Recasting professionalisation: Understanding self-legitimating professionalisation as a precursor to neoliberal professionalisation

Abstract

This document may differ from the final, published version of the research and has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies. To read and/or cite from the published version of the research, please visit the publisher's website (a subscription may be required.) Recasting professionalisation: understanding self-legitimating professionalisation as a precursor to neoliberal professionalisation ABSTRACT This article explores the complex ways in which development NGOs become professional development actors. It offers a uniquely holistic understanding of professionalisation that draws on extensive new research data. It challenges the accepted narrative, presented by development scholars, of neoliberalism as the fundamental driver of professionalisation. Instead, it offers a more nuanced theorisation that recognises that professionalisation from outside, driven by neoliberalism, is often preceded by a professionalisation from within. Here the paper develops the concept of selflegitimising professionalisation as part of a 'two stage process' through a case study of international development practice delivered by UK based development education actors.

How should conservation be professionalized?

“…Among conservation NGOs, for example, Larsen (2018) distinguished The Good (small, idealistic, commitment-driven); The Ugly (professionalized, managerial and internationally financed institutions that increasingly rely on a capitalistic expansion of activities, public finance entanglements and flawed corporate partnership projects) and the Dirty Harrys (pragmatic conservation operators in a world of money). The latter reflect a perceived shift towards neoliberalism (Humble, 2019), defined by Lang (2013, p. 63) as ‘the processes through which social movements professionalize, institutionalize and bureaucratize in vertically structured, policy-outcome-oriented organizations that focus on generating issue-specific and, to some degree, marketable expert knowledge or services’. This emergence of corporate conservation, exemplified by the growth of the so-called BINGOs (big international NGOs), has attracted extensive criticism, including accusations of colonialism (Mbaria & Ogada, 2017), undue influence by business donors (Hance, 2016), lack of concern for Indigenous issues and human rights (Tauli-Corpuz et al, 2020), and over-professionalization (Banks et al, 2015).…”

Do executive remuneration decision-makers know what's going on? The gap between independence and institutional contexts

“…Reinforcing processes may follow initial action that appears to secure positive feedback (for instance from shareholders and the corporate financial media following announcement over successive codes of practice of vaguely specified notions of independence for top pay decision-makers and their consultants), leading to a pattern of action to do more of the same. While at this stage any perverse implications of an obsession with independence – such as formulaic, homogenised top pay outcomes (Humble, 2019) – may not be visible, a dominant organisational solution (or path) emerges (Sydow et al. , 2020).…”