From “Pure” to “Hybrid” Professionalism

Abstract

Public sectors struggle with professionalism. Classic professions are weakened, welfare state occupations professionalize, and public managers try to become professionals. This raises questions. What is professionalism? What is professional control in ambiguous occupational domains? What happens when different types of occupational control get mixed up? The first question is answered by portraying classic professionalism as "controlled content." The second question is answered by tracing a transition from "pure" to "hybrid" professionalism in domains such as health care and social work. The third question is answered by portraying present-day professionalism as "content of control" instead of controlled content.

Formal Planning and the Reshaping of Public Sector Professional Work

“…Much of the most recent debate had indeed cast attention in overcoming such classic dichotomous representations of professional services and in reassembling professionals as "hybrid" instead (Noordegraaf, 2007, Ezzamel et al ., 2007Levay & Waks, 2009). However, the findings from this research allow not only going beyond a notion of profession-management conflict (the resistance thesis), but also challenging the notion that "we are all managers now" (Grey 1999) (the hybridization thesis).…”

“…a non conflictual absorption and re-elaboration of new managerial values within traditional professional work, leading to a blurring of boundaries between management and profession. Noordegraaf (2007) revisited the notion of professionalism in ambiguous contexts, proposing to go beyond dualisms and positing the existence of hybrid professional-managers. In his view, the definition of profession is not an a priori, but is a relational concept, also relative to time and space.…”

“…The research that investigated professionals' responses to managerialization tended to find evidence of dualism and resistance especially in the earlier studies of the 1990s, while more recent studies recognized much softer responses ranging from decoupling or superficial absorbing to -increasingly -a convergence on blurred roles where professionals act both as expert and as accountable decision makers. This might reflect both a shift in academic thought in this field, questioning the perhaps too rigid notion of profession in classical sociology (Golden et al, 2000;Noordegraaf, 2007), but it might also reflect some shift in the practice, as a new view of management in general (Grey, 1999), and of public management in particular, consolidated. In other words, "the initial question about how managers are differentiated from nonmanagers seems to be disappearing under the effects of a discourse which stresses the ways in which 'we are all managers'" (Grey, 1999).…”

“…This theme is derived from the literature on profession-management tensions too, where it is more commonly addressed with the label of Hybridization, i.e. a non conflictual absorption and re-elaboration of new managerial values within traditional professional work, leading to a blurring of boundaries between management and profession (e.g., Llewellyn, 2001;Ezzamel et al, 2007;Noordegraaf, 2007).…”

“…Broadbent & Laughlin, 1998;Farrell & Morris, 2003;McGivern & Ferlie, 2007); hybridization -i.e. the blurring of boundaries between professional and managerial values (e.g., Llewellyn, 2001;Noordegraaf, 2007;Levay & Waks, 2009). However, most of this research has investigated the introduction of accounting and auditing practices or the introduction of new managerial roles, or new organizational structures.…”