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Cited by 779Management and Organizational StudiesEducation, sociology, and vocational trainingFoucault, Power, and Ethics

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 65 of the 65 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

The Appeal to ‘Professionalism’ as a Disciplinary Mechanism

Fournier, Valérie·1999·The Sociological Review
DOI 10.1111/1467-954x.00173
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Abstract

The paper examines the deployment of ‘professional’ discourses in occupational domains not traditionally associated with the professions (eg management, clerical or sales staff are turned into ‘providers of professional services’). It first proposes to analyse professionalism as a disciplinary logic which inscribes ‘autonomous’ professional practice within a network of accountability and governs professional conduct at a distance. It is argued that professional labour is autonomous labour where the conditions of autonomy have already been inscribed in particular forms of conduct embodied in the notion of ‘professional competence’. The paper then suggests that the appeal to the discursive resources of professionalism in new occupational domains potentially acts as a disciplinary mechanism that serves to profess ‘appropriate’ work identities and conducts. The extension of the disciplinary logic of professionalism is illustrated with the turn to competencies to regulate managerial work in Teamco, a large privatised service company. However, the final section of the paper cautions against a deterministic analysis of the disciplinary logic of professionalism in regulating employees' conduct, and suggests that the constructed and contestable nature of professionalism makes it an inevitably imperfect form of government.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1111/1467-954x.00173

Cites

65 of 65 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

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Citations

Cites

Show all 65 references

Research works printed but not linked: 18

  1. Burawoy M., 1979, Manufacturing Consent
  2. 10.1080/03085149300000018 · DOI · Paper page
  3. 10.7208/chicago/9780226028811.001.0001 · DOI · Paper page
  4. Carr-Saunders A.M., 1928, Professions: Their Organisation and Place in Society
  5. Clegg S., 1990, Modern Organizations: Organizations Studies in the Postmodern World
  6. Fineman S., 1997, 15th Annual International Labour Process Conference
  7. Foucault M., 1988, Technologies of self, 16
  8. Foucault M., 1989, Résumé des cours
  9. Johnson T., 1972, Professions and Power
  10. Johnson T., 1994, Foucault's new domains
  11. Gordon C., 1991, The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, 1
  12. Harrison S., 1989, Controlling Medical Professionals
  13. Keat R., 1991, Enterprise Culture, 216
  14. Keat R., 1991, Enterprise Culture, 1
  15. Latour B., 1987, Science in Action
  16. Parsons T., 1954, Essays in social structure
  17. Parsons T., 1968, International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, 536
  18. Peters T., 1982, In Search of Excellence

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Metadata

Authors
Fournier, V.
Affiliations
Keele University (GB)
Corresponding author
Fournier, Valérie
Venue
The Sociological Review
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
1999-05
Volume
47
Issue
2
Pages
280-307
ISSN
  • 0038-0261 (ISSN-L)
  • 1467-954X
DOI
10.1111/1467-954x.00173
OpenAlex
W2049551972
Cited by
779
References
65
Citations by year
2026: 24 · 2025: 32 · 2024: 34 · 2023: 50 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 40 · 2020: 32 · 2019: 39 · 2018: 29 · 2017: 40 · 2016: 48 · 2015: 51 · 2014: 57 · 2013: 42 · 2012: 46
FWCI
2.53
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
The Sociological Review (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Management and Organizational Studies
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Education, sociology, and vocational training
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Foucault, Power, and Ethics
Keywords
professionalism, disciplinary mechanisms, professional autonomy, professional competence, managerial work, occupational identity, accountability, governmentality, privatization, service companies, managerialism

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Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.