The Development of Work-Related Attitudes and Behavior of Professional Recruits: A Test of the Functionalist Argument

Abstract

It has been argued that the professional school plays an important role in adjusting professional activities to meet the changing needs of society. This position is stated mostforcefully by representatives of the functionalist school, who have posited three mechanisms by which this adaptive role is carried out: (1) professional schoolfaculty members, because of their insulation from the profit system via their salaried status, tend to develop enlightened attitudes and orientations toward issues in the professions; (2) as role models, faculty transmit these attitudes and values to students in the process of professional socialization; (3) these attitudes and values play an important role in determining the subsequent performance of professional graduates. Each of these assumptions is subjected to empirical scrutiny using data derivedfrom a national longitudinal study of dental students and dental faculty members in Canada. The results indicate some support for the first assumption of the functionalist position but do not support the latter two assumptions. Instead, students' attitudes and the behavior of graduates appear to be influenced by structural factors both within the professional school and in the organization of practice. The implications of these findings both for future research and for future work on the professional school are discussed.