This paper focuses on the professionalization project of the Swedish military and police and the interplay between profession and organization. Previous literature has suggested that the relationship between professions and organizations are crucial for understanding matters such as organizational change and the development of professional work. Against this background, we start with the assumption that the relationship between professions and organizations is an important variable also for the development and evolvement of professionalization undertakings. We start by mapping ambitions and concrete measures, undertaken from the 1990s onwards, to professionalize these two forces. Following the understanding of professionalization as the scientification of work, we study changes in officer education as well as ambitions to increase the linkage between research and the conduct of professional work. We thereafter analyze to what extent the receiving end has adopted to the input side of these reforms, by studying the importance of scientification when it comes to what knowledge base officers rely on when conducting work; the linkage between scientification and admission, promotion and the status of officers as teachers or researchers. We conclude that there is no immediate correlation between efforts to reform these professional groups and their impact on the organization. Despite similar ambitions by the state, the Swedish military and police have responded differently. We further conclude that for externally initiated professionalization reforms to have an effect, they cannot solely target the professional groups, but also the organization.