The Routledge Companion to the Professions and Professionalism

Mike Dent, Ivy Lynn Bourgeault, Jean-Louis Denis, Tracey Adams, Mike Dent, Ivy Lynn Bourgeault, Jean-Louis Denis, Ellen Kuhlmann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317699484
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The Routledge Companion to the Professions and Professionalism is a state-of-the-art reference work which maps out the current developments and debates around the sociology of the professions, and how they relate to management and organizations.

Supported by an international contributor team specializing in the disciplines of organizational studies and sociology, the collection provides extensive coverage of this field of research. It brings together the core concepts and issues, and has chapters on all the key aspects of professions in both the public and private sectors, including issues of governance and regulation. The volume closes with a set of international case studies which provide valuable practical insights into the subject.

This Companion will be an indispensable reference source for students, scholars and educators within the social sciences, especially within management, organizational studies and sociology. It will also be highly relevant for those working and studying in the area of professional education.

Part I

Theories and contemporary context of professions and professionalism

Introduction

Mike Dent

Earlier in 2015, during the time we were putting together this Companion, I was watching on TV the French TV drama series that was broadcast in the UK as The Spiral. The original French title is Engrenages, which I understand has the figurative meaning of being ‘caught up in the system’ (Larousse-Bordas, 1997). This is in itself a good way of introducing the professions and professionalism, for the professions and professionalism have intriguing, various and changing relations with ‘the system’, by which I mean the economy, society and state. But to return to the TV series, it is the French legal profession as well as the police who play a significant role in the drama. Whatever licence has been taken in the service of dramatic storytelling, it is clear that the French legal system – and the profession that works within it – operates differently from that in the UK and North America. These latter countries’ legal systems have been shaped by common-law principles, whereas in France – and much of continental Europe – the system of law is based on the Napoleonic code (Krause, 1996, p. 139). Yet, even while the two legal systems are very different, we can still recognise that the work of advocates and magistrates in France corresponds, however loosely, to that of barristers and judges in Britain and similarly to the attorneys and judges in the USA. By extension, we recognise other professions as they exist within different countries across the globe even though their organisation may be somewhat different. In this current section, the chapters are focused primarily on Europe, the UK and the USA; the issues of professional organisation and practice elsewhere are treated in greater depth within Part IV (Global Professionalism and the Emerging Economies).

In this first group of chapters, our contributors set out key concepts and theories for the understanding and analysis of professions and professionalism. These are specifically discussed in the first chapter, which reviews the sociological and organisational theories underpinning research and provides an assessment of recent developments (Ackroyd). Similarly, too, the closing chapter deals with professions and power (Saks), including issues of policy. Between these two broadly foundational chapters there are three chapters that set out, in some detail, key themes that are crucially shaping the professions and professionalism today: governance, including how this relates to globalisation (Kuhlmann et al.), service users as citizens and consumers (Tonkens), and gender and diversity (see Hearn et al.). Together, these provide the bedrock for the following thematic sections and case studies.

References

Krause, E. A. (1996) Death of the Guilds: Professions, States and the Advance of Capitalism, 1930 to the Present. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Larousse-Bordas (1997) BBC French Dictionary. London: BBC Books.

1

Sociological and organisational theories of professions and professionalism

Stephen Ackroyd

Introduction

In everyday speech to be professional requires only that a person is paid for their work and/or adopts a business-like approach to it. Professionalism is an attitude to work which anyone may adopt. Researchers understand professions and professionalism differently, however. For them, professionals are members of a limited group of high-status service occupations such as medicine, engineering and law. In addition to being repositories of authoritative knowledge, these occupations have some common features: restricted entry, high-level qualifications and stringent tests of competence, together with distinctive types of formal organisation. It is because of the high status and supposed effectiveness of established professions that aspects of their outlook and behaviour are claimed for work of every type.

The delivery of expert services by discrete, independent and high-status occupations, each with a monopoly of a specialised type of knowledge, is not the only way of organising the supply of expertise. Thus, the question of how professions have come into being, and what sustains their continuing importance in the modern world (around a thousand years after their first creation) is important and an issue on which the theories to be considered in this chapter have a bearing.

Outline of the chapter

This chapter considers, first, the historically important and theoretically distinct approaches to the professions which provide insights into their origins and character. Second, it is then proposed that the resulting accumulated research has so broadened our understanding that there is now a widely shared knowledge of the kinds of professions that have emerged and of the processes of change typically affecting them. Third, whilst there is agreement on many fronts, there remain some important theoretical differences concerning the causes of change and how to explain them. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the likely future of professions and predicts further decline in their importance.

1Historical schools of thought

Analysts of professions usually distinguish different schools of thought (Suddaby and Muzio, 2015). There are benefits in approaching history in this way. It is economical in presenting the range of opinions about the professions and indicates something of the differences of emphasis in the writings of leading researchers. But the idea of distinctive theories is misleading if it is assumed that contributions only make sense within a particular perspective and there is no common ground between them. The proposition that different perspectives are fundamentally incommensurable because they are conceptually distinct is not as widely accepted as it was. Today it is thought there are findings in common between different approaches to the professions, including ideas about processes of change.

1.1Traits of professions

Early writers on the professions, amongst other things, made some attempt to describe the characteristics of professions which made them distinct from other occupations. From this the suggestion has been made that the first approach to the professions was something called ‘trait theory’. One problem with this is that there was (and still is) only limited agreement as to what the traits of professions are or why they are important. Also, a list of traits alone is insufficient for a theory, which requires proposals about causality to be made.

Whether there was an agreed list of traits in early works is highly doubtful. One of the key texts usually cited as the start of trait theory is by Carr-Saunders and Wilson (1933). This was certainly written before the literature on professions proliferated in the 1950s. But it is difficult to find a list of attributes of professions there. Analysing professions is not considered until Part III of the book and the discussion is inconclusive. The evidence considered is drawn from documents produced by a sample of British professional associations, and discussion is tied to views recorded. This writing has conceptual elements, but they stem from the authors’ concern with improving the quality of the population (eugenics). Other texts also supposedly foundational for trait theory by Cogan (1953) and Greenwood (1957) were written for members of particular occupations – educationists and social workers respectively. It is difficult to see these as serious contributions to theory.

The traits envisaged by writers increased with time, however. Most lists referred to expertise, a consistent body of knowledge, and certification of competency. Willensky (1964) discussed a sequence in which traits might be acquired, whilst others also tried to measure them (Millerson, 1964; Hickson and Thomas, 1967), but there were many exceptions and anomalies. There was a teleological cast to this listing. Professions were successful because of their attributes: prolonged education, specialised knowledge, regulatory associations, developed rules and codes of ethics etc. Too often it was simply assumed that these traits must be the cause of professional effectiveness, but how and why was unanalysed.

1.2Functionalist accounts

The first recognisably theoretical account of the professions was functionalism. Functionalism proposes that groups and institutions exist because they are functional for society. The theory is described as ‘holistic’ because the reasons for the parts taking their form is sought in the character of the whole. This approach developed strongly in North America after 1950, but originated in Europe in the nineteenth century. A key source of ideas here was Emile Durkheim (d 1917), who thought civic and professional organisations (with their origins in antiquity) would continue to be valuable elements of economically advanced societies (translated, 1957). Durkheim thought modernisation of society could lead to continuing political instability, but that professions and civil organisations would act as counter-balancing sources of power and authority to the state and military (Turner, 1992). Such institutions would provide a differentiated condition of culture (the ‘conscience collective’) appropriate to economically developed societies, and supporting social responsibility and altruism. Thus, professions contribute to order and avoidance of (a) authoritarianism (by the state or political power) and (b) rootlessness and anarchy (anomie). The functionality attributed to institutions in this theory was thus highly qualified. It was not suggested institutions necessarily contribute to social order, but that appropriate institutions will improve functionality and avert incipient crisis.

Durkheim’s approach was taken up by another key figure, Talcott Parsons, whose new variant of functionalism was popularised in America after World War II. In his mature work, Parsons (1953) proposed a theory featuring the self-adjusting tendencies of groups and organisations within society. Durkheim’s idea that functionality was not automatic and needs to be fostered was lost. In its place was the idea that society would automatically tend towards equilibrium. In Parsons’ thought, integration occurred through four processes – adaptation (necessary to meet changed economic and political conditions), new goal attainment (innovation necessary to effective competition and in response to changed conditions), reintegration (necessary for institutions to accommodate change) and pattern maintenance or latency (homeostasis to provide continuity).

It might be thought that Parsons would conclude that professions contribute more to integration and homeostasis than to innovation, but this is incorrect. Brante suggests (2011) that Parsons discussed professions as part of a range of elite occupations, including business executives and administrators, which he regarded as functionally similar. All these occupations alike were seen as bearers of progressive, rational values, all feeding off and indebted to developments within pure science. These ideas give a limiting idea of the professions, and do not allow key questions such as why some professions are developed to an exceptional degree but others are not. Parsons also had little to say about the different types of formal organisation of professions, except to imply that the more functional for society they are, the more developed occupations would be.

Functionalists assume that professions serve the public good and are altruistic (Goode, 1957). However, such claims were generally not tested. Despite attempts to put the study of professionalism on an objective basis, for example by the use of measurement by Millerson (1964), such methods were difficult to develop and apply. Indeed, many noticed practices that were obviously self-serving rather than altruistic, such as suspending the operation of market processes and relying on professional judgement as the basis of provision. Many also noted the tendency of professional groups to limit supply of qualified practitioners, so increasing rewards as well as sustaining quality. Problems arising from the contentions of functionalism thus grew in the 1970/80s.

Functionalist thinking was also widely applied to organisations. The influential ‘Aston Group’, for example, assumed organisations adapted their structures to remain functional and efficient. These researchers set out to study large samples of firms, and their approach was called contingency theory because they thought organisations must adapt to market, technical and other environmental ‘contingencies’. In their research they found two types of organisation approximating bureaucracy: what they called ‘work-flow bureaucracies’ and ‘personnel bureaucracies’ (Pugh and Hickson, 1976, p. 161). The latter are large, service organisations typically employing many professionals. Thus the Aston researchers suggested that bureaucratic organisations and professionals within them would adapt to externally imposed demands for change. As contemporary research showed, however, adaptation was not automatic and there were sometimes groups within existing structures who would resist change (Burns and Stalker, 1961). Subsequent research into the professions has amply shown this tendency amongst professionals (Ackroyd, 1996).

1.3Conflict theory

Marx (d 1883) and Weber (d 1920) saw conflict as basic to understanding social change. Neither presented extended work on modern professions, but later researchers developed a distinctive approach to professions from their initial insights.

For Marx, the main source of professional revenue would be from services provided to capitalists or other members of the middle class. The existence of such groups as lawyers and managers was to be understood in terms of their relationship with the capital-owning class. This was a different explanation from that of functionalists, being cast in terms of self-interested motives of professionals, and related to their relative social position. Weber was more aware of the range of historical variation in the beliefs and practices of groups and their connections with society, but, like Marx, he assumed self-interest was endemic. In the first chapter of Economy and Society, Weber compares the operation of social groups, and he proposes, amongst other things, that groups can be artificially closed in various ways. This is a possibility he illustrated briefly with the case of lawyers in early modern England (1968, pp. 43–47). The idea of closure by social groups, as developed by Weber’s followers, has made an important contribution to the explanation of social processes (Parkin, 1979). It has also been applied with go...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Figures and charts
• Tables
• Contributors
• General introduction: the changing world of professions and professionalism
• PART I Theories and contemporary context of professions and professionalism
• PART II Governing the professions and professionalism
• PART III Professions, management and leadership
• PART IV Global professionalism and the emerging economies
• PART V Sectoral analysis: case studies
• Index