Cambio. Rivista sulle Trasformazioni Sociali

Professions Within, Between and Beyond. Varieties of Professionalism in a Globalising World

2019-11-04T12:40:04+00:00

This article introduces the monographic section on the varieties of professionalism in a globalising world. The monographic section aims to explore new theoretical perspectives and analytical approaches in the field of the sociology of professions, by collecting both theoretical and empirical contributions focusing on different professions (either established or emerging ones) and topics, from different geographical regions. In the first part of this introductory article, we discuss professionalism as a concept that needs to be theoretically redefined in the context of post-industrial society after the crisis. For this purpose, we propose to refocus the discourse about professionalism on the process of differentiation and the increasing heterogeneity it is bringing about, within and between professional groups. Additionally, the changed societal conditions imply a changing role for professionals in society, beyond professionalism, which is an area worth being explored. Thus, we outline possible developments of the academic debate in three main analytical dimensions, labelled as within, between and beyond. The second part charts the nine contributions included in the monographic section, while trying to reconduct them to the dimensions mentioned above. Three orders of themes have thus been identified, concerning: (1) the redefinition of the concept of professionalism as a “practice”, highlighting the practicality of the wisdom used by professionals in performing their everyday tasks; (2) the analysis of regulation processes, focusing on what happens when institutions shape professionalism; and (3) the investigation of the dynamics of transnational mobility, in the context of globalisation processes

What Are the Issues of Focusing on Irreducible Uncertainties in Professional Work? A Historical Outline of “Prudential Professionalism”

2019-11-04T12:39:53+00:00

This article brings into view “prudential professionalism”, a particular type of professionalism needed in situations of irreducible uncertainties, presents the philosophical concept of prudentiality on which this is based, and seeks to clarify both the theoretical and practical issues associated with this professionalism. A discussion with Abbott’s book, The System of Professions, is used to argue that revisiting the theme of professionalism is needed. Then a historical outline of prudential professionalism brings some empirical material to support the theoretical arguments. This historical outline sheds new light on the current difficulties of professionals faced by demands from new public management they cannot meet and by the values of organisational professionalism. Finally, a method to rethink the social conditions of professional work is proposed.

Street-Level Workers’ Discretion in the Changing Welfare

2019-11-04T12:39:41+00:00

A crisis and deep re-organisation of European welfare systems started in the 1970s. Both the demand for and supply of welfare intervention are involved in relevant transformations, and the street-level workers are placed right at the crucial point where which they meet. They have to accomplish their complex mandate in a changing context and cope with multiple pressures. In order to carry out this task, they manage a certain degree of discretion (Lipsky 1980) that is shaped by the legal, organisational, cultural, social and economic context in which they are embedded. These conditions’ change tends to modify the “spaces” and the use of discretion. Usually, the street-level perspective studies the effects of discretion on policy implementation, services and users. This article focuses on how discretion produces feedback on the same street-level workers, modifying their role, work conditions and risks.

«You’ve Got to Do This like a Professional – Not like One of These Scratchers!». Reconstructing the Professional Self-Understanding of Tattoo Artists

2019-11-04T12:39:30+00:00

This article investigates the professional self-understanding of tattoo artists, an occupational group that has been expanding rapidly in recent years. Despite ongoing discussions on health and safety risks, tattooing does still not require a recognised licence in most European countries. Tattooists respond to public prejudices concerning their potentially dangerous work practices by referring to their responsibility towards clients and the complexity of their work, which qualify them as professionals. In narrative interviews, tattooists stress that the high standards of artistic quality, craft skills and service orientation, which their customers expect, require their individual professionalisation. Their accounts reveal their notions of professionalism and the rhetorical strategies of boundary work, which they employ to construct their professional identity. The study provides an example of how the practitioners of a non-regulated professional group, whose work has been considered as unskilled and even deviant, adopt and interpret the concept of professionalism to legitimise their status as professionals.

A Royal Charter Is Not Enough – How PM Professional Associations Can Continually Show the Value of Professionalisation to the Markets

2019-11-04T12:39:19+00:00

The Association for Project Management (APM) is engaged in the process of raising the status and performance of Project Management (PM) in the UK. They have obtained a royal charter, regarded as the “locus of professionalisation”, but can the APM really assist PM to achieve “a world where all projects succeed”, when there is no provable link between professionalisation and performance of practitioners? This current claim alone (along with chartership) will not improve the profession’s market reputation, which also raises concerns regarding the APM tactics for growth by engaging practitioners and corporate partners. This article uses actor-network theory to re-frame a historical case of the major UK Cost Accounting Association (ICWA), identifying the tactics this association used to effectively represent the value of the occupation/profession and influence their markets. Parallels and recommendations are generated for the APM, research directions are proposed for PM professionalisation and associations’ tactics for building market value.

Torn Between Neoliberal and Postmodern Trends, Corporatist Defence and Creative Age Prospects: The Ongoing Reshaping of the Classical Music Profession in Italy

2019-11-04T12:39:08+00:00

In modern industrial societies, strongly associating work to tangible productivity and professions to formal regulation and protection of membership, the music occupation has represented a conundrum for theoretical analysis. In post-industrial societies, however, musicians are being recognised a pivotal role in capitalist economies, as part of a creative class sharing working conditions already defining artistic labour markets, but within a significantly changed regulative framework. Drawing on the literature and her field research, the author adopts a neo-institutional perspective to consider the reshaping of the classical music profession in Italy, exploring how collective and individual actors are responding to neo-liberal trends extending market logic to a music world crossed by processes of cultural declassification. Conclusions reflect over the ambiguities created by creative age prospects, in applying principles of economic hierarchisation within the field of musical production, and over the transient nature of professionalisation processes.

Italian Teachers: A Profession in Transition?

2019-11-04T12:38:56+00:00

The teaching profession, like many others, is involved in a deep process of change. The sources of pressure are manifold: top-down, as a consequence of neo-liberalist policies and of the implementation of the logic of New Public Management and, later, of New Public Governance; bottom-up, as a result of the socio-demographic and cultural changes affecting the relationship with end-users. All of these elements are challenging teachers’ professionalism. The article questions whether teaching in Italy is currently a profession in transition and, if so, which new features are emerging. To do so, we present a locally-based case study that draws on both Hargreaves’s and Noordegraaf’s theoretical frameworks.

Socio-Professional Integration and International Mobility: The Case of French Engineers Under the France-Quebec Mutual Recognition Arrangements

2019-11-04T12:38:45+00:00

This article examines the dynamics of admission into the professional practice of French-trained engineers into Quebec’s professional system. It also looks at the socio-professional integration of these engineers who have sought admission through the France-Quebec MRA since it went into effect on July 18, 2013. Therefore, we consider not only conditions of admission in the professional system, but also factors facilitating or impeding their socio-professional integration, and the impact of these factors on the entry into professional practice. This article also considers the roles of some stakeholders involved in the MRA process and the dynamics among them, as well as the effectiveness of policies that regulate immigration and the labour market, looking at the socio-professional integration as a multi-faceted process that brings together actors mainly from immigration, the professional system, the training establishments and the employers themselves. By analysing these professionals’ trajectories, we also look at the impact of institutional disjunctions, with the aim of identifying solutions towards a more efficient integration of these foreign-trained professionals (FTPs). Our methodological protocol involved a case study approach (Creswell 2007) combining semi-structured interviews, participant observation, informal meetings with some stakeholders and documentary analysis about professional systems, focusing on the dynamics between regulation of professions and the socio-professional integration of FTPs in this context.

Managing Knowledge Standards at the Periphery of Professional Knowledge Development: The Case of the Philippine Accountancy Profession and International Accounting Standards Harmonisation

2019-11-04T12:38:36+00:00

This article is a case study of how a peripheral professional group, the Philippine accountancy profession, managed its knowledge standards to strengthen its occupational authority despite lack of control on standards development. It focuses on explaining the decision to harmonise the Philippine Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) with the International Accounting Standards (IAS), which overturned postcolonial dependence on the US GAAP as a model for standards development. The harmonisation of the Philippine GAAP with the IAS is the outcome of a complex mix of structural changes in the core of the accounting standards development field, resource constraints on domestic accounting standard-setters, and the local professional group’s efforts to advance its professional project. Local conditions that favour adoption of a model and the active pursuit of occupational authority by local actors are just as crucial as pressures from the external global environment in decisions leading to harmonisation with international standards.

Professional Boundaries in Transnational IT Workspaces

2019-11-04T12:38:26+00:00

In this article, I analyse the formation of professional boundaries in the dynamic of globalisation and the internationalisation of work concentrating on the question of how professional boundaries emerge in transnational workspaces constituted by heterogeneous actors from different institutional and socio-cultural backgrounds. Theoretically, I depart from Abbott’s notion of ‘linked ecologies’ and focus on three dimensions of professionalism (the linkages between tasks and organised action or professional jurisdictions, the mechanisms for legitimating work or control over work and the search for professional identity) as basic mechanisms of professional boundaries formation in transnational workspaces. Retrospectively, I show focusing on the case of IT project management how employers and practitioners combining organisational and occupational professionalism contribute to form professional boundaries in workspaces that emerge in globalisation processes. Based on the research results and comparing them with the current situation of transnational IT project management, I conclude that the processes of formation of professional boundaries in the IT sector are historically situated in the first decade of the Twenty-first century.

Towards process-figurational theory in organization studies

2019-11-04T12:38:16+00:00

This paper outlines the significance of Elias’s work as an alternative solution for many of the core conceptual problems in organization studies as well as the distinctive contribution of The Court Society, sketches the main elements of the ways in which his ideas have been taken up by organisation scholars to date, concentrating on a selection of studies drawing on Elias, and concludes with some reflections on the future directions that process-figurational theory might take in organization studies. The core line of argument is that Elias provides a range of powerful theoretical resources to transcend many of the problems usually addressed through the work of Foucault, actor-network theory, postmodernist and post-structuralist theory, especially the supposed agency/structure problem, constituting an alternative and effective analysis of organizational life that is anchored in the relational and processual strands of classical sociological theory.

La paura della morte

2019-11-04T12:38:05+00:00

Traduciamo qui l’intervento a una conferenza che Norbert Elias fece nel 1986 a Groningen. Il testo è stato poi pubblicato nel 1990, nel libro Concept of Person in Religion and Thought, a cura di H.G. Kippenberg, Y.B. Kuiperand e A.F. Sanders. La versione che qui traduciamo è quella contenuta in Collected Works, vol. 15, a cura di R. Kilminster e S. Mennell, 2008, pp. 256-266. ©2008 Norbert Elias Foundation, Amsterdam. Desideriamo ringraziare i colleghi del Norbert Elias Stitching per il permesso di tradurre e pubblicare questo scritto.

Gender Barriers at Work: A Comparison Between Women Train Drivers and Women Garage Mechanics in Spain

2019-11-04T12:37:54+00:00

Occupational segregation persists despite continuous promotion of equal opportunity policies. This article describes various barriers that have stood in the way of women train drivers’ and women motor vehicle mechanics’ entering and remaining in employment. The results are based on case studies of these two occupations in Spain and primarily on the analysis of in-depth interviews of female and male employees in these occupations. The comparison is justified because of the companies’ similarities in terms of underrepresentation and yet their dissimilar organisation in terms of both size and management style. The findings indicate the presence of at least two types of obstacles: 1) explicit barriers related to personnel selection and the material characteristics of workplaces; and 2) implicit barriers associated with attitudes and practices in the relationships between the minority of women workers and the male majority.

The Shaky Social Citizenship of Early-Career Independent Professionals: Work Transformation, Career and Life Uncertainty, Unrepresented Rights

2019-11-04T12:37:44+00:00

The combination of a segmented and flexible labour market and a fragmented welfare system has given rise to an unprecedented risk of uncertainty for the new generation of independent professionals. Independent self-employment frequently conceals precarious working conditions, low wages and limited protection; tasks, knowledge, networking and creativity are deteriorating, with an evident decline in autonomy often leading to entrapment in poor occupational careers. A qualitative research, involving 72 early-career I-Pros in Milan, argues that the new generation of professionals is undergoing a crisis of social citizenship – since social integration through labour market inclusion, structured representation of interests, welfare protection, are lacking – and it is also showing a “culture of uncertainty”, a day-by-day approach to life and career. Beyond a group of fully integrated I-Pros, most professionals show to suffer from economic and work vulnerability as well as relational fragility, whereas the weakest part of interviewed I-Pros experiences social and professional vulnerability, strong isolation at work and renunciation of personal objectives.

Il Mediterraneo e l’Europa. Intervista a Román Reyes

2019-11-04T12:37:34+00:00

Cent’anni dopo. Max Weber e la politica come professione e vocazione

2019-11-04T12:37:24+00:00

Mapping Precariousness, Labour Insecurity and Uncertain Livelihoods: Subjectivities and Resistance, edited by Emiliana Armano, Arianna Bove, Annalisa Murgia

2019-11-04T12:37:08+00:00

Mapping Precariousness, Labour Insecurity and Uncertain Livelihoods: Subjectivities and Resistance, edited by Emiliana Armano, Arianna Bove, Annalisa Murgia

2019-11-04T12:36:58+00:00

Le reti delle mafie. Le relazioni sociali e la complessità delle organizzazioni criminali, di Francesco Calderoni

2019-11-04T12:36:48+00:00

Book Review - Profiles

2019-11-04T12:36:37+00:00