of a project manager’s competence. A three-level 
assessment model comprising curriculum vitae, written exam, and oral exam was suggested by UNI and this was 
contained in a first draft offered to a public hearing (‘udienza pubblica’) that took place between September and 
November of 2015.  
In response to this, the PMI introduced the content of this draft for discussion within its members’ webinar series 
(specifically on the 30th September 2015 webinar entitled: How Italian Project Management certifications have 
changed; and on the 27th October 2015 webinar entitled: Instructions for requesting the modification of the 
technical standard). These webinars explained the UNI process and technical standard. Here the PMI took issue 
with the misalignment between the UNI proposed three-level assessment model and their own two level-
assessment model (used in their entry-level qualification the Project Management Professional certificate).  
The tone was somewhat alarmist, with statements made such as: 
“the Italian professional association (ASSIREP) are afraid of an ‘open’ market (for project 
manager accreditation), we (PMI) cannot afford to let the market ‘close’ (reference to enclosure 
created by the MiSE list)”  
PMI webinar – held 30th September 2015. 
While the overt objective of the PMI in giving these webinars was to inform members of developments, it could 
be argued that the covert objective was to stimulate resistance among PMI members to this (what could be 
interpreted as) protectionist measure by the Italian state, aimed at ensuring that the PMI qualification was not 
recognised.   
In addition to encouraging PMI members to comment, the PMI raised its concerns about the UNI method of 
assessment more directly in a formal letter to UNI arguing that: 
“oral interviews/role playing, as designed, implemented, and non-uniformly applied in the context 
of the UNI standard, do not meet ISO/EIC 17024:2012 requirements for construction of a “fair, 
valid, and reliable” assessment.  
PMI letter to UNI – issued November 2015. 
20 
 
In December 2015, after the public hearing had completed, more than 600 individual comments, mainly from PMI 
members, had been collected - an unusually large number for this type of consultation. In February 2016, after 
two months of reconsideration, UNI amended the proposal, changing the three-level assessment to a two-level 
assessment to accommodate the comments received. 
It therefore appeared that UNI had relented, seemingly bowing to the pressure applied by the PMI. They then 
launched an unprecedented second public hearing (March - May 2016) and this proceeded more smoothly with 
the final UNI technical standard - UNI11648: Project Management – Qualification of Experts in Project 
Management (UNI website)d issued in January 2017. The implications for PM professional development in Italy 
are significant as this technical standard effectively sets the boundaries of the Italian project manager’s 
professional practice, specifically the knowledge that Italian project managers need and how to assess their 
mastery of this knowledge.  
The establishment of this technical standard can be interpreted in two ways. First, as a genuine attempt to 
encourage homogenization of professionalization through alignment with international professional standards; 
and second, as the creation of a somewhat unnecessary ‘national tier’ so further adding to the entanglement of the 
overall regulatory framework. Again, this suggests that in Italy the agents of the state, while aware of the wider 
imperatives such as EU harmonization and international standardization, are still reluctant to relinquish fully the 
control that they are historically accustomed to with the ‘Ordini’ model.  
Thirdly, ANAC, the independent body set-up by law n. 114/2014 to ensure no corruption within Public 
Administration, created a new code for public works procurement. This has also been the subject of some 
controversy. All parties involved in the ANAC consultation agreed that the person in charge of complex public 
projects had to be a ‘professional project manager’ so ANAC set out to: 
“…enhance the figure of […] Project Manager, emphasizing the skills of planning and managing 
the development of specific projects, also through the coordination of all available resources”  
ANAC consultation document – issued July 2016. 
The main issue that emerged was defining what the necessary qualifications or certifications should be to warrant 
the title of professional project manager. In the first draft proposal for consultation published in June 2017, ANAC 
stated that the project manager must possess a ‘professional qualification’ (‘qualifica’). In the context of ANAC 
this means one that is approved only by ACCREDIA. At this stage it was clear that ANAC were following the 
traditional professional logic that specifies state-sanction is required. Obviously, the Italian state-sanctioned 
professional body ASSIREP welcomed this development (see appendix 3). 
21 
 
However, as a result of this first round of consultation, ANAC received 50 comments all requesting the removal 
of the term ‘professional qualification’ in favour of the more elusive term ‘adequate training’ (‘formazione 
adeguata’). ANAC relented as evidenced by this except:  
“the provision that required the ‘qualification’ of a project manager was changed, replacing it with 
the request for ‘adequate training’ in the field of project management”  
ANAC official document – issued June 2017. 
A second draft was produced which included the term ‘adequate training’. In effect, the terminology in this second 
draft was a dilution of that in the previous draft. While the terminology is (possibly deliberately) vague, it was 
seen by ASSIREP as a softening of the position on state-sanction, since it can be interpreted as a way for other 
bodies, national or international, to provide the ‘adequate training’ required by ANAC guidelines. As expected 
ASSIREP responded negatively to this change publishing a petition (see Appendix 4) which outlined their 
objections to the softening of the language claiming that the revised terminology could lead to an open market for 
project manager accreditation. 585 supporters, mainly Italian project managers signed this petition. Therefore, 
ANAC made a second amendment producing a third (and final) version of the guideline that stated that PMs must 
have ‘adequate competence’ (‘competenza adeguata’) or have completed a ‘successful training’ (‘formazione con 
profitto’).  
Again, this terminology lacks definitional precision but is interpreted as follows. First, holding ‘adequate 
competence’ can only be proven by membership of the PM professional association recognised by the Italian state 
through inclusion on the MISE list: in this case that professional association is ASSIREP. Second, completing a 
‘successful training’ means gaining a qualification from a recognised Italian awarding body, in this case being a 
recognised awarding body means being accredited by ACCREDIA the Italian state accreditation body. 
The outcome is that project managers who want to work within Italian public projects need to prove themselves 
qualified but can only do this through an Italian route. Either ASSIREP certifying the project manager as 
‘adequately competent’ or a project manager undertaking a ‘successful training’ provided by a certified 
ACCREDIA provider. All other certifications as awarded by, for example the PMI (the PMP qualification) or the 
IPMA (the IPMA D qualification), are not enough for a practitioner to be recognized in accordance with Italian 
law. 
Professional Regulatory Entanglement 
While this outcome seems to indicate a clear case of Italian state-sponsored protectionism, the process that led to 
it suggests a more nuanced situation. It is difficult to argue that the Italian government was not influenced to some 
22 
 
extent by an attachment to the historical, and nationally bound ‘Ordini’ model and because of this were reluctant 
to accede all control to an international model dominated by international professional associations. However they 
demonstrated a willingness to accommodate some form of compromise in their acceptance of a closer alignment 
between the UNI and international standards of qualification. 
This compromise initially appeared to set the foundation for a more straightforward regulatory environment where 
international standards could have been imported directly into the national context. However, this outcome was 
thwarted because of the intervention of ASSIREP and a cohort of Italian project managers (using the ANAC 
guideline). Both ASSIREP and this cohort of project managers had a vested interest in retaining a national level 
of control. This intervention had two outcomes. First, a reaffirmation of control enforced by both an agent of the 
state in the form of ACCREDIA and a partisan entity in the form of ASSIREP the ‘Italian’ professional 
association. And second, a more complex regulatory environment bound up in standards and legislation existing 
at national (as enforced by this action), continental (as advocated by the EU) and global (as advised by the ISO 
and regulated by the professional bodies) levels.  
So, by seeking to retain some measure of control for professionalization the state has created a two-tier system 
whereby professional accreditation by international professional associations is acceptable to global corporations 
working within the Italian state but is not acceptable to some public works directly commissioned by the state.  
This situation would appear to result in two standards of professional qualification: that legitimised by the Italian 
state and that legitimised by the international professional associations. However, when taken in context of the 
EU aspiration to achieve free movement of professional labour the situation is more complex as it highlights two 
further issues. Firstly, the existence of two lists of regulated professions, one from the EU and one from the Italian 
State, where the EU list exists to enable transnational movement of professional labour so liberalising the market 
for professional services and the Italian list exists to prevent it. And secondly, a direct contradiction in that the 
enclosure of the Italian public-sector market directly contravenes the EU directive ensuring labour mobility.  
This has further ramifications in that while the Italian barrier prevents the recognition of PM professionals 
accredited by the international bodies it also prevents the recognition of PM professionals accredited by national 
bodies, such as the UK Association for Project Management, leaving accreditation by international mandate and 
by transnational mandate impossible. The implication therefore is a reduction in the importance within the Italian 
context of the major international proprietary certifications (such as the PMI) that globally are coming to represent 
the de-facto standard.  
23 
 
In this regard it is worth to mention an analogous development in the recent case of APM vs PMI in the UK 
regarding the Royal Charter (mentioned in Hodgson & Muzio, 2011; Muzio et al., 2011), where the UK incumbent 
association – the APM, has seen a fierce opposition to its application for a Royal Charter by the international 
project management association – the PMI (Hodgson et al., 2015). The evolution of this case has also seen the 
UK regulator rewarding to the national association (APM) with the desirable status of Royal Charter. We argue 
that this situation can also be interpreted as state intervention resulting in an increase in professional regulatory 
entanglement. 
Conclusion 
Historically the Italian government has considered the control of professions by the state as a desirable way to 
protect citizens’ interests by ensuring high standards of professional practice. This position is in sharp contrast to 
neoliberal principles of market self-regulation, principles that are in differing ways supported by other 
stakeholders. International standards organisations exist to create frameworks around which free markets can 
operate fairly and responsibly. The EU wishes to promote free movement of qualified expert labour. Global 
corporations, as clients and users of expert labour, require a consistent supply of competent, reliable and, possibly 
most importantly, standardised forms of this labour. Professional bodies are service providers supporting members 
through provision of resources and accreditation, and global corporations through provision of standards, tools 
and expertise. Using project management in Italy as a research case we have attempted to unpack this complex 
interplay between stakeholders and the conflicting local and global demands to understand how these influences 
are impacting the trajectory of corporate professionalism. 
This analysis contributes in three ways. First, this research provides empirical evidence that what was once a 
simple bargain involving two actors, the state and the profession, with a long established, commonly agreed and 
mutually beneficial agenda is now a more complex system involving multiple actors and a number of different 
and often competing agendas. 
Second, widening our analysis to the trajectory of global professionalization reveals there is clear evidence of 
some homogenisation of professional practice. The participation of the PMI in the process of creating the UNI 
standard indicates some direct influence of this professional body on national activity. While, the use of IS021500 
for project management as a reference by UNI (in creating UNI11648) represents an indirect influence and it 
should be remembered that ISO21500 is itself influenced by the PMI. Therefore, this suggests that the broader 
international interests that are trying to create a simplified order, i.e. one standard (ISO) and a number of 
24 
 
recognised accreditation routes (national-based PM bodies and international PM bodies), and in effect colonise 
national contexts are having some success. This demonstrates that the homogenisation of professional practice 
supported by supranational organisations who aim to drive standard practice into national sites is occurring. 
Third, building on the second point, we argue that the national focus of the Italian state is diminishing as the bulk 
of the resistance to colonisation was provided by other nationally oriented actors motivated by self-interest. It can 
therefore be concluded that while homogenisation is occurring it is a more nuanced homogenisation where the 
previously singular actor of the state and the previously singular actor of the profession now demonstrate 
fragmentation (Spence et al., 2016) with agents of the state and agents of the profession broadly acting to further 
their own more plural interests. This resistance is embodied in the increased regulation imposed to control 
professions within the national context therefore we have introduced the term professional regulatory 
entanglement and defined it as the increase in the number of regulations faced by international corporate 
professions when attempting to colonize a national context.  
In summary, this article presents project management as a typical corporate profession and the Italian state as an 
extreme, but not unique, form of national entity. It argues that for corporate professions the bipartite bargain 
between profession and state is being altered in two ways. First, the once discrete bodies of national government 
and professional association each characterised by a unitary purpose now represent a diversity of interests. And 
second, additional actors in the form of supranational bodies such as the EU, the ISO and global corporations are 
becoming influential in shaping the trajectory of professionalization and these agendas will have similar effects 
across the range of corporate professions. However, an important limitation to our study is its focus to one national 
case and one corporate profession, given this consideration we call for further research on the ‘professional 
regulatory entanglement’ which emerging corporate professions may experience in different national contexts. 
 
  
25 
 
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a ACCREDIA, in line with requirements of European Regulation EC 765/2008, attests the competence, 
independence and impartiality of certification, inspection and verification. 
b   Law n.4/2013 – article 2, clause 7: “The list of professional associations referred to in this article and the 
aggregative forms referred to in art. 3 […] are published by the Ministry of economic development [MiSE] in 
the own website…”. 
c Project Manager: definition of knowledge, skill and competence requirements (definizione dei requisiti di 
conoscenza, abilità e competenza). 
d The Technical Specification is intended to provide criteria for the qualification of experts in PM. The standard 
can be used for the selection of candidates and for self-assessment of all those who wish to submit their CV for a 
referenced position.