The Swedish school system and the role and work of teachers have been the target for ongoing political reforms during the last decades.  National school inspections have been reintroduced, recourses have been invested in further teacher training, the teaching programs at the country's universities have been scrutinized, a new curriculum/school law has been adopted and a teacher certification has been introduced. The consequences of these political reforms on teachers’ professional role have been the focus of analyses and discussions, often leading to the conclusion that the teachers have become deprofessionalized (Stenlås, 2009). Others have argued that the reforms are so diverse that there is hardly any coherence in terms of whether they strengthen or weaken the teaching profession (Sahlin & Waks, 2008; Fredriksson, 2010).

In this paper, we argue that the various reforms of the last decades are expressions of different institutional logics. The institutional logics’ perspective was initially presented in a much cited paper from 1991 where Friedland & Alford argue that the main institutional orders of Western society are the market, the state, the family, the religion and democracy. These societal level orders are characterized by certain logics which are critical for understanding organizational and individual behavior. Institutional logics are belief systems which materialize in sets of rituals, routines and practical solutions. The logics guide individuals and organizations in how to act in different situations and in how to interpret demands in their environment.

But despite a common awareness of the existence of institutional pluralism, much of institutional research has focused on how institutional fields are structured by a dominant logic (Lounsbury 2007; Greenwood et al. 2010, p. 1). It has been argued that the line of research that investigates how organizations confront institutional complexity is underdeveloped (Kraatz & Block, 2008, p. 244; Greenwood et al. 2010, p. 2) and that we know little about how single social actors, such as professionals, deal with co-existing multiple logics (Goodrick & Reay, 2012, p. 373.). Many previous studies that have aimed to understand how professional groups are affected by various political reforms conclude that the previously dominant logic of professionalism has gradually been replaced by managerialism and a market ideology (Scott et al., 2000; Reay & Hinings, 2005). In this paper, we intend to give a theoretical contribution to the literature that seeks to understand what it means to act and work as a professional under the influence of multiple institutional logics. 

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