Established Profession Research Articles

A School of Its Own: US Naturalism and the Demands of Professional Labor

Abstract: This essay centers around a comparative reading of William Dean Howells's A Hazard of New Fortunes and Frank Norris's McTeague . Its main goal is to contextualize Norris's attempts to promote what he understood to be literary naturalism—positioned against the "well-behaved, ordinary, bourgeois" realism of Howells—and to show how he connected the idea of 'the literary' to the postbellum world of professional labor. In as much as other, established professions already regulated the practice of work according to internally ratified standards of quality, postbellum writers, too, sought to render the practice of writing objectifiable by appeal to standards of evaluation that were approved by experts within their own community, a "brotherhood of novelists" in the words of James.

Professional responses to exogenous change: the social work profession and the jurisdictional domain opened up by the Norwegian welfare-to-work reform

ABSTRACT This paper examines the social work profession’s responses to the organizational reform of the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration, which opened a new jurisdictional domain of employment services to groups marginalized in the labour market. This domain was not colonized by any established professions, and social workers were the only occupation in the reformed organization with the character and identity of a profession. With existing research as the main source, the paper shows that despite having influenced the reform policy, during reform implementation, agents of the profession refrained from expanding the jurisdiction of social workers and instead protected and maintained its established jurisdiction based on municipal social services. Potential explanations behind the response are discussed: the pressure from the organizational context, combined with the profession’s ingrained distrust of ‘the system’; the ‘dirtiness’ of welfare-to-work tasks, around which some scepticism existed; and the profession’s strong value base and lack of capacity to articulate its knowledge base and, subsequently, theorize its knowledge and skills as resources that were key to meeting the reform’s welfare-to-work goals. All three explanations have some explanatory power but must still be considered tentative and in need of more research.

An exploration of perceptions and experiences of Australian paramedics following the introduction of professional regulation

PurposeSince 2018, Australian paramedics have been regulated under the National Registration and Accreditation Scheme (NRAS) for health practitioners. Established professions have been regulated in Australia for some time, so there is limited knowledge of their entry to regulation. However, as paramedicine has not been previously centrally regulated, this provides a unique case study to explore the transition to regulated practice.Design/methodology/approachAustralian paramedics undertook two surveys: pre- and post-introduction of registration. The first survey was in the month leading up to the commencement of registration (N = 419), and the second survey took place 31 months after registration (N = 407). This paper presents the results of statistical analyses of the post-registration survey including comparisons to the pre-registration survey.FindingsAlthough support for regulation has increased over time, there remains strong dissent consistent with 2018 levels. After 31 months of regulation, respondents reported increasing knowledge of the scheme and greater ease of navigation. The impacts of regulation are more nuanced and less polarised than in the first survey. Identity is again canvassed, and results suggest a shift from employment status and qualifications as key elements of identity to a community of practice and registration.Originality/valueParamedics' experiences and understanding of the rationale for registration are developing. Further support is needed to assist with the emerging professional identity and behaviours. Regulation is one of many occupational factors influencing professional identity and professionalism. Exploring the experience of regulation potentially assists regulators in better supporting practitioners and helps better understand professional evolution.

Professionalization of Public Health – an exploratory case study

Introduction: Public health is continuously challenged by a shortage of workforce. There are various reasons for this: 1) public health is less visible than traditional health professions and people may be unfamiliar with the nature and opportunities involved in entering this career field; 2) lack of official recognition of public health as a professional category; and 3) no umbrella organization that supports its members and governs professional standards as is the case of other more established professions. To adequately address the challenges of public health for the 21st century, a key policy element will need to focus on adequately cultivating, training and growing the future workforce of professionals in the field. The aim of this study was to examine why professionalization of public health in Europe is not as robust as it deserves to be and what steps can be taken to assure an adequate supply of professionals with the proper education and training background, and career guidance to tackle the public health needs of the future. Method: A case study approach was used collecting data via a scoping literature review, a focus group with public health students and interviews with public health experts for convergence. Data was analysed using directed content analysis and pattern matching logic. Results: Public health fulfilled five out of seven attributes of a profession, such as skills, training and education, certification and an altruistic service. Recognition of Public Health as multidisciplinary and multi-professional field, derived from the interviews as an additional characteristic. A code of ethics and professional conduct and a formal organization were missing. Conclusion: Public health professionals and organisations that govern best practices in this field should consider introducing a shared code of ethics and professional conduct as well as establishing a coordinated body to help advance the public status as a the profession to increase interest in studying and specializing in this area.

Professionalising the police pragmatically

The College of Policing has stated its intention to have policing recognised as a profession. In pursuit of this ambition, they have created a Code of Ethics and introduced a graduate entry requirement for new recruits. These changes reflect common features of established professions such as medicine and the law. Another common feature of established professions is an established body of knowledge that informs professional practice. The College has developed a Crime Reduction Toolkit as the genesis of a knowledge base for policing. The evidence presented on the toolkit is generally based on random control trials and their systematic review. While this is accords with the evidence-based approach supported by the College and others it has been criticised as being too quantitative. Some commentators have argued that it overlooks the qualitative approaches such as ethnography which have been the traditional research approach to the study of policing and ignores the voice of practitioners. It is generally accepted that to date research has had little impact on policing practice. This article argues for the adoption of a pragmatic philosophical framework for the development and application of a professional knowledge-based for policing. Pragmatic philosophy would facilitate the incorporation of both qualitative and quantitative research into the creation of a knowledgebase. Furthermore, pragmatism is an action-oriented philosophy that accords with the College of Policing’s ‘what works’ agenda, and would not only accommodate practitioner research but provides a structure for changes to current practices that are needed if the police are to become a profession

Can they trust us? The relevance debate and the perceived trustworthiness of the management scholarly community

Concerns about the relevance of management research and its impact on management practice have been ongoing for decades. We propose a novel angle to explain this research vs practice gap: instead of focusing on the content and language of management papers as reasons for practitioners’ limited interest in the majority of our results, we focus on the role of trust. We propose that management research is often seen as irrelevant by practitioners because of the shape and direction of trustworthiness-building institutions. Unlike in other professions, such as medical doctors and lawyers, the trustworthiness-building institutions in our field are directed inwards rather than outwards. Institutional arrangements governing the area of management research ensure that scholars can trust results delivered by other scholars, but they do not cover the interaction between scholars and practitioners. Thus, practitioners have few reasons to trust and reach for our results. We conclude that the issue can be addressed, albeit only partially. This is because, unlike in the case of established professions, the well-being of our discipline is not highly dependent on practitioners, neither is practitioners’ well-being particularly dependent on our research.

Accepting the future as ever-changing: professionals’ sensemaking about artificial intelligence

AbstractThis article examines how professionals leading the digitalization of professional service firms construct their views on new digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the influence of such technologies on their future. This understudied question is important because such early-stage envisioning can significantly affect the later processes and outcomes of digitalization. A qualitative study was conducted, using interview and archival data, on a Big Four audit firm in Japan during the period 2017–9, when its taskforce considered applying AI to its core audit service. The contribution of this study is threefold. First, the findings expand our knowledge of prospective sensemaking by introducing a distinct mode of viewing the future that accepts the future as ever-changing as a means of coping with high uncertainty. Second, this study demonstrates the understudied link between institutions and sensemaking by showing how professionals’ embeddedness in their professional institution sets the focus of their sensemaking on the elements that support the institution. Third, these insights add to our knowledge of digitalization and professions by suggesting the potential high variability of professionals’ strategies regarding digitalization due to their continuous updating of their view of the future, as well as the inherent antinomy of digitalization for established professions due to their advantaged but constrained position regarding digitalization.

Half a century of female wage disadvantage: an analysis of Denmark’s public wage hierarchy in 1969 and today

ABSTRACT In June 1969, the Danish parliament passed an extensive law complex, known as the Public Servant Reform of 1969. An important part of the reform was a new wage and classification system into which all public employees were placed. In newer Danish research on the gender wage gap, it is a hypothesis that the reform created a wage hierarchy in the public sector which in general was unfavourable to female-dominated professions, and that this hierarchy largely has persisted to the present due to mechanisms in the collective bargaining system. In our article, we test this hypothesis using graphical analysis and descriptive statistics. Our study supports the existing hypothesis about a gender biased wage hierarchy in 1969. We find that there is a close coherence between the wage hierarchy in 1969 and the wage hierarchy in 2019. However, our analysis also shows how education level explains even less of the traditional female dominated professions’ position in the wage hierarchy in 2019 compared with 1969, and that this is still the case when we take absence patterns and family-friendly benefits into account. That points toward a wage system, which seems unable to adjust to changes in an established profession’s profile.

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on risk management practice: A report from the epicenter of the epicenter in New York City.

Health care organizations have had to respond to the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic in unprecedented ways. In the United States, where health risk management is an established profession, health care risk managers (HRMs) contributed to the response by supporting organizations and frontline workers. HRMs advised administrative and clinical leadership on decisions and policies aimed at addressing the medico legal, ethical, and operational dilemmas raised by this public health emergency. This article describes these challenges from the perspective of a New York City (NYC) public hospital located in the “epicenter within the epicenter” of the pandemic and aims to provide practical guidance for HRMs on the front lines of this crisis.

The development of the chartered financial analyst in the United States during the twentieth century

This article examines the rise of a professional rating for financial analysts – the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) award. The development of a professional rating is explained here as a need to brand and distinguish those analysts who had undertaken a formal training and achieved the necessary skill-sets. Three themes are used to trace this development: the emergence of regional communities of analysts, leading to a national federation and the CFA institute in the post-war years; the development of a formal body of knowledge which could be examined formally; and the need for a code of ethics, as existed for established professions. This study applies elements of a technological deterministic model, augmented with the concept of epistemic communities, to the emergence of the CFA.

Adaptation of Apraxia Battery for Assessing the Patient with Apraxia

Background: Speech and Language Therapy is an established profession in many countries of the world but still very new in Bangladesh. There is no culturally appropriate adult assessment tool for assessing patient with Apraxia in Bangladesh and has no alternative tool in own language to assess and diagnose patient with apraxia. Objectives: The aim of the study was cultural adaptation of Apraxia Battery for assessing the patient with Apraxia. Methodology: A total of nineteen people diagnosed with apraxia of speech, within the age from 37 to 80 years, participated in this study. The investigator was used quantitative (item analysis, validity determination and reliability determination) and qualitative (observation and focus group discussion) method for the adaptation procedure. After observation and focus group discussion the investigator received concern from the panel of expert for conducting the pilot study. After find out the pilot study result the investigator conducted test and retest. The result was discussed changing forward translation, changing pilot study and test retest findings. The pilot study was examined in a sample of eight apraxia patients. The interval between five days the test and retest reliability was examined in a sample of eleven apraxia patients. Using the Cronbach’s alpha, examined the internal consistency and intra-class correlation for test retest reliability. Results: After modification of ABA-2 tool, the pilot study showed that the ABA-2 tool was in culturally appropriate in Bangladesh for apraxia patient. The test reliability for Diadochokinetic Rate, Increasing word length (Part A), Increasing word length (Part B), Limb Apraxia, Oral Apraxia, Latency Time for polysyllabic word, Utterance Time for polysyllabic word and Repeated Trials sub-tests appear to be satisfactory as researchers claim that Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranging between .8143 and 0.9006 indicate good to excellent reliability. And the retest reliability for these subtests Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranging between 0.7898 and 0.9095 indicate acceptable to excellent reliability. The intra-class consistency for all subtest of the test and retest was excellent (Cronbach’s alpha =0.9478 to 0.9917). Conclusion: This study suggests that valid assessment of apraxia patient using the ABA-2 assessment tool. The modified ABA-2 assessment tool is feasible for assessing the patient with apraxia in content of Bangladesh. The test retest result also showed that the ABA-2 assessment tool was reliable in culturally. ABA-2 is reliable and valid instrument for evaluating the patients with apraxia. This assessment tools also help Speech and Language Therapists to assess and diagnose the patient with apraxia.

Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s Isagoge: An Edition of the Arabic Text with an English Translation

Abstract This article treats one of the first philosophical texts translated into Arabic, Porphyry’s (d. 305 CE) Isagoge, which was translated by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (d. ca. 139/756). The Isagoge is part of a collection referred to in the Syriac tradition as “the four books,” also including three Aristotelian treatises on logic, Categories, On Interpretation, and Prior Analytics. This collection of texts was translated into Arabic before translating became an established profession in the Abbasid caliphate, causing difficulties to read and understand it properly. The texts were published by Danishpazhuh in 1978, leaving numerous errors and inaccuracies in the edition. After an introduction to the context and the content of the text, a new edition of the Isagoge is presented here alongside an English translation, followed by a comparison of technical terms used by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ with those used by al-Dimashqī dating from the early fourth/tenth century.

Theoretical Approaches in the Sociology of Professions

The sociology of professions as a developing field in the last decade in Turkey does not yet have a theoretical and conceptual ground. This article aims to critically evaluate and classify the theoretical approaches developed to understand professions in the sociology literature since Durkheim and Weber. In sociology, professions have been analyzed from different perspectives that vary according to different national contexts and periods. The functionalist definition of professions which is rooted in Durkheimian-Flexnerian framework in particular has been dominant until the 1970s. The term profession is a legacy of this tradition which took as a universal model prestigious jobs such as the lawyer and physician that have designated a high status and high income in Western societies since the 19th century. In this framework, professions are considered as sets of traits and attributes that are convenient to function as moral balance mechanisms. Alternatively, the concepts of professionalization and deprofessionalization offer to reconsider the established professions as dynamic processes rather than abstracted models. Since the 1970s, Weberian and Marxist approaches that emphasize conflict, struggle and power rather than harmony, have entered the field and fostered critical, skeptical and relational perspectives. Notions such as professional closure and monopoly, proletarianization, and field of power have become widespread in the last thirty years. In addition, as studies on different historical experiences increase, the need for a fundamental revision of the concept profession becomes indispensable.

Field Position and Sensemaking: Prospective Sensemaking of Change by Professional Actors

Periods of field change are marked by contention and ambiguity, leading to extensive sensemaking and sensegiving by the actors involved. However, though the relevance of sensemaking during change is well acknowledged and extensively studied, most of the work has been focused at the individual and organizational levels. Further, comparatively less attention has been paid to prospective sensemaking, even though research suggests that prospection is integral to interpretation of ambiguous change. Even less studied is the relationship between actors field position and their sensemaking. This is surprising, as prior research suggests that fields are highly hierarchical and variegated structures and interpretation of issues may vary substantially across actors in a field. Even in research which explicitly explores the influence of field position on interpretation, field position has typically been treated as a unidimensional construct, e.g. based on Bourdieu’s notion of capital. In this paper I address these gaps in our understanding of the influence of actors’ field position on sensemaking by drawing on two dominant sociological theories of field – Bourdieu’s and Fligstein & McAdam’s – and developing a multidimensional conceptualization of actors’ field position. I specifically ask the following question: how does actors’ prospective sensemaking of change evolve over time and what is the influence of actors’ unique field position on prospective sensemaking. I undertake this research in the context of market based reforms in English legal services and enactment of Legal Services Act, 2007. LSA 2007 drastically transformed the fundamental structure of the legal profession in England as it challenged the three key pillars of an established profession – allowing entry barriers to non-professionals, removing professional control of professional organizations and challenging professional self- regulation. Such a contentious change provides a rich context for exploring the relationship between actors’ field position and sensemaking. To do so, I define actors’ field position based on two dimensions: structural position or capital (central versus peripheral) and membership of the proximate client field (individual versus corporate) and identify the unique field positions held by the four key professional actors as central—individual (Barristers), central-corporate (corporate law firms), peripheral-individual (small law firms) and peripheral-corporate (in-house lawyers). I examine actors’ sensemaking based on the coverage in legal trade media during the period of 2001-2006, coding 327 articles in total. My inductive analysis presented two aggregate theoretical dimensions of prospective sensemaking of change in the legal profession: schema of change and problematization of change. I find that actors’ schemata of change is expressed through three different mechanisms: change outlook, affective response to change and market opportunity construction. I also induce three different mechanisms through which change is problematized – public interest, professionalism and bureaucratic inefficiency. My analysis shows that actors’ schema of change varies substantially based on the membership of the client field (individual versus corporate), whereas, their locus of problematization of change varies substantially based on the position in the legal services field (central versus peripheral).

Does Age Matter? Examination of Hungarian Basketball Coaches’ Pedagogical Beliefs and Professional Attitudes

Sports coaching in Hungary is an established profession. The coaching workforce, which is diverse in terms of age and coaching experience, is trained and paid. This study aimed to illustrate the impact of age on coaches’ values, beliefs and attitudes towards various aspects of their jobs. A total of 152 basketball coaches (105 male and 47 female) working in Hungary, with an average of 12.9 years (±11.5) coaching experience participated in an online survey. They were categorized into five age-groups i.e. < 23 years, 23-35 years, 36-45 years, 46-55 years and > 55 years; one-way analysis of variance and Tukey’s post hoc tests were used to identify the differences between groups. Regardless of their ages, coaches shared similar viewpoints on a range of aspects concerning coaching. Significant distinctions were mainly seen between coaches aged over 55 years and other age-groups suggesting that age has some effect on coaches’ beliefs and attitudes. Because respondents’ age and coaching experience were closely related, these differences could be attributed to age and commensurate experience.

Review of Commitment Theories and Models: Application to an Emerging Profession

The purpose of this research project is to explore if traditional explanations of organizational and professional commitment and conflict, which have been developed through research of older and more established professions such as the Accounting profession, also apply to the Human Resource profession. Survey data gathered from HR practitioners are used to examine the correlates of organizational and professional commitment and conflict. Study results indicate the models explain a significant portion of the variation in both organizational and professional commitment, and that the two types of commitment have different antecedent factors. Results also indicate that organizational and professional conflict is lowest when both levels of organizational and professional commitment are high. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Optometry students’ perspective on optometry in suburban Western India: A qualitative study

PurposeOptometry has been an established profession in India for 60 years. Despite this, students who choose this course may have misconceptions and unrealistic expectations about the profession. The goal of this study is to understand the perceptions about optometry among optometry students, prior to and during their studies. MethodsA snap-shot narrative qualitative study using a semi-structured open-ended questionnaire was designed to understand the perception of optometry. Optometry students and educators from three suburban colleges were invited to participate. Forty-one participants took part in 24 in-depth interviews and 5 focus groups; of those 32 were undergraduate optometry students and 9 were optometry educators. Interviews and focus groups were audio-recorded, transcribed, coded, and analyzed. ResultsThree major themes emerged: retrospective perception of optometry, current perception and strategies to improve awareness level. All the participants mentioned that there was a considerable lack of awareness about optometry in society. None of the students stated that they chose optometry as their first choice of professional education. Most students expressed that they were provided with ample exposure during the curriculum to understand the scope of optometry. Various strategies were recommended to improve the level of awareness of optometry. ConclusionsThe current study highlights the lack of awareness and knowledge of optometry among the students while enrolling in the course. Knowledge about the scope of optometry practice among optometry students improved after extensive education and clinical exposure. Improving the awareness level of the profession will improve the quality of students entering the profession.

The disavowal of dance as labour in popular Hindi cinema

In this article, I analyse screendance texts from Hindi cinema to introduce a theoretical framework called the ideology of amateurism which, I argue, made space within the narrative of the Hindi film for the ‘ideal’ Indian woman to dance publicly while simultaneously disavowing modernity. Through an analysis of selected film dance texts, I show how this turned the dancing heroine into the restorer of the moral order of the narrative. I argue that this ideology of amateurism amounted to a denial of dance labour, which was a necessary precondition for the cultural legitimation of the viewers’ desire for the screendancer in particular and a disavowal of the desire for modernity in general. Following this, I show how with the liberalization of the Indian economy and the rise of neoliberalism, and interestingly, also the replacement of the erstwhile ‘union-dancers’ on-screen Bollywood film dance texts today not only acknowledge the labour of screendance but promotional materials lay out the ‘labouring process’. This, I suggest, is symptomatic of the emergence of a new work order and the entry of a new class into this sphere. I read this in conjunction with the rise of dance as an established profession, as seen through the mushrooming of Bollywood dance schools, in order to show how the ideology of amateurism is challenged through a reconfiguration of work practices in neoliberal economies.

Toward Increased Professionalism in Teaching English as a Second or Other Language through Pre-service Trainee Teacher Mentoring in the United Arab Emirates

For a variety of reasons, both historical and sociological, the feasibility – as well as the very desirability – of mainstream teaching securing the status of a profession (in the sense of established professions such as law, medicine, architecture, and engineering) has long been questioned (e.g., Burbules and Densmore, 1991). If this is the case as regard regular, mainstream education, what then is the situation in relation to the subfield of teaching that is teaching English as a second or other language (TESOL)? Sadly, few if any would likely doubt that the field has so far failed to achieve the status of a recognized profession. There are numerous causes of this failure, though some especially salient reasons – less than stellar public perceptions of the fields of English as a second language/English as a foreign language, employment standards of the private sector, that is, the (in) famous English language teaching industry, the initial training and qualifications of those in the field, and discriminatory practices – will be highlighted in the following discussion. In addition, the second half of this paper draws and reflects on a trainee teacher mentoring scheme at a federally-sponsored institution of higher education in the United Arab Emirates – now sadly discontinued – which the author participated in for 3 years between 2011 and 2015, and which, it is argued, exemplified programs which can go some not inconsiderable way toward combatting a number of the obstacles currently preventing the field of TESOL achieving the status of a legitimate profession.

In What Ways Does Australian Emergency Management Reflect the Criteria of a Profession?

Introduction:The term “profession” to describe the people who carry out emergency management (EM) in Australia continues to gain momentum. Many emergency managers see themselves and are seen by others as professionals, yet little evidence exists to confirm this proposition. Unlike other professions, there is no peak body or overarching organization in Australia to help the diverse group of emergency managers to identify standards of performance and to lobby decision-makers on their behalf.Aim:This study identifies criteria that define a profession and considers how the emergency management sector in Australia reflects them.Methods:A literature review and review of established professions informed criteria of what constitutes a profession. Using these criteria, a survey was conducted to identify the demographic profiles of Australian emergency managers, their perception of the criteria of a profession, and their attitudes towards professionalization of their sector. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a representative sample. Ethics approval was obtained.Results:A set of criteria for an EM context in Australia was created. 859 emergency managers in Australia were surveyed using an online questionnaire. No common profile emerged from the survey in terms of age, gender, background, expertise, skills, or experience. Likewise, no clear career path, no clearly defined standard training, no universal standards of performance, and no statutory certification to qualify an emergency manager as a professional were revealed. Participants variously identified some of the necessary criteria of a profession, but no uniformity emerged.Discussion:This unique study concludes that the sector is not yet in a position to regard emergency management as a profession. Recommendations suggest steps be taken in the short- and long-term to facilitate the establishment of EM as a profession and identifies further research to inform the journey towards professionalizing the emergency management sector.