5.1 Introduction
5.1.2 Professionals in the Organization
(1979) conception of governmentality which asserts that the dominant method of control in modern society is self regulation (Evetts 2003). Organizationally, this self-regulation results in the development of patterns and routines which conform to dominant industry standards as professionals seek to legitimate themselves and their organizations (Evetts 2003). The reliance on Foucault over the organizational commitment theories that proliferated in the 1950s, most notably in Whyte’s (2002 [1956]) theory of the
organization man, is important. The latter of these theories is primarily concerned with organizational commitment and conformity. Although the concept of commitment is an important one to explore in the context of the resistant organization, it is not the task of this particular study. This chapter, and indeed much of the literature regarding
contemporary professionalization, draws on Foucault’s governmentality because of its emphasis on a commitment to the profession over and above a commitment to a particular organization. This concept is especially useful for explaining why resistant organizations associate so many institutionalized processes with professionals rather than with any particular organizational form. As I will show later, a commitment to the profession as opposed to the organization is precisely what the people in this study view as a root cause of institutionalization. Indeed, many of the strategies described below are attempts aimed at recoupling processes with organizational context. In Foucauldian terms, then, this means to deprofessionalize the organization in order to avoid the implementation of taken for granted processes.
Leicht and Fennell (1997) claim that now, as we move more completely into a postindustrialized society, professionals are beginning to be managed by non-
professionals.
[T]he control of professional work is no longer necessarily vested in peers, or even in the administrative elite of the profession; hierarchical control over professional work is often vested in professional managers of the employing organization.
(Leicht and Fennell 1997:217)
Freidson (1984) noted that professional control was shifting from an informal
relationship marked by collegiality to a more formalized relationship where professionals were increasingly stratified according to hierarchical position within the organization where some professionals are practitioners and others are managers and supervisors. In other words, Friedson claims that practitioner-professionals are increasingly being managed by managing-professionals. This battle is really about the control of professional work as alluded to in the quote above. In medicine, for example, the primary norms have shifted from improving quality and access to dealing with cost and service containment along with the rise of managed care organizations (Alexander and D’Aunno 1990; Coulehan 2005; Leicht and Fennell 1997). Scott et al. (2000) argue that the changes in the medical field had the effect of eroding doctor's sovereignty as a consumer model replaced the older, professional model. Similar shifts to uniformity in order to generate revenue and comply with state regulations can be found among legal professionals, engineers and scientists (Leicht and Fennell 1997). In a postindustrial setting, the organization has a much stronger incentive to control the professions than in the industrialized setting due to the increased reliance on the products provided by the professional (services and knowledge) (Evetts 2003).
Professionals, of course, have a vested interest in maintaining control over themselves both individually and as a group as it is precisely this lack of external control
which undergirds the prestige and status they have typically enjoyed. However, Leicht and Fennell (1997) show that mimetic and coercive isomorphism to organizational norms and stability have taken over control from the normative isomorphism controlled by professional groups. Specifically, they claim that the pressure to generate revenue and accountability to both the state and the consumer has caused professional norms to be in flux. In this period of flux, professional groups have lost much of their isomorphic power.
Increasingly, professionals are becoming resigned to the idea of external oversight by bureaucrats and managers. In medicine, for example, physicians are more and more associated with managed care organizations, and even medical specialists are beginning to jump on the trend, trading in autonomy and prestige, traditional characteristics and benefits of being a professional, for a guaranteed income and the protection that comes from external oversight (Scott et al. 2000). It is unclear if professionals are engaging in some form of rational choice decision-making where school debts, desires for a larger income, and risk are weighed against the ability to be self-employed and act with discretion based on one’s training, but the trend toward voluntary (i.e., not state sponsored) external oversight in medicine is as undeniable as the booming health care industry. This restructuring of the professional within the postindustrial organization is bound to have a profound impact on the way the professions are structured especially with regard to prestige and attractiveness to future professionals, but we still do not know the degree or extent of these effects (Leicht and Fennell 1997). Of paramount importance to this study is that Leicht and Fennell note that this shift in control has resulted in the routinization and standardization of standards and procedures even at the point of
professionalization. Credentialing and training organizations are adjusting their practices to meet industry oversight standards claiming that “practice guidelines have both shaped the content of professional decision-making and provided a vehicle through which accountability for professional practice can be explicitly measured” (Leicht and Fennell 1997:219-220). Hanlon echoes these claims saying that “accountability and performance indicators have now become a dominant aspect of professionalism” (Hanlon 1999:121).
Evetts (2003:405) draws on Fournier (1999) and Miller and Rose (1990), in her explorations of “professionalism as the government of professional practice ‘at a
distance,’” and finds that external regulation and professionalism are becoming more and more intertwined.
Religious professionals are not immune from these battles over the control of professionals. In a field which has strong elements of both technical and institutional fields, such as religion, professionals rely on the development and implementation of routines and procedures in order to signal both to themselves and others that they are legitimate professionals and to confirm to their external regulators that they are doing their job efficiently and as decreed by dominant norms and standards. Satisfying
internalized norms of professionalism surrounding control and discretion can be difficult in an environment with a substantial amount of external oversight. One of the ways clergy have traditionally maintained their normalized preference for independence, autonomy and discretion while simultaneously appeasing external auditors is by initiating and institutionalizing their own programs, projects or organizational procedures. In short, they put their "stamp" on the organization. In this way, they can satisfy their internalized professional norms because the project, once institutionalized, serves as a marker of their
independence and power. At the same time these institutionalized procedures and programs serve as durable and quantifiable examples of professional work for external oversight agencies. Satisfying external regulators often takes the form of attempting to quantify the inherently unquantifiable nature of professional work. In the field of religion for example, this leads to reporting attendance numbers, tithes, and hours as a way of measuring the professional enterprise.
To sum up, as professional activity has moved out of the institutionalized, taken for granted position enjoyed in highly industrial environments and into a more technical environment where the production of knowledge and services dominates, their products and labor have begun to be subject to an increasing amount of oversight and regulation.
The result is that whereas once, goods were thought to be interchangeable, now
professional products, indeed professionals themselves are interchangeable. Oversight from both regulatory agencies and expectations of the people being serviced by
professionals has lead to the institutionalization of professional products. In the field of religion this means that there is now an implicit expectation that we can switch out pastors who do not meet our expectations like we change out car parts, indeed that one can even switch denominations or faith traditions if one is dissatisfied. Though this has, of course, always been technically true, there has been a distinct increase in these kinds of activities (Sherkat 2001). The importance of professionals for establishing and
maintaining routines and organizational procedures, however, is as strong as ever even as they have moved from the initiator and developer of such routines to the mechanism and apparatus by which such routines are implemented. In the remainder of this section I discuss exactly how professionals themselves are regulated before moving on to consider
the role of the regulated professional in religious settings more fully.