Professions and Professional Service Firms

3 Professions and professional service firms in a global context

Reframing narratives

John Flood

Introduction

It is often argued that the superior cognitive powers of homo sapiens enabled them to overcome the limitations of the Neanderthals through better abilities to make tools and diversify their agricultural processes. As a result, they had better nutrition and were stronger and so dominated others. Yuval Harari (2015) in his magisterial history, Sapiens, argues another case which is to do with humans’ abilities to communicate and learn from such communication, or more simply the ability to gossip. It might sound trite, but from one’s communicative abilities come myths, stories and fictions. And it is this which makes professions so successful ...