Professions and Professionals: Capturing the Changing Role of Expertise Through Theoretical Triangulation

Abstract

Experts with a high level of specialized knowledge deliver manyimportant services, especially in the public sector. New Public Man-agement reforms have, however, challenged the entrenched role ofexpertise in public services (Clarke and Newman 1997; Exworthy andHalford 1999), and the classical sociology of professions has difficultycapturing the changing role of expertise (Brint 1993: 3; Scott 2008:221). On the one hand, the introduction of a wide range of marketmechanisms has challenged the traditional logic of governing basedon expert authority. Instead, the role of micro-level institutions such asincentives has come to the fore. On the other hand, New PublicManagement reforms have occurred widely across different Europeancountries, thus highlighting the need to understand the relationshipsamong professional and public actors in different macro institutionalset-ups. We, therefore, discuss one approach that is concerned withmarket mechanisms and economic incentives (rational choice institu-tionalism) and another approach that focuses on the broader institu-tional context (institutionalist sociology of professions). The centralquestion in this article is how we can triangulate these two approachesin studies of how professional actors are governed and, thereby, adaptour theoretical tools to the changed context of expertise. How pro-fessional actors are governed (understood as both how others governprofessional actors and how professional actors govern themselves) isan important question: professionalized services such as medicine andteaching are vital for individual citizens, and professional actors playa key role for these services in terms of both quality and costs.