Professionalism

The concepts of professionalism, profession, and professionalization have received considerable and sometimes critical attention in sociology. In early British and American analyses, professionalism was identified as an occupational value that was important for the stability and civility of social systems. In these interpretations, professional relations were characterized as collegial, cooperative, and mutually supportive. Relations of trust characterized practitioner-client and practitioner-management interactions since competencies were assumed to be guaranteed by education, training, and sometimes by licensing.

There is a second more pessimistic interpretation of professionalism, however, which has grown out of the more critical literature on professions that was prominent in Anglo American analyses in the 1970s and 1980s. During this period, professionalism came to be dismissed as a successful ideology, and professionalization as a process of market closure and monopoly control of work and occupational dominance. Professionalization was intended to promote professionals' own occupational self interests in terms of their salary, status, and power, as well as the monopoly protection of an occupational jurisdiction. Professionalization was a process largely initiated and controlled by the practitioners themselves through their professional institutions and associations in order to promote and protect their own interests.

A third and later development has involved the analysis of professionalism as a discourse of occupational change and control—this time in work organizations where the discourse is increasingly applied and utilized by managers. There is an important difference when the discourse of professionalism is constructed “from within” (by the occupational group itself) and “from above” (by managers in work organizations). When the discourse is constructed from within, then the returns to the group can be substantial. The occupational group uses the discourse to construct its occupational identity, promoting its image with clients and customers, and in bargaining with states to secure and promote the occupational control of the work. In contrast, when the discourse is constructed from above, then it is usually a false or selective discourse used to facilitate occupational change and rationalization. The effects are not the occupational control of the work by the practitioners but rather control by the organizational managers and supervisors. Organizational objectives define practitioner-client [Page 753]relations and set achievement targets and performance indicators. Organizational objectives regulate and replace occupational control of the practitioner-client work interactions, thereby limiting the exercise of discretion and preventing the service ethic that has been important in professional work.

Professionalism as an occupational value is currently under threat from the logic efficiency and effectiveness of organizational models of control of work. Talcott Parsons demonstrated in 1951 how the authority of the professions and of hierarchical bureaucratic organizations both rested on the same principles. He went on to argue that the professions, by means of their collegial organization and shared identity, demonstrated an alternative to the managerial hierarchy of organizations toward the shared normative end. In 2001, Eliot Freidson examined the logics of three different ways of organizing work in contemporary societies (the market, organization, and profession). He demonstrates the advantages of professionalism for both clients and practitioners and the importance of maintaining professionalism, along with trust, competencies, and discretion, as the main organizing principle for service work in modern societies.

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