Professional Power Research Articles

The professional autobiography and power

The professional autobiography and power

Hatékonyan hatni az emberekre

The economic and political crises of the last two decades have been greatly influenced by the factthat, impacted by manipulative effects, instead to follow their rational judgements people havemade their decisions under the influence of emotional and instinctive temtation, deception andmanipulation. So far, these manipulative influences dominate contemporary commercial or populist political communication. The paper below shares the author’s hesitation that, whilenon-rational factors bias from rational arguing and reasoning, both in decision-making and incommunicative impacts on the other person inevitably present, is it acceptable to manipulatethe users/clients by assisting professionals/social workers while exercising influence on decision-making of their clients? And if so, under what conditions, what specific constraints could beexercised such impacts and „professional power”? Likewise, when and what can and should bedone to immunize clients against manipulation, to mitigate manipulative effects, to „gain back”rational mind and „empower” clients to follow rational consideration and make wiser decisions?The article does not undertake to provide „only” true and correct answers, rather gives insightsand tries to provoke its reader to contribute to clarifying this important issue.

Research on the Modernization of University Financial Governance Based on the Framework of Governance System

The establishment of financial governance system is the basis of modern university governance, which plays an important role in optimizing resource allocation, serving discipline development, and preventing financial risks. The governance structure is the core component of the university financial governance system, which realizes the management goal through the reasonable allocation of financial decision-making power, executive power and supervision power. We should straighten out various financial relations according to law, establish scientific financial decision-making power, professional financial execution power, and diversified supervision power, and jointly promote the modernization of the university's financial management system and governance ability.

The processes involved in the establishment of user-provider partnerships in severe psychiatric illnesses: a scoping review

PurposeWith the rising relevance of person-centred care, initiatives towards user-led decision making and designing of care services have become more frequent. This designing of care services can be done in partnership, but it is unclear how. The aim of this scoping review was to identify for mental health services, what user-provider partnerships are, how they arise in practice and what can facilitate or hinder them.MethodsA scoping review was conducted to obtain a broad overview of user provider partnerships in severe mental illness. Data was inductively analysed using a conventional content analysis approach, in which meaning was found in the texts.ResultsIn total, 1559 titles were screened for the eligibility criteria and the resulting 22 papers found relevant were analysed using conventional content analysis. The identified papers had broad and differing concepts for user-provider partnerships. Papers considered shared decision making and user-involvement as partnerships. Mechanisms such as open communication, organisational top-down support and active participation supported partnerships, but professional identity, power imbalances and stress hindered them. Users can be impeded by their illness, but how to deal with these situations should be formalised through contracts.ConclusionThe field of research around user-provider partnerships is scattered and lacks consensus on terminology. A power imbalance between a user and a provider is characteristic of partnerships in mental healthcare, which hinders the necessary relationship building allowing partnerships to arise. This power imbalance seems to be closely linked to professional identity, which was found to be difficult to change.

Conceptions of Professional Expertise: Implications for Educating Future Librarians

Librarianship has struggled with professional identity and power relations, both within the profession, such as between librarians who serve customers face-to-face and those who create and maintain library systems (Harris, 1992), and outside the profession (e.g., on academic campuses, where librarians have maintained a subservient relationship with disciplinary faculty) (Julien & Pecoskie, 2009). Librarianship remains a feminized profession, which generates value from stereotypically female attributes, such as caring and service, rather than from recognized professional and intellectual expertise. VanScoy (2013) found that librarians who identify as women downplay their professional expertise when discussing public service activities. However, subsequent research did not find a similar tendency among librarians of color (VanScoy & Bright, 2017) suggesting that intersectional identities may be at play. These findings merit further study. While a feminist lens has been used to examine librarianship (e.g., Harris, 1992; Lew & Yousefi, 2017), feminism and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) have not been applied to empirical work to a significant extent. We will present preliminary results of an ongoing study exploring librarians’ experience of professional expertise, examined through an intersectional lens. The project includes interviews with 30 librarians representing multiple identities including gender, race, type of role (public-facing and non-public-facing roles), and managerial level. The study intends to amplify marginalized voices, to better understand personal conceptions of professional expertise. This has implications for education future librarians, as they are coached to develop a sense of expertise to support their career ambitions. Implications for educating librarians are the focus of the poster.

Client-Centered Practice when Professional and Social Power are Uncoupled: The Experiences of Therapists from Marginalized Groups

Background: Client-centeredness is foundational to occupational therapy, yet virtually no research has examined this aspect of practice as experienced by therapists from marginalized groups. The discourse of client-centeredness implicitly assumes a “dominant-group” therapist. Professional power is assumed to be accompanied by social power and privilege. Here, we explore what happens when professional and social power are uncoupled.

Children's sleep needs improvement: Here's how

An editorial in JAMA Pediatrics published Sept. 12 focused on the need to improve children's sleep, a problem that parents are well aware of. If children don't get enough sleep, they suffer. So do their parents, watching their bleary‐eyed teens head off to school every morning, knowing that there will be a long night ahead in which the healing nature of sleep does not have an opportunity to exist. Yet, it is in the power of parents and professionals to change this.

How to improve children's sleep

An editorial in JAMA Pediatrics published September 12 focused on the need to improve children's sleep, a problem that parents are well aware of. If children don't get enough sleep, they suffer. So do their parents, watching their bleary‐eyed teens head off to school every morning, knowing that there will be a long night ahead in which the healing nature of sleep does not have an opportunity to exist. Yet, it is in the power of parents and professionals to change this.

Managing the moral expansion of medicine

Science and technology have vastly expanded the realm of medicine. The numbers of and knowledge about diseases has greatly increased, and we can help more people in many more ways than ever before. At the same time, the extensive expansion has also augmented harms, professional responsibility, and ethical concerns. While these challenges have been studied from a wide range of perspectives, the problems prevail. This article adds value to previous analyses by identifying how the moral imperative of medicine has expanded in three ways: (1) from targeting experienced phenomena, such as pain and suffering, to non-experienced phenomena (paraclinical signs and indicators); (2) from addressing present pain to potential future suffering; and (3) from reducing negative wellbeing (pain and suffering) to promoting positive wellbeing. These expansions create and aggravate problems in medicine: medicalization, overdiagnosis, overtreatment, risk aversion, stigmatization, and healthism. Moreover, they threaten to infringe ethical principles, to distract attention and responsibility from other competent agents and institutions, to enhance the power and responsibility of professionals, and to change the professional-beneficiary relationship. In order to find ways to manage the moral expansion of medicine, four traditional ways of setting limits are analyzed and dismissed. However, basic asymmetries in ethics suggest that it is more justified to address people’s negative wellbeing (pain and suffering) than their positive wellbeing. Moreover, differences in epistemology, indicate that it is less uncertain to address present pain and suffering than future wellbeing and happiness. Based on these insights the article concludes that the moral imperative of medicine has a gradient from pain and suffering to wellbeing and happiness, and from the present to the future. Hence, in general present pain and suffering have normative priority over future positive wellbeing.

Analysis on the Influencing Factors of Teacher-Student Relationship in Postgraduate Education

The relationship between teachers and students in postgraduate education directly affects the level of postgraduate education. Based on the current situation of postgraduate education, this paper analyzes the influencing factors of teacher-student relationship in postgraduate education, mainly from the macro and micro levels. That is, the training mode at the macro level, the tutor's knowledge and professional power at the micro level, the personality charm, the way to deal with the relationship between teachers and students, and the role of teachers and students.

Digital Teaching Research Based on the Intelligent Research and Training Platform: Citing the Practice of the Chinese Teaching and Research Group of Senior Secondary School Affiliated to Xingyi Normal University for Minorities as a Case Study

The Intelligent Research and Training Platform (IRTP) of the National Center for Educational Technology (NECT) is an application designed to integrate AI technology and teacher education in response to the “Artificial Intelligence + Teacher Education” strategy, in order to provide teacher professional development and power the advancement of basic education. In this study, a school teaching and research team conducted instructional research on the seventh-grade Chinese lesson Wisteria, utilizing analytical reports of classroom observation, teaching behavior, and teacher ability matrix generated by the Intelligent Research and Training Platform’s big data-based evaluation of classroom teaching for this lesson. Using data analytics and scale grading, this kind of practice helps teachers get better at doing research in their own fields.

Seeing Human Rights: Video Activism as a Proxy Profession by Sandra Ristovska

Reviewed by: Seeing Human Rights: Video Activism as a Proxy Profession by Sandra Ristovska Isabella Waltz (bio) Sandra Ristovska, Seeing Human Rights: Video Activism as a Proxy Profession ( MIT Press, 2021) ISBN 9780262542531, 271 pages. The modern world is shaped by rapid technological developments that are challenging long-formed institutional environments. As smartphones and social media platforms have grown, video has become a pervasive aspect of everyday communication. The rise of video-sharing platforms such as YouTube and TikTok, and new video-based features on Facebook and Instagram, has paralleled a myriad of global crises. Eyewitnesses are now able to capture and share human rights abuses like never before, allowing global audiences to bear witness to harsh realities of police brutality in the United States, state-sponsored violence in [End Page 650] Syria and Myanmar, escalating violence between Israel and Palestine, and many other conflicts previously left largely visually undocumented. In Seeing Human Rights: Video Activism as a Proxy Profession, Sandra Ristovska refers to over seven years of qualitative research to analyze how evolving institutions and human rights video activist tactics inform and contradict one another. The book hones in on journalistic, legal, and political institutions specifically, outlining their logocentric histories that tend to view images only as a complement to words and how this complicates the inevitable integration of video in institutional contexts today. Ristovska's central argument asserts that video activism functions as a proxy profession that often plays a mediating role, brokering arrangements between eyewitnesses, activists, and institutions. Modern video activism is forced to rely on strategies and tactics inherent within neoliberal power structures to legitimize itself in these institutions. While reliance on these strategies and tactics allows video to be used in a meaningful way where it has traditionally been overlooked, video activists within the proxy profession must also face pressing ethical questions that challenge the spirit of human rights work. Seeing Human Rights is separated into six chapters, with three providing detailed insight into the function of video in journalistic, legal, and political institutions. These chapters provide a succinct history of the ways these institutions have both relied on and undervalued images, beginning with still photography and emerging into weak attempts to effectively integrate video. While institutions have "sidelined images in different ways and for different purposes," human rights collectives such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), and WITNESS have more successfully incorporated video into their work, establishing it as a crucial tool in humanitarian advocacy.1 The journalistic, judicial, and political advocacy domains have turned to video out of necessity, leading them to rely on expertise developed in the realm of visual activism. Human rights collectives then have had "to be connected to professional power and authority" to exist in an institutional context while still "embracing the values long associated with video activism."2 According to Ristovska, human rights collectives are in a position to address some of the journalism industry's ongoing struggles due to their publicly perceived trustworthiness and early investment in open-source research techniques. Although outlets such as the New York Times have established visual investigation teams, most journalists rarely receive significant training in open-source research, which human rights collectives have relied on for years. Ristovska argues that "human rights collectives became codified as public experts on eyewitness imagery because of journalism's failure to face the challenge," suggesting that journalism's logocentric ethos is not a thing of the past.3 The book frames journalists' current resistance to modern technology as reminiscent of past hesitancies regarding the introduction of photography, television, and citizen journalism. Because of journalism's perceived failure and logistical concerns in places [End Page 651] like Syria and Myanmar, where reporters may be denied access, human rights collectives now serve a brokering role within the proxy profession, mediating between eyewitness-content producers and journalists. The book attributes a similar historic resistance to constructively incorporating photography in the judicial realm to the conservative, innovation-avoidant nature of the law, as well as traditional judicial authority's reliance on the authority of words.4 Ristovska outlines three key affordances of video that amplify its impact in legal contexts: its ability to serve as a documentary, persuasive...

Professional Power and Skill Use in the “Knowledge Economy”: A Class Analysis

Professional Power and Skill Use in the “Knowledge Economy”: A Class Analysis

“It Helped Me Open My Eyes”: Incorporating Lived Experience Perspectives in Social Work Education

Working from a trauma informed lens is increasingly recognized as a vital component of social work practice, as is learning from and incorporating lived experience into one's approach to practice. Further, the critical and feminist informed interrogation of dominant ideas around professional power and expertise within social work practice is necessary in learning and teaching about trauma. This conceptual article describes an integrated approach to teaching fourth year Australian social work students in the area of violence, abuse, and trauma. The intentionally immersive learning and teaching framework presents and incorporates praxis as involving educator lived experience, theoretical knowledge, and practice experience. The approach aims to create transformative and embodied learning opportunities which destabilize dominant constructions of social work identities, use of professional power and different practice approaches. While honoring the valuable contributions of trauma informed practice, we seek to push students beyond this model, prompting critical feminist analysis of the socio-political complexity of trauma experiences. We describe our work, ambitions, challenges, and learnings as feminist educators, sharing these ideas in order to provoke dialogue on possibilities for pedagogical innovation, within the context of power, expertise, social work education, and lived experience.

Making do by getting real: Psychological contract violations and proactive career agency among medical professionals.

Health care professionals face greater uncertainty in their careers as traditional jobs wither and new, organizationally controlled jobs proliferate, reducing economic security and professional autonomy. We apply psychological contract and self-efficacy theory to examine the career agency of early-career physicians. We ask the following: (a) What are the unfulfilled expectations and emotions experienced by young physicians at the training and early career stages? (b) What are the forms of career agency exhibited by young physicians in response to unfulfillment? We conducted a study on 48 U.K. early-career primary care physicians, known as general practitioners. The sample comprised both trainees as well as newly qualified physicians. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. Physicians interpreted their early-career experiences based on predominantly ideological expectations around what it means to be a successful professional. However, the realities of practice resulted in highly emotional experiences of violation that were associated with a "reactive" agency and job behaviors that were more transactional and less relational. This study identifies the expectations of early career professionals, which helps understand how and why psychological contract violations occur. It also expands the conceptualization of career agency from a positively framed aspect of professional behavior to one that includes haphazard and self-serving elements. Our study highlights several implications of the shifts in physician career agency for primary care practice. It discusses the potential effects of the purposeful self-interest among doctors on professional identity and power, as well as patient care.

Barriers for Inter-Organisational Collaboration: What Matters for an Integrated Care Programme?

Introduction:Inter-organisational collaboration is challenging but essential in managing the complex and comprehensive needs of frail older people. Therefore, there is a need to investigate the influence of different barriers to inter-organisational collaboration when implementing an integrated care programme. The aim of this study was to investigate both inpatient and outpatient staff views on the factors they deemed to be influential to inter-organisational collaboration for an integrated care programme.Methods:The study was a cross-sectional study and included staff from hospitals, primary care and municipal health and social care.Results:There were no significant differences between staff from inpatient and outpatient care in measuring factors that may cause difficulties for inter-organisational collaboration. Staff views diverged significantly on all factors, such as educational level at long physical distances, laws and regulations, knowledge of each others work settings, experience from inter-organisational collaboration, different professions, variations in professional status and power, psychosocial factors such as positive work environment and interpersonal chemistry.Discussion:A multidisciplinary team culture and avenues for inter-organisational collaboration need to be developed for improved care continuity.Conclusion:The staffs’ educational level influenced what was perceived as barriers to inter-organisational collaboration, and may guide future development of integrated care programmes.

Home care program flexibility as a relational phenomenon

The capacities of home care programs to respond to clients’ holistic, everyday needs and changing circumstances can shape trajectories of clients and family caregivers. This analysis examines how such flexibility emerges in relations between home care actors within the constraints of policies, regulations and funding contexts. A relational lens broadly informs the analysis of interview data from 46 participants in two Canadian regions. Twelve configurations of participants centre around older adults receiving publicly-funded, non-medical home support, and include their case/care coordinators (CCs), support workers, and where applicable, family carers and private agency supervisors. Case-based and thematic analyses were conducted within and between configurations. Findings illuminate how flexibility to client situations arises around tasks, schedules, roles, and social connection can arise in relations, and how policies, protocols and institutionalized practices shape this process. When bounded professional power is accompanied by minimal interaction with or knowledge of clients, system flexibility to emergent needs, preferences and situations relies heavily on worker prompting and effort, client assertion of needs, and professional exception-making. Participants contributed to an understanding of system flexibility emerging in this context as key actors develop and respond to concerns about others. Findings illuminate the importance of relationally embedded knowledge and (inter)action and are discussed with regards to client-centred care and current policy shifts in some provinces towards direct-managed home care. Further research should examine how system flexibility may shape care pathways over time.

Structural Inequalities in Educational Leadership: Addressing Social and Professional Identities and Recognitional Power

In this article, we aim to work toward a rich theoretical understanding of the relationship between social identity, professional identity, and school leadership in the context of recognitional power. We approach the relationship the study constructs by problematizing the traditional areas of leadership literature that is marked by veneration of leadership and its functional toolkit that includes traits, attitudes, behaviors, efficiency, productivity, mastery, etc. as antecedents to the leadership process. In addition, the article aims to capture the intersection of professional and social identity considering the relations of domination and everyday practices of recognition. These goals are reflected in two research questions: (1) How do we understand the relationship between school leadership, social identity and professional identity? (2) How do we approach social and professional identities in educational leadership studies in terms of recognitional power? We propound that leadership literature should include diverse epistemic approaches, problematize the structural inequalities and the institutionalized relations of recognition and recognitional power, and problematize the intersection of social identity, professional identity, and recognitional power.

Responsible Use of Professional Power When Working With Ethnic Minority Victims/Survivors Of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA): Results From A Program Evaluation Study In Australia

A program on culturally sensitive service delivery for ethnic minority victims/survivors of child sexual abuse was delivered and evaluated over six months in Australia in 2019 using a mixed-methods design. This paper reports findings regarding ‘professional omnipotence’. At T1 82% and T2 71% of ‘talk therapists’ do not believe all mental illnesses can be treated with formal services, so are using professional power responsibly – without enabling false hope that formal services ‘can fix everything’. This attitude was independent of cultural background, but somewhat related to age and work experience. Although a strongly held view, the proportion did decrease suggesting the program nevertheless affirmed the utility of formal services. Practitioners who do believe all mental illnesses can be treated with formal services view this as a trauma-informed hope-inspiring approach. Approximately a third of service providers suggest additional self-help strategies but appear reluctant to suggest additional family and group therapy, likely reflecting practice wisdom – that group-based help may increase risk of harm rather than empower clients. The results contribute new and innovative empirical data, peer into the contradictions and complexities of ‘trauma-informed’ practice, and provide suggestions for future research on how professional power can be used responsibly with this highly marginalised group.

Accounting practices and professional power dynamics during a crisis

This paper examines how changes in accounting practices during a crisis can affect organisational dynamics between hospital managers and clinicians. Our theoretical framework applies a multi-dimensional concept of power (Hardy, 1996) – which distinguishes power over resources, processes and meaning – to a longitudinal case study of a public university hospital during a budgetary crisis. Based on interviews with managers and clinicians, three successive time intervals with distinct power constellations are identified. Initially, we identify a pre-crisis phase where management formally controls resources, which seems to have limited effects on clinician dominance because managers lack ‘processual power’ and ‘power of meaning’. Next, an implantation phase emerges whereby the introduction of mandated budget cuts triggers shifts in the distribution of power, such that managers acquire power by securing the collaboration of clinicians – a phenomenon which has tangible benefits in terms of enabling budget compliance and increased service provision. Finally, the third phase may be conceptualized as a fiscal pressure regimen whereby, when budgetary pressures intensify further, management's newly gained ‘power of meaning’ is eroded because management are now seen to pursue unrealistic demands. Drawing on research insights gleaned during each phase, our analysis contributes to extant literature in at least three ways. First, we present novel findings regarding the impact of crises-related applications of accounting practices on intra-organisational power constellations. Second, our work highlights how accounting practices help shape the understanding of crisis, which, in turn, impacts the distribution of organizational power and influences intra-organizational patterns of collaboration. Third, we find that awareness of the meaning power of accounting practices can help shape strategic action in crisis situations.