Profession
A profession is a field of
Professional occupations are founded upon specialized educational training, the purpose of which is to supply disinterested objective counsel and service to others, for a direct and definite compensation, wholly apart from expectation of other business gain.[4] Medieval and early modern tradition recognized only three professions: divinity, medicine, and law,[5][6] which were called the learned professions.[7] A profession is not a trade[8] nor an industry.[9]
Some professions change slightly in status and power, but their prestige generally remains stable over time, even if the profession begins to have more required study and formal education.[10] Disciplines formalized more recently, such as architecture, now have equally long periods of study associated with them.[11]
Although professions may enjoy relatively high status and public prestige, not all professionals earn high salaries, and even within specific professions there exist significant differences in salary. In law, for example, a corporate
Etymology
The term "profession" is a truncation of the term "liberal profession", which is, in turn, an
Formation
A profession arises through the process of professionalization when any trade or occupation transforms itself:
"... [through] the development of formal qualifications based upon education, apprenticeship, and examinations, the emergence of regulatory bodies with powers to admit and discipline members, and some degree of monopoly rights.[13]
Major milestones which may mark an occupation being identified as a profession include:[6]
- an occupation becomes a full-time occupation
- the establishment of a training school
- the establishment of a university school
- the establishment of a local association
- the establishment of a national association of professional ethics
- the establishment of state licensinglaws
Applying these milestones to the historical sequence of development in the United States shows surveying achieving professional status first (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln all worked as land surveyors before entering politics[14][15][16]), followed by medicine, actuarial science, law, dentistry, civil engineering, logistics, architecture and accounting.[17]
With the rise of technology and occupational specialization in the 19th century, other bodies began to claim professional status:
Regulation
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Regulatory organisations are typically charged with overseeing a defined industry. Usually they will have two general tasks:
- creating, reviewing and amending standards expected of individuals and organisations within the industry.[19]
- Intervening when there is a reasonable suspicion that a regulated individual or organisation may not be complying with its obligations.[20]
Originally, any regulation of the professions was
An example was in 2008, when the British government proposed wide statutory regulation of psychologists. The inspiration for the change was a number of problems in the psychotherapy field, but there are various kinds of psychologists including many who have no clinical role, and where the case for regulation was not so clear. Work psychology brought especial disagreement, with the British Psychological Society favoring statutory regulation of "occupational psychologists" and the Association of Business Psychologists resisting the statutory regulation of "business psychologists" – descriptions of professional activity which it may not be easy to distinguish.
Besides regulating access to a profession, professional bodies may set
The
Typically, individuals are required by law to be qualified by a local professional body before they are permitted to practice in that profession. However, in some countries, individuals may not be required by law to be qualified by such a professional body in order to practice, as is the case for accountancy in the United Kingdom (except for auditing and insolvency work which legally require qualification by a professional body). In such cases, qualification by the professional bodies is effectively still considered a prerequisite to practice as most employers and clients stipulate that the individual hold such qualifications before hiring their services. For example, in order to become a fully qualified teaching professional in Hong Kong working in a state or government-funded school, one needs to have successfully completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Education ("PGDE") or a bachelor's degree in Education ("BEd") at an approved tertiary educational institution or university. This requirement is set out by the Educational Department Bureau of Hong Kong, which is the governmental department that governs the Hong Kong education sector.
Autonomy
Professions tend to be autonomous, which means they have a high degree of control of their own affairs: "professionals are autonomous insofar as they can make independent judgments about their work".[21] This usually means "the freedom to exercise their professional judgement."[22]
However, it also has other meanings. "Professional autonomy is often described as a claim of professionals that has to serve primarily their own interests...this professional autonomy can only be maintained if members of the profession subject their activities and decisions to a critical evaluation by other members of the profession."[23] The concept of autonomy can therefore be seen to embrace not only judgement, but also self-interest and a continuous process of critical evaluation of ethics and procedures from within the profession itself.
One major implication of professional autonomy is the traditional ban on corporate practice of the professions, especially accounting, architecture, engineering, medicine, and law. This means that in many jurisdictions, these professionals cannot do business through regular for-profit corporations and raise capital rapidly through initial public offerings or flotations. Instead, if they wish to practice collectively they must form special business entities such as partnerships or professional corporations, which feature (1) reduced protection against liability for professional negligence and (2) severe limitations or outright prohibitions on ownership by non-professionals. The obvious implication of this is that all equity owners of the professional business entity must be professionals themselves. This avoids the possibility of a non-professional owner of the firm telling a professional how to do his or her job and thereby protects professional autonomy. The idea is that the only non-professional person who should be telling the professional what to do is the client; in other words, professional autonomy preserves the integrity of the two-party professional-client relationship. Above this client-professional relationship the profession requires the professional to use their autonomy to follow the rules of ethics that the profession requires. But because professional business entities are effectively locked out of the stock market, they tend to grow relatively slowly compared to public corporations.
Status, prestige, and power
Professions tend to have a high
Sociology
Émile Durkheim argued that professions created a stable society by providing structure separate from the state and the military that was less inclined to create authoritarianism or anomie and could create altruism and encourage social responsibility and altruism. This functionalist perspective was extended by Parsons who considered how the function of a profession could change in responses to changes in society.[27]: 17
Esther Lucile Brown, an anthropologist, studied various professions starting the 1930s while working with Ralph Hurlin at the Russell Sage Foundation. She published Social Work as a Profession in 1935, and following this publications studying the work of engineers, nurses, medical physicians and lawyers. In 1944, the Department of Studies in the Professions was created at the Russell Sage Foundation with Brown as its head.[28]: 183
Theories based on conflict theories following Marx and Weber consider how professions can act in the interest of their own group to secure social and financial benefits were espoused by Johnson (Professions and Powers, 1972) and Larson (The Rise of Professionalism, 1977). One way that a profession can derive financial benefits is limiting the supply of services.[27]: 18
Theories based on discourse, following Mead and applying ideas of Sartre and Heidegger look at how the individual's understanding of reality influence the role of professions. These viewpoints were espoused by Berger and Luckmann (The Social Construction of Reality, 1966).[27]: 19
System of professions
Andrew Abbott constructed a sociological model of professions in his book The System of Professions. Abbott views professions as having jurisdiction over the right to carry out tasks with different possession vying for control of jurisdiction over tasks.[29]
A profession often possesses an expert knowledge system which is distinct from the profession itself. This abstract system is often not of direct practical use but is rather optimized for logical consistency and rationality, and to some degree acts to increase the status of the entire profession. One profession may seek control of another profession's jurisdiction by challenging it at this academic level. Abbott argues that in the 1920s the psychiatric profession tried to challenge the legal profession for control over society's response to criminal behavior. Abbott argues the formalization of a profession often serves to make a jurisdiction easier or harder to protect from other jurisdictions: general principles making it harder for other professions to gain jurisdiction over one area, clear boundaries preventing encroachment, fuzzy boundaries making it easier for one profession to take jurisdiction over other tasks.
Professions may expand their jurisdiction by other means. Lay education on the part of professions as in part an attempt to expand jurisdiction by imposing a particular understanding on the world (one in which the profession has expertise). He terms this sort of jurisdiction public jurisdiction. Legal jurisdiction is a monopoly created by the state legislation, as applies to law in many nations.
Characteristics
There is considerable agreement about defining the characteristic features of a profession. They have a "professional association, cognitive base, institutionalized training, licensing,
A profession has been further defined as: "a special type of occupation...(possessing) corporate solidarity...prolonged specialized training in a body of abstract knowledge, and a collectivity or service orientation...a vocational sub-culture which comprises implicit codes of behavior, generates an
A critical characteristic of a profession is the need to cultivate and exercise professional discretion - that is, the ability to make case by case judgements that cannot be determined by an absolute rule or instruction.[33]
See also
- Anticipatory socialization
- Professional
- First professional degree
- Professional association (or body)
- Professional boundaries
- Professional class
- Professional degree
- Professional development
- Professional responsibility
- Professional ethics
- Professionalization
- Semiprofession
- Norwegian Centre for the Study of Professions
- List of occupations
References
- OCLC 1378675481.
- ^ "What is a Profession". Australian Council of Professions. 2003. Archived from the original on 1 September 2022. Retrieved 19 February 2020.
- ^ "What is a Profession". Professional Standards Council. Archived from the original on 12 March 2022. Retrieved 9 August 2018.
- Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb quoted with approval at paragraph 123 of a report by the UK Competition Commission, dated 8 November 1977, entitled Architects Services(in Chapter 7).
- ISBN 9781329911642. Retrieved 10 September 2016.
- ^ ISBN 0-412-47330-5. p.2.
- ^ See for example:
Fisher, Redwood, ed. (August 1846). "Statistics of the State of New-York". Fisher's National Magazine and Industrial Record. 3 (3): 234. Retrieved 17 August 2013.
[...] the three learned professions of divinity, law, and medicine [...]
- ^ John J Parker, "A Profession Not a Skilled Trade" (1955-1956) 8 South Carolina Law Quarterly 179 HeinOnline Archived 6 August 2020 at the Wayback Machine; Sommerlad, Harris-Short, Vaughan and Young (eds), The Futures of Legal Education and the Legal Profession, Bloomsbury, 2015, p 147; Richard Colman, "Medicine is a profession not a trade" Archived 15 December 2021 at the Wayback Machine, British Medical Journal, 7 October 2001; A M Linz, "A profession, not a trade" (December 1990) New York State Dental Journal 56(10):16 PubMed Archived 16 June 2018 at the Wayback Machine; E. G. Eberle, "The practice of medicine held to be a profession and not a trade" (August 1939) 28 Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association 482 Wiley Archived 15 December 2021 at the Wayback Machine; Wendler, Tremml and Buecker (eds), Key Aspects of German Business Law: A Practical Manual, 2nd Ed, Springer, 2002, p 255; William F Ryan, "Methods of Achieving Professional Recognition" (1946) The American Engineer, vols 16-17, p 8 [1] [2].
- ^ (1961) 2 The Industrial and Labour Law Digest, 1926-1959, Annotated 668; Sharma and Goyal, Hospital Administration And Human Resource Management, 5th Ed, PHI Learning, p 445.
- from the original on 25 April 2022. Retrieved 17 September 2020 – via Elsevier Science Direct.
- ISBN 82-547-0174-1.
- ^ "Liberal professions". Growth. European Commission. 5 July 2016. Archived from the original on 11 January 2017. Retrieved 3 May 2018.
- OCLC 45667833.
- ^ Redmond, Edward. "Washington as Public Land Surveyor". Library of Congress. Archived from the original on 6 March 2023. Retrieved 17 September 2020.
- ^ Boehm, Jay (March 1998). "Surveying". Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. Archived from the original on 2 June 2023. Retrieved 17 September 2020.
- ^ "Lincoln's New Salem 1830–1837". National Park Service. 10 April 2015. Archived from the original on 18 August 2022. Retrieved 17 September 2020.
- ^ Perks 1993, p. 3.
- ^ Buckley, J.W. & Buckley, M.H. (1974): The Accounting Profession. Melville, Los Angeles. Quoted by Perks, p.4.
- ^ OECD (2001). "Good Governance And Regulatory Management" (PDF). Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Retrieved 6 November 2023.
- ^ Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC). ""They set standards, hold a register, quality assure education and investigate complaints."". Retrieved 6 November 2023.
- ^ Bayles, Michael D. Professional Ethics. Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 1981.
- ^ "The World Medical Association Declaration of Madrid on Professional Autonomy and Self-Regulation", 1987. Archived 5 December 2010 at the Wayback Machine Revised in France in 2005, rescinded and archived in India in 2009, and rewritten and adopted in India in 2009 as "WMA Declaration of Madrid on Professionally-led Regulation" Archived 27 August 2012 at the Wayback Machine
- S2CID 10581304.
- ^ Tinsley, Ron; Hardy, James C. (2003). "Faculty pressures and professional self-esteem: Life in Texas teacher education". Essays in Education. 6.
- ^ Peter E. S. Freund and Meredith B. McGuire. Health, Illness, and the Social Body: A Critical Sociology, New Jersey, US: Prentice Hall, 1995, p.211.
- ISBN 978-1-55542-039-0.[page needed]
- ^ ISBN 978-1-317-69948-4. Archivedfrom the original on 6 March 2023. Retrieved 4 May 2021.
- ISBN 978-0-19-507232-7. Archivedfrom the original on 6 March 2023. Retrieved 4 December 2021.
- ISBN 978-0-226-18966-6. Archivedfrom the original on 6 March 2023. Retrieved 4 May 2021.
- ^ Magali Sarfatti Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: a Sociological Analysis, Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1978, p. 208
- ^ Joanne Brown, The Definition of a Profession: the Authority of Metaphor in the History of Intelligence Testing, 1890-1930, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992, p. 19
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Cruess, S. R., Johnston, S. & Cruess R. L. (2004). "Profession": a working definition for medical educators. Teaching and learning in Medicine,16(1): 74–76.
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Gailmard, S. & Patty, J. W. (2007). Slackers and zealots: Civil service, policy discretion, and bureaucratic expertise. American Journal of Political Science, 51(4), 873–889. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2007.00286.x
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Further reading
- .Abbott, Andrew (1988). The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor. Chicago: ISBN 9780226000688.
- Brint, Steven G (1994). In an Age of Experts: The Changing Role of Professionals in Politics and Public Life. ISBN 9780691033990.
- .Corfield, P. J. (1995). Power and the Professions in Britain, 1700-1850. London: ISBN 9780415097567.
- Dezalay, Yves; Sugarman, David (1995). Professional Competition and Professional Power: Lawyers, Accountants and the Social Construction of Markets. ISBN 9780415093620.
- Freidson, Eliot (15 May 1988). Professional Powers: A Study of the Institutionalization of Formal Knowledge. OCLC 26287874.
- .Jacob, Joseph M (1999). Doctors & Rules: A Sociology of Professional Values (2nd ed.). New Brunswick and London: OL 1914768W.
- Montgomery, Jonathan (1989). "Medicine, Accountability, and Professionalism". Journal of Law and Society. 16 (3): 319–39. JSTOR 1409987.