Professions

A Key Idea for Business and Society

Mike Saks

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780429879722
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Gestione
• Index: Business

Professions and professionalism have played an integral part in business and society. In this book, Mike Saks provides a thorough overview of this field through an analysis of a range of professions, including, amongst others, accountants, doctors and lawyers.

The book offers a critical analysis of such privileged occupational groups in modern societies. Anticipating a positive if changing role for such groups in the years ahead, the book outlines conflicting theoretical perspectives on professions and discusses current developments in an accessible, multi-disciplinary style. The book documents their evolution and contemporary transformation from medieval guilds to fully-fledged professions and international professional service firms, while pointing a path towards their future in the world of work and beyond.

With insights into the recent challenges provided by clients, citizens, the state and corporations in neo-liberal societies, Professions provides a concise overview that will be essential reading for students, academics and others interested in the operation of these key occupational groups in business and society.

1 Introduction

The context to the analysis of professions

Introduction

In this Key Ideas book on professions, the general concept of a profession will be analysed in modern neo-liberal societies. This will involve distinguishing professionals as individuals from collective professional associations. It will also allow the nature and activities of professions to be considered in an international context – not least in areas such as accountancy, law and medicine, amongst many others including relatively new and emerging professional groups. The book will also cover in an interrelated manner the major changes that have occurred in recent years with the development of national and international professional service firms. The structure and argument put forward in each of the ensuing chapters of the book will be overviewed in Chapter 1 to underline the coherence and flow of the volume. To set a context, lay and academic views on the difference of professions from non-professions will then be highlighted, along with the relationship between specific professions in terms of features such as hierarchy and jurisdiction.

The field of business and management in Britain and the United States on which this book is in large part centred is made up of several sub-disciplines based on subjects such as sociology, social policy, economics, politics and social psychology. Although this field is frequently depicted as a well-charted area, contributors typically use different theoretical approaches, generating diverse maps of what is essentially the same terrain. This is certainly true of the subject of professions about which, as will be seen, there are multiple interpretations from varying socio-political perspectives. As such, the book goes beyond the typically rather superficial accounts of professions given in textbooks in business and management covering areas like human resource management, organisational behaviour and work organisation. In so doing, it importantly enables the reader to grasp key concepts and debates about professions more holistically – in the context of a much wider discussion about such occupational groups.

In this manner, the book mirrors the philosophy of the series of which it is part. More specifically, it offers new ways of understanding professions primarily, but not exclusively, from a business and management perspective. As such, it provides an authoritative and original narrative on professional groups, locating this subject matter within differing schools of thought, giving insights into its applications and meanings, and critically discussing the contributions of a wide variety of top authors in this field. Drawing extensively on the latest published research on professions, it aspires within the series template to be a clearly written, accessible and pacey volume – delivering a thought-provoking, stimulating path into the subject for its range of potential readers, from undergraduates, postgraduates and academics to executive leaders, professionals themselves, policy makers and, of course, the educated lay person.

The contents of the book

As will be apparent from this introductory Chapter 1, while the nature of professions is debated, they are traditionally seen as an integral aspect of modern neo-liberal societies – as repositories of exceptional expertise, the mainstays of democracy and the guardians of ethical behaviour. This book continues in Chapter 2 by noting the growth in their significance by the second half of the twentieth century and charting their chronological development from more localised guilds to fully-fledged and legally underwritten professional bodies within specific nation states. While this history is focused on their classic Anglo-American socio-economic and political origins, it also considers the similarities and differences in the process of professionalisation with other countries, from continental Europe to societies with a socialist heritage like China and Russia. This highlights that professionalisation is by no means an inevitable and unilinear development in modern societies, bringing about long-term occupational convergence.

Differing theoretical interpretations of professions and professionalisation are then considered in Chapter 3. This begins with the more positively disposed trait and functionalist theories from the 1950s and early 1960s. It then outlines the work of their initial free market economist and social psychologically oriented symbolic interactionist critics – the latter of whom provide a platform for contemporary discourse analysis, which views professionalism purely as a politically deployed occupational ideology. The chapter goes on to outline the more recent macro structural theories of professions of Marxism and Foucauldianism, which also in different ways paint a less entrancing view of professions. This analysis of competing theories of professions culminates in an outline of the neo-Weberian perspective linked to exclusionary social closure in the market and the loosely interwoven Bourdieusian and neo-institutionalist approaches. The neo-Weberian perspective is particularly favoured here and frames most of the remainder of the volume.

In parallel with these theoretical shifts, the self-regulatory powers of legally enshrined professions increasingly came under attack in the wake of the counter culture from the 1960s and 1970s. It derived from both clients and citizens and the state in modern neo-liberal societies, alongside the threat of growing corporatisation. Chapter 4 considers the effects of these challenges on the autonomy and privileges of professional occupations. Although some argue that this has led to the increasing emaciation of ever more bureaucratised and externally controlled professions, others believe that the position is a good deal more complex because of hybridisation and other factors. This leads to a discussion of the extent to which professions have been able to resist the challenges to their independence and to self-interestedly protect their typically high income, status and power. This is considered mainly in terms of the deprofessionalisation thesis, which is widely debated by neo-Weberian and other contributors.

Key issues for professions in business and management are discussed in Chapter 5. These follow the question of to what extent professions have become the creatures of organisations in the private and public sector in responding to competing institutional logics. It is argued that the modern world is increasingly becoming transnational in scope, rather than simply being contained within country-specific boundaries. The chapter also considers the implications of the rise of international professional service firms in an ever more global and entrepreneurial context. The extent to which managers can be seen as professions in national settings is then explored, alongside an analysis of more established and newer and emerging business-linked professions, again primarily from a neo-Weberian perspective. The benefits or otherwise of interprofessional collaboration in a business environment are then assessed. In all this, as in the rest of the volume, it is argued that the impact of diversity in terms of gender and ethnicity on professions in the marketplace cannot be ignored.

This leads on to a consideration of the future of professions in the concluding Chapter 6. Some academics argue that the focus in modern neo-liberal societies should now be on knowledge and expertise rather than professions themselves, while others believe that professions should be disestablished. Alternatively, the future may best involve changes in particular professions and/or professions as a whole taking on such roles as risk managers or trusted interpreters of information. Here the part played by professions has been developing as a result of, amongst other things, the growing importance of technological changes – including the increasing introduction of artificial intelligence. This raises the question of whether professions can take on a more positive role in society in the future. In shedding some of their undesirable characteristics, it is argued that care should be taken not to jettison their potential future role in responsible leadership. Whatever their shortcomings, Britain and the United States and the broader contemporary neo-liberal world would be a poorer place without professional groups.

In sum, the core message of this book lies in providing a range of fascinating and topical insights into the past, present and future role of professions in business and management and modern society in general in a challenging and rapidly shifting socio-political context – not least in a world currently riven by the coronavirus pandemic, of which more in the book’s conclusion. The main aims of this volume can be listed as follows:

• To increase our understanding of professions in modern societies
• To outline the history of professions and professionalisation
• To consider different theoretical interpretations of professions
• To examine the impact of the recent more critical political climate for professions
• To discuss selected business and management issues related to professions
• To consider whether and in what form professions have a future.

In covering these themes, it should be noted that, from a stylistic perspective, the pedagogic features the book adopts to enhance readability on its professional themes include:

• Accessible content based on an engaging reading style
• The inclusion of boxed entries and tables
• The bulleting of points where appropriate
• The use of metaphors where relevant to highlight pivotal points
• A guide to key further reading in addition to the general bibliography.

Readership, publications on professions and authorship

The readership for the book is potentially extensive – especially in developed English-speaking countries like Britain, the United States, Australia and Canada, as well as continental Europe. Consideration of the historical and contemporary position of professions is very relevant to a wide range of academic business and management programmes, as well as a broad span of social science and professional courses. Its relevance extends beyond such strongly business-related areas as accounting and law to include the established fields of medicine and health and newly evolving professional areas like executive search and project management. In addition, it intersects with more general subjects such as corporate governance, responsible leadership and business ethics. In this respect, there are very few publications that generically cover such work on professions – not least in monograph form.

To be sure, as will be seen, in addition to broader Anglo-American journals like Work, Employment and Society and Work and Occupations, there are high-quality targeted journals that publish articles on professions and specific professional groups. Central amongst these are the online open-access journal Professions and Professionalism and Oxford University Press’s Journal of Professions and Organization. In the former, as the author of this text, I have published a number of papers, while in the latter I have been a serial contributor and referee for new submissions as a longstanding member of the editorial board. Here I have regularly served annually on the prize-awarding body selecting the best article, the presentation of which is made at the annual conference on professional service firms at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford.

There are also several helpful edited and other books giving coverage of the professions field – albeit in restricted terms in relation to the year of publication and the particular professional groups or geographical locations covered. They include those by Dingwall and Lewis (1983) focusing on law and medicine in Britain, and Svensson and Evetts (2010) primarily centred on Scandinavia in a wider European context. However, despite these collections, more comprehensive international books on professions are rarely produced as monographs. The most memorable sole-authored volumes in this mould are The Sociology of the Professions by Macdonald (1995), which is now rather dated, and the recently reproduced and revived early 1970s book by Johnson on Professions and Power (2016), for which I and John Flood contributed a new Preface.

As will be seen in this volume, there are a range of excellent monographs on various aspects of specific professions in a range of different modern societies – including on the elite occupations of medicine and law (see, for instance, Berlant, 1975; Burrage, 2006) – and professions more generally in England from the viewpoint of a social historian (Perkin, 1989). These cover areas spanning from their historical development in the very different Anglo-American socio-political milieu to their contemporary regulatory positioning in the countries concerned. In addition, there are also larger compendiums for academic researchers – as illustrated most recently by The Routledge Companion to the Professions and Professionalism co-edited by Mike Dent and colleagues (2016), for which I was an invited contributor. But such a collection is the exception rather than the rule and does not provide the coherence of a monograph such as this across the wider landscape of professional groups in the modern world, especially focused on neo-liberal societies.

This gives some indication of where this book is positioned in the existing literature on professions. I have found professions both a fascinating and exciting area to research. As a full academic professor for some thirty years, I have written extensively on this and related subjects like regulation and research, particularly in the health field. This has resulted in over one hundred journal articles and book chapters, alongside the many papers and keynote addresses I have given on these themes at international conferences. I have also enjoyed writing more than twenty edited and single-author volumes on cognate subjects with top publishers from Oxford University Press and Sage to Bristol University’s Policy Press and Routledge – with the latter of which I have now published more than half-a-dozen books over a twenty-five-year period.

The texts with Routledge reach back to such pioneering sole and co-edited works with other authors as Professions and the Public Interest (1995) and Health Professions and the State in Europe (1995). These were followed by books with other publishers on Professional Identity and Order in Comparative Perspective (1998), Professional Identities in Transition (1999), Regulating the Health Professions (2002) and Rethinking Professional Governance (2008). Most recently I have written, amongst others, The Professions, State and the Market (2015), Professions and Metaphors (2016), Professions and Professional Service Firms (2018), Professional Health Regulation in the Public Interest (2018) and Support Workers and the Health Professions in International Perspective (2020). The latter two books are part of a series for which I am co-editor with Policy Press specifically on health professions in modern societies.

As such, my work spans the various social sciences covered by this volume – from politics and social policy to my base discipline of sociology which I studied at a number of British universities, culminating in my doctorate on the professions at the London School of Economics, where I once taught. My early career as a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer at De Montfort University (DMU) was helpfully spent teaching in a Law School and a Business School, alongside regular inputs on a range of other professionally accredited courses from estate management to public administration. This was in addition to later becoming Head of School and then Dean of Faculty of Health and Community Studies at DMU. This experience was expanded in my roles as Pro Vice Chancellor and Deputy Vice Chancellor at the University of Lincoln and Provost at University Campus Suffolk, where I had academic oversight over a range of professionally related disciplines.

The value of this interdisciplinary experience in professional and associated fields in writing this book has been increased by my recent roles as Research Professor and Emeritus Professor at the University of Suffolk – which runs many courses providing the higher education qualifications necessary for entry into the mainstream professions. It has also been accentuated by my present posts as Visiting Professor at the University of Lincoln, the Royal Veterinary College, University of London, and the University of Westminster in Britain and the University of Toronto in Canada. These followed my service on the Executive of De Montfort University, the University of Lincoln, the University of East Anglia and the University of Essex and my Chief Executive role at University Campus Suffolk – as well as my ongoing Board membership at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance in London.

Aside from the wide-ranging insights I can therefore provide on the educational foundation of the professions and higher education itself as an academic profession, I have a strong enterprise profile as befits the author of a book focused on business and management. As indicated above, I have successfully been involved in running universities in Britain with multi-million-pound turnovers receiving Times Higher Education awards for Widening Participation University of the Year and Outstanding Leadership and Management Team of the Year. I have also held numerous Company Directorships and am a Fellow of the Institute of Directors and the Institute of Knowledge Exchange. In the latter role, I am a member of the Innovation Council, which includes many Chief Executives of major multinational companies. In addition, I have been a Chair/member of many National Health Service and other health committees including national charities and have advised the United Kingdom Departments of Health and professional bodies like the General Social Care Council and the General Medical Council.

To add to my motivation in writing this book, which covers a range of modern societies, I have engaged in funded international research projects on professions in countries as diverse as Canada and Russia. I have also been President of the International Sociological Association (ISA) Research Committee on Professional Groups – and am the current Vice President of the ISA Research Committee on Health with members drawn from some forty different countries. I am also a member of the Editorial/Advisory Board of various international journals and have advised governments on regulatory policy in several countries. Most recently, I became honorary Senior Advisor to the United Nations on public sector leadership and co-founder of the United Nations-sponsored Institute for Responsible Leadership, both of which centrally link to professional governance.

Debates about the concept of a profession

Having established my own knowledge base for producing this volume on professions which brings together several important threads of my previous work, what exactly is meant by the general concept of a profession in the modern neo-liberal world? As the much-revered Am...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction: The context to the analysis of professions
• 2. The history of professions and professionalisation
• 3. Competing theories of professions
• 4. Attacks on professions: Professional deconstruction?
• 5. Business and management issues and the professions
• 6. Conclusion: The future of professions
• Bibliography
• Further reading
• Index