Abstract
Companies gather professionals such as scientists or lawyers who are trapped in a tension between organizational goals and professional expectations. Individuals have then to permanently decide whether to follow their managers’ policies or their peers’ ethos. The question is then to know what form their resistance takes when they decide to rebel organizational goals and how this influences organizations. This paper attempts to answer this question through the study of forms of resistance mobilized by scientists in business firms and their consequences. It relies on two case studies where scientists challenge top managers’ evaluation of a research project they have to or want to work on. The paper argues that although professionals resist in practice in the same way other employees do, Top Managers cannot judge whether this is resistance or not. This is the case because Scientists can use their expertise to make Top Managers believe that results are due to the characteristics of projects. This form of “undetectable” resistance works when there is team solidarity, making a “counter-expertise” impossible to get. At the end, the paper shows that professionals attempt to influence categories of judging worth in their organizations in a sustainable way.Third, the paper shows that professional resistance can target something other than meaning or policies. Indeed, they can target the way projects are evaluated in the firm by influencing the perimeter of categories mobilized in the decision making process.