Professionalism

The period of critique of professions and analysis of professionalization projects, which Sciulli and others have characterized as neo-Weberian, has been followed by a period of re-evaluation (e.g. Freidson 2001). In the 1990s researchers began to reassess the significance of professionalism and its positive (as well as negative) contributions for clients and practitioners, as well as for social systems. To an extent this indicates a return to professionalism as normative value, an interpretation which was prominent in earlier analyses (e.g. Durkheim, see 1992; Tawney 1921; Carr-Saunders & Wilson 1933; Marshall 1950; Parsons 1951), but in addition there are new directions in the analysis.

One result of this return and re-appraisal is a more balanced assessment of professionalism as a normative value. Thus, in addition to protecting their own market position through controlling the license to practice and protecting their elite positions, professionalism might also represent a distinctive form of decentralized occupational control or ‘moral occupational community' which could be important in civil society (Durkheim, see 1992). It has also been argued that the public interest and professional self-interest are not necessarily at opposite ends of a continuum and that the pursuit of self-interests may be compatible with advancing the public interest (Saks 1995). Professionalism might also work to create and represent distinct professional values or moral obligations which restrain excessive competition and encourage co-operation (Dingwall 1996).

The claim is now being made (for example, Freidson 1994, 2001) that professionalism is a unique form of occupational control of work which has distinct advantages over market, organizational and bureaucratic forms of control. In assessing the political, economic and ideological forces that are exerting enormous pressure on the professions today, Freidson (1994) has defended professionalism as a desirable way of providing complex, discretionary services to the public. He argues that market-based or organizational and bureaucratic methods impoverish and standardize the quality of service to customers and demotivates practitioners, and he goes on to suggest how the virtues of professionalism can be reinforced. In his latest book Freidson's (2001) analysis reflects many of the features of professions and the normative social order identified by Parsons (1951). Thus, professions might need to close markets in order to be able to endorse and guarantee the education, training, experience and tacit knowledge of licensed practitioners, but once achieved professions might then be able to concentrate more fully on developing the service-orientated and performance-related aspects of their work (Halliday 1987; Evetts 1998). The process of occupational closure will result in the monopoly supply of the expertise and the service, and probably also to privileged access to salary and status as well as to definitional and control rewards for practitioners. In respect of these privileges, it is necessary to remember the dual character of professions which includes both the provision of a service (and the development of an autonomous form of governance) as well as the use of knowledge and power for economic gain and monopoly control (which poses a threat to civility).

It has also been suggested that rather than the question – How do professions capture states? (which was considered to be an aspect of occupational powers) – instead the central question should be – Why do states create professions, or least permit professions to flourish? This has resulted in a renewed interest in the historical evidence about the parallel processes of the creation of modern nation-states in the second half of the 19th Century and of modern professionalism in the same period. It is suggested, for example, that professions might be one aspect of a state founded on liberal principles, one way of regulating certain spheres of economic life without developing an oppressive central bureaucracy (Dingwall and King 1995). Perkin (1989) has highlighted the close and interconnected role played by both the nation-state and professionals in the creation of a legitimate capitalist order in the UK in the 1880-1920 period. Johnson (1992), using Foucault's arguments (1973, 1979, 1980), has shown how the extension of the capacity to govern depended on expertise in its professionalized form and the development of expert jurisdictions and systems of notation, documentation, evaluation, calculation and assessment. Dingwall (1996) develops this further by considering the growing need for social order in the rapidly developing global economy and international markets, and how professionalism might make a normative and value contribution in meeting this need.

In general, then, some recent Anglo-American analyses of professions have involved a re-interpretation of the concept of professionalism as a normative value in the socialization of new workers, in the preservation and predictability of normative social order in work and occupations, and in the maintenance and stability of a fragile normative order in state and increasingly international markets. This current interpretation has built on earlier (less critical) analyses and the result is now a more balanced and cautious reappraisal. There is due recognition, for example, of the power and self-interests of some professional groups in wanting to preserve and indeed promote professionalism as a normative value. This current interpretation of professionalism involves a re-evaluation of the importance of trust in client/practitioner relations (Karpik 1989), of discretion (Hawkins ed. 1992) as well as analysis of risk (Grelon 1996) and expert judgement (Milburn 1996; Trépos 1996). It also includes a reassessment of quality of service and of professional performance in the best interests of both customers (in order to avoid further standardization of service provision) and practitioners (in order to protect discretion in service work decision-making) (Freidson 1994).