Most analyses of professionalism as a normative value system have been at macro and meso levels of analysis and these will be the focus for this section, though micro analysis will also be indicated. There is a long history of attempts to clarify the meaning and functions of professionalism for the stability and civility of social systems. Durkheim (see 1992) assessed professionalism as a form of moral community based on occupational membership. Tawney (1921) perceived professionalism as a force capable of subjecting rampant individualism to the needs of the community. Carr-Saunders and Wilson (1933) saw professionalism as a force for stability and freedom against the threat of encroaching industrial and governmental bureaucracies. Marshall (1950) emphasized altruism or the ‘service' orientation of professionalism and how professionalism might form a bulwark against threats to stable democratic processes.

The best-known, though perhaps the most frequently mis-quoted, attempt to clarify the special characteristics of professionalism and its central normative values was that of Parsons (1951). Parsons tried to clarify the importance of professionalism through ‘a theoretical base in the sociology of knowledge, in terms of a socially-grounded normative order' (Dingwall & Lewis 1983:2). Parsons recognized and was one of the first theorists to show how the capitalist economy, the rational-legal social order (of Weber), and the modern professions were all interrelated and mutually balancing in the maintenance and stability of a fragile normative social order. He demonstrated how the authority of the professions and of bureaucratic organizations both rested on the same principles (for example, of functional specificity, restriction of the power domain, application of universalistic, impersonal standards). The professions, however, by means of their collegial organization and shared identity demonstrated an alternative approach (to the hierarchy of bureaucratic organizations) towards the shared normative end. This interpretation has been revisited in a recent analysis by Freidson (2001) who analyses professionalism as a third logic in contrast to the logics of the market and the organization.

Unlike Parsons, Hughes regarded the differences between professions and occupations as differences of degree rather than kind. For Hughes (1958), not only do professions and occupations presume to tell the rest of their society what is good and right for it, but also they determine the ways of thinking about problems which fall in their domain (Dingwall & Lewis 1983:5). Professionalism in occupations and professions implies the importance of trust in economic relations in modern societies with an advanced division of labour. In other words, lay people must place their trust in professional workers (electricians and plumbers as well as lawyers and doctors) and some professionals must acquire guilty knowledge. Professionalism requires professionals to be worthy of that trust, to maintain confidentiality and conceal such guilty knowledge by not exploiting it for evil purposes. In return for professionalism in client relations, professionals are rewarded with authority, privileged rewards and higher status. Subsequent analysis has interpreted higher rewards to be the result of occupational power rather than professionalism but this was one result of the rather peculiar focus on medicine and law as the archetypal professions in Anglo-American analysis, rather than a more realistic assessment of the large differences in power resources of most occupational groups.

The work of Hughes also constitutes the starting point for many micro level ethnographic studies of professional socialization in work places (e.g. hospitals and schools) and the development (in new) and maintenance (in existing) workers of shared professional identities. This shared professional identity is associated with a sense of common experiences, understandings and expertise, shared ways of perceiving problems and their possible solutions. This common identity is produced and reproduced through occupational and professional socialization by means of shared and common educational backgrounds, professional training and vocational experiences, and by membership of professional associations (local, regional, national and international) and societies where practitioners develop and maintain a shared work culture. One result is similarities in work practices and procedures, common ways of perceiving problems and their possible solutions and shared ways of perceiving and interacting with customers and clients. In these ways the normative value system of professionalism in work, and how to behave, respond and advise, is reproduced at the micro level in individual practitioners and in the work places in which they work.

The work of Parsons, in particular, on the core aspects of professionalism and the special characteristics of professional work, has subsequently been subject to heavy criticism. Sometimes, although mistakenly, Parson's work has been interpreted as leading to the trait approach (for example, Johnson 1972:25-32). In addition, Parsons' work has been over-zealously criticized because of its links with functionalism (Dingwall & Lewis 1983). In the 1970s and 1980s, the concept of professionalism as value system was rejected and replaced by a critical assessment (see next section) which resulted in a general scepticism about professions which were seen instead to be elite conspiracies of powerful occupational workers.