Research on organizational sensemaking has focused on the employing organization’s influences and individual difference variables, yet the perceptions and attitudes of professional employees may be related to professional affiliations outside of the employment organization. This research investigates the ways that professional affiliation is related to the individual’s schema, framing and attitudes toward the organization’s competitive environment by examining professional engineers. It is posited that through various possible processes, participation in and identification with professional organizations encourages the individual to hold tightly to certain perspectives about the environment leading to a resistance in environmental change that threatens the profession’s protected markets. The individual’s identification with the profession was found to be related to their perspectives about the industry and tendency to perceive environmental cues as a threat; however, professional perspectives professed by the professional organization did not appear to mediate this relationship.