Extent Of Professionalization Research Articles

The impact of social media on dental practice promotion and professionalism amongst general dental practitioners and specialists in KSA

ObjectiveThis study primarily assesses the social media use patterns of general dental practitioners and specialists in KSA. To fulfil its secondary objective, the study evaluates the social media preferences of the selected cohort for promoting their practice, and their extent of professionalism while using social media. MethodAn electronic questionnaire was developed and administered to all registered dentists and specialists in KSA through the Saudi Dental Association platform. The questionnaire comprised closed-ended items with a choice of predefined answers that covered demographics, reasons for using social media, and the ways in which social networking might affect professionalism. ResultsA total of 238 general dental practitioners and specialists from various age groups answered the questionnaire. The data revealed that 41% of the respondents used social media equally for personal, professional, and business purposes. Instagram was the most commonly used social media platform for dental practice promotion, and also regarded as the most powerful platform by all respondents (p = 0.0009). Thirty-four percent of the respondents rarely posted their own clinical cases on social media. However, a significant difference was observed amongst the specialities (p = 0.01). ConclusionInappropriate use of social media can cause ethical issues regarding patient confidentiality and data protection that may lead to negative perceptions of dental professionalism. Therefore, guidelines and policies should be established to regulate dental practitioners’ use of social media for sharing clinical data.

Professionalization of Public Service: Civil Servants in Dordrecht, 1575-1795

This article examines the extent to which bureaucratization and professionalization of public services occurred in early modern Dordrecht, a medium-sized town in the Dutch Republic. To this end, general developments in spending on public services are investigated, followed by more in-depth analysis of changes in three different professions of officials: Dordrecht’s city secretaries, city midwives, and gatekeepers. Three possible explanations for the bureaucratization and professionalization of public services in Dordrecht are investigated: economic and demographic developments, social standing of the offices, and type of service provided. There appears to be a definite, albeit not necessarily linear, relationship between economic and demographic influences and the process of bureaucratization. The extent of professionalization can to a large degree be explained by the variations in social status and in working sphere between the different types of officials providing public services, in which varying degrees of monitoring and regulation were considered desirable.

Explaining the Extent of Local Economic Development Activity: Evidence from Canadian Cities

This paper is an attempt to explain economic development policies in Canadian cities by examining local fiscal health, intercity competition for development, the extent of professionalism in the economic development arena, and local governmental structure. Although these factors have been found to affect local economic development practices in the United States, the data presented here indicate that this is not the case in Canada. Only the amount of planning in economic development, the extent of citizen input, the presence of ward-based elections, and the extent to which decisions are left to professionals appear to influence economic development techniques practised in a city.

Developing More Encompassing Theories About Organizations: The Centralization-Effectiveness Relationship as an Example

Theories that relate organization-level variables to one another frequently contain just three variables. “Formalization is negatively associated with success in a turbulent environment” and “Technology is a determinant of span of control at lower organizational levels” are examples. Theories limited to two or three variables tend to have low predictive validity and consequently are of limited use to anyone attempting to predict or interpret relationships among organizational variables. One purpose of the study reported here was to develop a more encompassing and more valid theory about a specific relationship—the relationship between centralization and effectiveness. A second purpose of the study was to set forth and test the efficacy of a general approach for developing more encompassing and more valid theories about organizations. The successful application of this approach resulted in a six-variable theory: the relationship between the two variables centralization and effectiveness is a function of (1) the average size of the units of analysis, (2) the effectiveness subconstruct considered, (3) the extent of professionalization in the organizations, and (4) whether the organizations produce primarily goods or services. Specifically, 57% of the variance in the linear association between centralization and effectiveness was shown to be explainable by a linear function of the four variables just noted. This theory enables identification of the conditions where centralization will be related to effectiveness most positively (i.e. r = 0.49) and the conditions where it will be related to effectiveness most negatively (i.e., r = −0.56). Besides these four predictor variables, four others were tested as possible predictors of the centralization-effectiveness relationship, but were rejected. Rejection of two of these latter four variables contradicted commonly accepted beliefs—decentralization was not more positively related to effectiveness in turbulent environments and decentralization was not more positively related to effectiveness in larger organizations. Two concerns regarding the organization science literature resulted from this research. The first follows from our observations that most reports of studies include dysfunctionally sparse descriptions of the organizational contexts in which the data were collected and that in many studies the magnitudes of both the variables of primary interest and also the contextual variables are reported on coarse scales (e.g., on nominal scales with few levels, such as “small” and “large”). As a consequence of these two practices, researchers synthesizing the literature and developing theories from it—as was done in the research reported here—necessarily group together studies that should be distinguished from one another on the basis of their attributes. This unwanted grouping results in theories that are less predictive than they could be. The second concern is that the subset of the organization science literature dealing with relationships between organizational design variables (such as centralization) and organizational effectiveness contains few studies demonstrating the causal directions of observed relationships. As a result, because various levels of effectiveness may lead to the adoption or evolution of different levels of “design variables,” or may be related to certain levels of a design variable because both are related to a third variable researchers and administrators observing high correlations between a design variable and effectiveness must be cautious in inferring that effectiveness can be enhanced by changing, the level of the respective design variable.

Professionalization in Higher Adult Education Administration

Ninety-three higher adult education chief administrators served as subjects in this study which was designed to test whether or not there was evidence of increased professionalization between 1957 and 1967. Utilizing Hall's Professionalization Scales and some background scales to measure attitudinal and structural attributes of professionalization, an analysis of variance technique and a chi square analysis were used to determine the difference between the extent of professionalization of three cohorts of Ss. Findings revealed no significant change over time between the three cohorts at the .05 significance level. The average scores in this study were higher than those reported in previous studies using the Professionalization Scales with other occupations. These unexpected findings were viewed as attributable, at least in part, to characteristics of the field of higher adult education during the past decade which mitigated against further professionalization of the occupation. Using a supplementary questionnaire, addi tional comparsions were made between 93 respondents and a sample of the 143 non-respondents to the initial questionnaire. The differences were not significant.

Serving the City

T HIERE are nine times as many municipal employees in the United States as there are men in the Regular Army. Approximately 600,000 persons, representing almost every profession, specialization, and skill, are carrying on the work of government, exclusive of education, in the 3,165 municipalities of over 2,500 population. If employees of municipal school systems are included, another 500,000 must be added, giving a total of well over one million municipal employees, or approximately one third of the total public service personnel of the Nation. In cities over 500,000 population there are 11.7 city employees (except schools) for each 1,000 population, as compared to 6.1 employees in cities of 10,000 to 30,000.1 The total number of employees is important from the point of view of this article only as it reflects the scope of municipal functions. As municipal functions increase, the number of appointed employees increases more rapidly than the number of political or elected officials. In fact there is a tendency for the latter number to decrease with the adoption of modern city charters. How well the rank and file of the municipal service do their work depends in part not only upon their qualifications and how they are selected, but also on the extent to which a permanent administrative service is provided, and the extent of professionalization of the service.