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A profession’s social organization is comprised of three distinct internal
structures, they being groups, controls, and worksites. These modules of
professional organization work in unison to create a more bonded and organized
professional structure. Together they influence professions in several ways.
First, the more organized a profession is, the more effective it is at claiming
jurisdiction. Second, organization of a profession into “a single, identifiable
national association is clearly a prerequisite of public or legal claims”
(Abbott 1988: 83). Third, in some conditions oddly, some relatively less
organized professions due to their internal structures have a certain advantage
in workplace competition. For these professional organizations lack rigid focus,
and thus have freedom to move back and forth from different tasks, whereas more
organized professions lack this flexibility to venture into other areas of work
to increase diversity, to become more competitive. Finally, professions that
have highly organized internal structures are more resilient to attacks by less
organized professions. These facts illustrate that the social structure of
professions is neither fixed nor uniformly beneficial; the nature of it is
“constantly subdividing under the various pressures of market demands,
specialization, and interprofessional competition” (Abbott 1988: 84). In
addition, these facts demonstrate that different competitive conditions favour a
more or less organized profession. Taken together these factors imply that the
professions as a group will develop in the structured dynamic pattern that
Abbott calls the system of professions. Abbott upholds in his book the ideal
that professions constitute an interdependent system, and that jurisdiction is
exclusive (Abbott 1988: 86). That being true, then a move by one inevitably
affects the others.
Change occurs within professions according to Abbott through two sources. One
source is from external factors, these initiate the “opening or closing [of]
areas for jurisdiction and by existing or new professions seeking new ground”
(Abbott 1988: 90). New tasks areas of jurisdiction are opened; some professions
prosper by the acquisition of these new jurisdictions by procedures such as
enclosure at the expense of destroying old jurisdictions, that lead to the
weakening of the jurisdiction of other professions (Abbott 1988: 91). A second
source of change comes from internal factors, these causes unlike external
factors do not create or abolish jurisdiction. Change is initiated internally
within the dynamic structures of professions through the development of new
knowledge, and expansion of jurisdictional consolidation by processes such as
professionalization or reduction (Abbott 1988: 91). Section II: The System's
Environment Abbott defines professional power “as the ability to retain
jurisdiction when system forces imply that a profession ought to have lost it”
(Abbott 1988: 136). The power of professions to expand their cognitive domain,
and thus their jurisdiction, Abbott maintains is dependent on their use of
abstract knowledge to annex new areas of work, and to define then as their own
(Abbott 1988: 102). Abbott also adds that knowledge must not be too abstract or
concrete to be jurisdictionally advantageous for a profession. Two mechanisms
help professions to maintain an optimal level of abstraction, these being the
processes of amalgamation and division. Within professions there exists internal
differentiation between the organized groups of individuals that comprise the
profession. One major source of internal stratification comes from the
phenomenon of professional regression. This is a process whereby professionals
withdraw into themselves, working in more purely professional environments, as a
consequence of gaining greater status (Abbott 1988: 118). They inevitably become
segregated from the tasks for which they claim jurisdiction, and from clients,
the public, and other subordinate professionals. Besides professional regression
there is the concept of client differentiation, which leads to specialization
within professions, this creates internal divisions of labour. A process
correlated to labour division is that of degradation.
Degradation is the progression whereby work is systematically segmented from
professional to non-professional status, which leads to the division of labour
between “an upper, truly professional group and a lower, subordinate one”
(Abbott 1988: 128). An interrelated issue of labour division is that of career
patterns, Abbott argues that career patterns are often quite rigid, and that
interchangeability between work of different professions is impossible. For due
to demographic rigidity, some professions size and reproduction mechanisms
prevent them from expanding or contracting rapidly, thus constraining their
professionals from practicing outside of the profession (Abbott 1988: 129).
Abbott proposes that large scale general changes on the structures that make up
the system of professions, and not their effects on individual professions must
be examined, to generate an accurate picture of the variables that mediate
change (Abbott 1988: 143). Abbott mentions that two significant circumstances
have helped in the advancement of professional jurisdictions. One being the rise
of the large-scale organization, and the other being the rise of technology
(Abbott 1988: 144). Beyond technology and organizations, social movements have
also been responsible for the creation and abolishment of professional work.
With the organizational revolution of the 19th century professions became more
bureaucratic. The rise of bureaucracies has increased competition between
professions, by absorbing certain forms of work, and thus creating struggle for
work that remains (Abbott 1988: 157). As a consequence, there has been a split
between workplace and public jurisdiction, and subsequently a division between
administrative and legislative authority. This Abbott contends leads to various
changes in audiences for professional claims dependent on the social environment
(Abbott 1988: 157). Related to the increase of bureaucracy is that of
co-optation, the phenomenon of professions shrinking in number and becoming more
monopolized in power. This process has not decreased interprofessional
competition, but has simply changed its location.... and involving different
arrangements of 'friendly' groups (Abbott 1988: 176). Besides the many social
organizational and structural changes of professions that have occurred
throughout the short history of professions, great cultural changes have also
been involved in remaking the work of professions.
The three of most significance have been the growth in size and complexity of
professional knowledge, the emergence of new types of legitimacy claims for that
knowledge, and the rise of the university. The changes in professional knowledge
have involved two processes, that of growth and replacement. Growth has lead to
the subdivision of knowledge, while replacement has pressured knowledge towards
abstraction (Abbott 1988: 179). Legitimation of professions justifies what forms
of work they can do and how they are to do it (Abbott 1988: 184). The emergence
of new forms of jurisdictional legitimacy has been warranted by cultural shifts
such as secularization, and changing cultural values. This has led to a shift in
professional legitimation from a reliance on social origins and character values
to a reliance on scientization or rationalization of technique and on efficiency
of service (Abbott 1988: 179). The ascent of the modern university has been a
great external force behind the development of professions. Universities have
served as legitimators of professional knowledge and expertise. They have helped
to generate new techniques of practice, and have been the training ground for
professionals. Finally, universities have also become another arena for
interprofessional competition (Abbott 1988: 196). Section III: Three Case
Studies In his discussion of information professionals Abbott states that there
are two types. There are those who reside in qualitative information, such as
librarians, academics, advertisers, and journalists, and those who abide in
quantitative information, such as cost accountants, management engineers,
statisticians, operations researchers, and systems analysts. The move by
qualitative professions into technical organization has been attributed to the
concept of scientific management. Qualitative information work has been shaped
decisively by organizational and demographic developments... [as well as by]
major technological events (Abbott 1988: 219).
The area of quantitative information has developed through the advent
of two detrimental disturbances. One being the invention of mechanical devices
for calculation and tabulation, which helped to rountinize the work, and the
other being the birth of cost accounting, which helped professions to become
more competitive (Abbott 1988: 228). The 1930's were the beginning of the
unification between qualitative and quantitative information. This brought about
the emergence of two practical claimants of this new area of information
jurisdiction. The first was information science (IS) which took a purely
theoretical perspective on the topic, and the second was management information
systems (MIS), which had a more practical orientation. The initial structural
development of the English legal profession began in the early 19th century,
while the onset of that of the Americans came at a much later time. Two
organizational structures attributed to the growth in demand for legal services
in the 19th century. One was large commercial enterprise, the other was
administrative bureaucracy. In its infancy legal work outgrew its profession.
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