Notes

Profession:
- Lay definition: Prolonged training and formal qualification
- Vital to the well-being of society
- Controlled Services (a monopoly)
- Autonomy in the workplace
- Ethical behaviour

Attributes of a profession
Prolonged training:
- A core aspect of aspect of being a profession that a person should have a set of
knowledge skills and experience that are not easily acquired.
o To gain such skills one should have had prolonged training during which time
they get formally educated, acquire specific skills and gain experience
(context).
- Professionals continue to develop throughout their careers: learning new skills,
knowledge and experience.
o One may claim that the profession should also have a ‘body of theory’ as
specified by Greenwood “treatises are written on legal theory, music theory,
social work theory and theory of drama and so on; but no books appear on
the theory of punch-pressing or brick laying”.
 Slightly problematic.

Formal Qualification:
- A formal qualification is often part of how an individual might demonstrate that they
have undertaken one or more aspects of the prolonged training.
o A university degree is an example of a formal qualification that is a pre-
requisite for some professions.
 For e.g., Chartered Engineer  Master’s level qualification in a degree
programme recognised by the engineering institutions.
- Some may argue there are difference between professional qualifications and
education qualifications.

Vital to the well-being of society:

- A core aspect of differentiating between an occupation and profession is the idea
that the service being performed is vital for the wellbeing of society.
o This brings the social view of a profession.
- This attribute of a profession is particularly important because it forms the basis of
the ‘social contract’ between the profession and the society that it serves.
o This social contract allowed members of the profession to seek a special
status within society and to be regarded as trustworthy and upstanding by
member of public.

Controlled service:
 - If a group of individuals have asserted that their occupation is vital to the well-being
of society, then it becomes important to ensure that only individuals with adequate
competence can undertake the occupation.
- To ensure only such people with adequate competence can practice, it becomes
necessary to protect the occupation.
o Protection is afforded by controlling who can practice and creating a
mechanism to ensure that those people who are practicing are competent.
 Common place professional institutions perform the role of
protection and practicing professionals to pass judgment about an
individual’s competence.
- This role of controlling the service is typically enabled by governments. Therefore,
having recognised that a profession is vital to the well-being of society, governments
must act to initiate the process of control of service.
o Such control is not exercises by governments but delegated to empowered
professional bodies.

Autonomy in the workplace:

- A key feature of professions is that professionals have a high degree of autonomy in
the workplace. Autonomy means they can decide how to undertake their work
without the oversight of others.
o For e.g., a surgeon is allowed to choose the best way to undertake an
operation without recourse to some higher authority.
- Autonomy is granted because of many factors, but fundamentally is rooted in the
recognition that a professional is competent to undertake their work, but equally is
aware of the limits of their competence and would not step beyond these.
- Autonomy means that those who are not within the profession are unable to make a
judgment on how a professional should undertake their work.
o Only other professionals can pass such judgment.
o Oversight of a professional work is provided via collegiate review by other
professionals.

Ethical behaviour:
- A core aspect of being trusted to be autonomous in the workplace are serving a
societal need is that trust must be maintained.
- Professionals are supposed to uphold to some standard of behaviour. Ethical manner
is central to such standards of behaviour.
o Professional institutions establish codes of ethical conduct to which members
are required to adhere.
 Non-adherence to these coned of conducts can result in disciplinary
action and ultimately being discharged from the profession (being
unable to practice).

Groups:
- Being part of a group is a pre-requisite for a profession.
o A profession has to be comprised of more than one person to allow the
community to pass judgments on each other’s competence and also
discharge their function of serving the community.
 - These points are very good to review to differentiate between any old occupation
and a profession.
o There is however always a tension between those aspects of the profession
such serve to publics good and those that serve to protect members of the
profession.

Social and protectionist views

The social view:
- The social view of the profession holds that a profession must be protected from
purely commercial market forces, in order that they can undertake their work.
o This view considers professionals performing a vital role for society and so,
the profession requires protection to perform that role adequately.
- Professions may be created either because a government recognises that an
occupation is so important that its practice require regulation or a group of
individuals enrol government support for their activities, to ensure that they can
serve the public good.
- By protecting a profession, governments are attempting to ensure that those
practicing have a minimum standard of competence  charlatans and incompetent
practitioners are avoided so public may trust the profession and be protected.

The protectionist view:

- This is sometimes referred to as a business view or the protectionist view.
- Within a group of like-minded people engaged in an occupation, there may be
competition which results in most of the people of this group to receive less pay.
- A small group of such people may then request the government to grant them
protected status and create a professional institution.
o Only people within this institution are allowed to perform the occupation.
- Therefore, this small group now have a monopoly on the supply of their service.
o They could then charge a premium for their service, as so few exist.
- It would be difficult for others outside to criticise as other professionals would be
able to assess whether the work that was being undertaken was completely
executed and reasonably priced.
o They promote the ideal of self-regulation and professionals to be composed
in regulatory bodies to avoid and forestall supervision by non-professionals.

Elevating a profession
- If a profession is primarily looking after the interests of its members but neglecting
the needs of society, then it is failing its roles as a profession.
o Hence, central to the idea of elevating a profession is the professional code of
conduct (codes of ethics).

Common morality
- Common morality concerns those beliefs that are shared by almost everybody with a
society. They are beliefs which most people would subscribe.
o For e.g., killing a person is wrong, stealing is wrong or that lying is wrong.
 - These beliefs are typically embodied within the laws of a country. The legal system
creates a mechanism whereby society can punish people who violate these shared
beliefs. For e.g., imprisoning a murderer.
o However, many may also disagree with the shared set of beliefs. Sometimes,
the legal embodiment of common morality is at odds with a large number of
people’s beliefs.
- The key here is that the idea of common morality makes sure that somebody’s
person is not getting violated. The positive aspect if common morality is therefore
the idea that we should prevent killing or stealing.
- Common morality also distinguished between outcome and intent. One is held
accountable by their intent and not the outcome.

Personal morality:
- Personal morality is the set of beliefs that a particular individual may hold. There is
likely to be a significant overlap between common and personal morality.
o But personal morality allows individuals to hold beliefs that are beyond those
embodied by common morality.
-

Professional ethics
Codes of conduct
Responsibility