{"title":"On Comparative Methodologies, or, How Professional Ecologies Vary","authors":"A. Blok","doi":"10.7577/pp.3807","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7577/pp.3807","url":null,"abstract":"Based on the authors’ own research experiences, this essay discusses the potentials of a “cross-jurisdictional” comparative methodology in the sociology of professions, which aims to describe similarities and variations in patterns of inter-professional interaction across substantively different work domains. This approach, the essay shows, stands in contrast to two more prevalent comparative methodologies in the field, dubbed here “cross-national” and “intra-national,” respectively. Drawing on Andrew Abbott’s seminal framework, cross-jurisdictional comparisons refrain from abstracting professional groups from their wider ecologies of inter-professional relations. On this basis, and invoking the methodological suggestions of Monika Krause on qualitative comparisons, the essay spells out key axes of variation between contemporary professional jurisdictions and ecologies, including along the lines of post-national analysis. The essay ends by highlighting more general reasons as to why reflecting further on new comparative possibilities may at present constitute a key stake for the future of research on professional change.","PeriodicalId":53464,"journal":{"name":"Professions and Professionalism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44345702","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"New Technology and Professional Work","authors":"S. Lester","doi":"10.7577/pp.3836","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7577/pp.3836","url":null,"abstract":"Until recently, the main effect of technology on professional or knowledgebased work has been to augment and expand it, partly as described in Autor, Levy and Murnane’s 2003 analysis. There are now increasingly instances of knowledge-based work being automated and substituted, developments that are more familiar from factory and basic administrative settings. Two widelyquoted studies, by Frey and Osborne (2013) and Susskind and Susskind (2015), point towards significant technology-driven job losses including in professional fields. Subsequent analyses indicate that while some occupations will disappear or be deskilled, others will be created. The argument made here is that the most significant effect will be occupational transformation, necessitating different types of skills in a net movement towards work that is more digitally-oriented but also complex, creative and value-based. These changes have implications that are already beginning to affect the way that professions are organised and how practitioners are educated and trained.","PeriodicalId":53464,"journal":{"name":"Professions and Professionalism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46810128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Positioning Each Other: A Metasynthesis of Pharmacist-Physician Collaboration","authors":"Hilde Rakvaag, Gunn Elisabeth Søreide, R. Kjome","doi":"10.7577/pp.3326","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7577/pp.3326","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract \u0000Interprofessional collaboration between different professions within health care is essential to optimize patient outcomes. Community-pharmacists (CPs) and general-practitioners (GPs) are two professions who are encouraged to increase their collaboration. In this metasynthesis we use a meta-ethnographic approach to examine the interpersonal aspects of this collaboration, as perceived by the professionals themselves. The metasynthesis firstly suggests that CPs and GPs have differing storylines about the cooperation between them. Secondly, CPs seem to position their profession in relation to the GPs, whereas GPs do not rely on the CPs to define their professional position. A successful collaboration between the two professions requires the CPs to reposition themselves through adopting a proactive approach towards the GPs. This proactive approach should comprise the delivery of specific clinical advice, as well as taking responsibility for this advice. In this way, they can build a more coinciding storyline of the joint agenda of improved patientcare.","PeriodicalId":53464,"journal":{"name":"Professions and Professionalism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47153664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Situating Boundary Work: Chronic Disease Prevention in Danish Hospitals","authors":"I. K. Pedersen","doi":"10.7577/pp.3362","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7577/pp.3362","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates how health professions compete and cooperate in addressing emerging local work tasks defined in relation to new globalized health challenges, such as type 2 diabetes. It identifies which professional groups have claimed responsibility for the tasks and by means of which kinds of interactions and infighting. The materials entail workplace-related artefacts and documents; in-depth interviews and extended conversations with health professionals about goals, dilemmas, and practices linked to prevention of lifestyle-related diseases; and site visits at Danish hospitals. Grounding Abbott’s framework of jurisdictions and his meso-level vocabulary in a situated account of professional boundary work, the analysis follows the ways that nurses in particular create, and sometimes stabilize or standardize, techniques for a disease prevention programme less than a decade old. The paper argues that processual theory of boundary work would benefit from grounding in a situated account of forms of professional boundaries within emerging jurisdictional tasks.","PeriodicalId":53464,"journal":{"name":"Professions and Professionalism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49512839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Social Closure and Veterinary Professionalization in Britain: A Self-Interested or Public Interested Endeavour?","authors":"M. Whiting, S. May, M. Saks","doi":"10.7577/pp.3321","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7577/pp.3321","url":null,"abstract":"The professionalization of veterinary medicine in Britain has been little studied by sociologists, although as a classic instance of an occupation that has achieved exclusionary social closure it merits examination from a neoWeberian perspective. Therefore, this paper explores how it has attained this position through state action in an historical and contemporary context using neo-Weberianism as a theoretical lens. In charting the different stages and forms of professional regulation in veterinary medicine, group self-interest is identified as a central driver, following the neo-Weberian idiom. However, contrary to the position adopted by some neo-Weberians, the professionalization process is seen as being more complex than simply being interest-based, with the public interest being upheld. As such, through the case of veterinary medicine, it is claimed professional self-interests and the public interest can be co-terminous and mutually achieve a dynamic equilibrium. They do not have to form part of a zero-sum game.","PeriodicalId":53464,"journal":{"name":"Professions and Professionalism","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43549792","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Striking a Regulatory Bargain. The Legal Profession, Associations and the State in South Africa","authors":"D. Bonnin","doi":"10.7577/pp.3113","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7577/pp.3113","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the regulation of the legal profession in South Africa from colonial times, through apartheid and into the post-apartheid period. It narrates the changing relationship between professional associations and the state, locating these events within the debates on professional self-regulation. Taking the view that professional self-regulation is as a result of “an arrangement” between professions and the state it explores the regulatory bargain struck between associations and the state. The paper demonstrates that during the apartheid period the profession utilised apartheid legislation to exclude black legal professionals. However, in the post-apartheid period, when the state proposed legislative interventions in order to enable access to both the profession and justice, a new regulatory bargain had to be negotiated.","PeriodicalId":53464,"journal":{"name":"Professions and Professionalism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43961016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Inequity and the Professionalisation of Speech-Language Pathology","authors":"K. Abrahams, H. Kathard, M. Harty, M. Pillay","doi":"10.7577/pp.3285","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7577/pp.3285","url":null,"abstract":"As a profession, speech-language pathology (SLP) continues to struggle with equitable service delivery to both people with communication challenges and disabilities. SLP clinical practice in its traditional form has an individual focus and therefore cannot adequately serve the large population in need, which, in South Africa is the majority population. Using the concept of social embeddedness of professions as a guiding frame, the article explores the history of the profession and the influence of the medical model and coloniality in shaping SLP profession’s knowledge and practices. As such, we argue that professionalisation in its current form perpetuates injustice. The article proposes innovation across clinical practice, education and research as leverage points for imagining new practices.","PeriodicalId":53464,"journal":{"name":"Professions and Professionalism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.7577/pp.3285","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41411666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
K. Barac, Elizabeth Gammie, B. Howieson, M. Staden
{"title":"How do Auditors Navigate Conflicting Logics in Everyday Practice?","authors":"K. Barac, Elizabeth Gammie, B. Howieson, M. Staden","doi":"10.7577/pp.2916","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7577/pp.2916","url":null,"abstract":"Historically professional logic has shaped accountancy, increasingly it has been shaped also by commercial logic. This study moves beyond these distinctions for a better and more nuanced analyses of how actors (Big 4 auditors) navigate conflicting logics in their everyday practice. The study follows a qualitative approach and is based on views of multiple role players in the audit process of complex companies in Australia, South Africa and the United Kingdom. The study examines auditors’ decision-making involving experts, rotating partners/firms and meeting regulatory inspection requirements. The study adds to the emerging debate around logic multiplicity at the institutional ‘coalface’ by showing that auditors use balancing mechanisms (segmenting, assimilating, bridging and demarcating) to navigate and make sense of coexisting (professional, commercial and accountability) logics. Views of non-auditor role players, mostly overlooked in by institutional research at micro-levels, challenge the institutionalisation of connected logics and question the influence on audit quality.","PeriodicalId":53464,"journal":{"name":"Professions and Professionalism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.7577/pp.2916","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42394695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Precariatization of Zimbabwean Engineers in South Africa","authors":"Splagchna Ngoni Chikarara","doi":"10.7577/pp.3303","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7577/pp.3303","url":null,"abstract":"This paper discusses how occupational closure of the engineering profession in South Africa left Zimbabwean migrant engineers amongst the precariat ranks. It aims to answer the following research question: what is the nature of precariousness experienced by immigrant engineers in South Africa. An exploratory study of the experiences of Zimbabwean engineers is used test out Standing’s (2011) notion of the precariat as an emerging social class. Semi-structured and group interviews were used as data collection tools. The findings reveal that bureaucratic challenges in obtaining relevant work permits from the department of Home Affairs, South African universities’ reluctance to acknowledge Zimbabwean qualifications at par with local qualifications as well as a host of insecurities in the workplace left migrant engineers in precariat ranks. ","PeriodicalId":53464,"journal":{"name":"Professions and Professionalism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41982366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editorial: A Southern African Dialogue","authors":"D. Bonnin, S. Ruggunan","doi":"10.7577/pp.3598","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7577/pp.3598","url":null,"abstract":"As a profession, speech-language pathology (SLP) continues to struggle with equitable service delivery to both people with communication challenges and disabilities. SLP clinical practice in its traditional form has an individual focus and therefore cannot adequately serve the large population in need, which, in South Africa is the majority population. Using the concept of social embeddedness of professions as a guiding frame, the article explores the history of the profession and the influence of the medical model and coloniality in shaping SLP profession’s knowledge and practices. As such, we argue that professionalisation in its current form perpetuates injustice. The article proposes innovation across clinical practice, education and research as leverage points for imagining new practices.","PeriodicalId":53464,"journal":{"name":"Professions and Professionalism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.7577/pp.3598","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42528206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}