This article investigates professional identities in Swedish Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The aim is to explore how professional negotiation takes place by incorporating the perspectives of teachers, managers, and strategic human resource management (HRM) representatives through a case study of three HEIs with different conditions for collegial influence and forms of management. The study examines how spaces of professional autonomy are defined and formed and how authenticity and legitimacy are established (Davies & Petersen, 2005; Deem & Lucas, 2007). The project was designed with the intention to relate analytical distinctions of different actors’ perceptions and objectives within the institutional conditions that form the meaning and objectives of education (Vaughan, 2002). The methods used are interviews with HEI management, strategic HRM representatives, and research and teaching staff. Contemporary researchers and teachers in academia have to handle increased evaluation pressure and, in many cases, strategic planning and organization of HEIs subjected to market-based principles (Widmalm et al., 2016). One question that has been raised in the research field is whether current trends in organizing academic work also contribute to changed academic identities (Clegg, 2008). By contextualizing the objectives of HEIs from the perspectives of teachers, management, and HRM departments, the results show that professional negotiations undergo conversion pressures under New Public Management (NPM)-implemented governance. However, professional identities are, at the same time, strongly rooted in academic core values, and the article offers a discussion via the aid of Pierre Bourdieu (1998) of the possibilities of forming autonomous professional identities and independent knowledge claims in NPM-inspired HEIs.