Editorial: Professions and Professionalism in Market-Driven Societies

Abstract

Social, political and economic transformations in contemporary society create instabilities, ambiguities, and uncertainties that bring significant challenges to professionals, professional groups, professionalization processes, and professionalism. Social notions, institutionalized during industrial capitalism, are now put in question. That is the case for the concept of a welfare state; the regulatory role of the nation-states, the dominant processes of work rationalization and control that along with the intrusion of market and management narratives in the structuring of societies, challenge the traditional role, power, and autonomy that professional groups had in the society. Eliot Freidson (2001) is among the authors who claim that professional values are—and should be—autonomous from the market and bureaucratic-administrative structures, as a condition to assure the quality of knowledge and similar conditions of access to services. However, it is no longer possible to think about work and professions without taking into account the current global context of market expansion into different dimensions of individual and collective everyday life. The states’ roles, particularly welfare governance, are changing accordingly (Kuhlmann, 2006), as are work models that are increasingly shaped by entrepreneurial and network-based values aiming at emancipating individuals from organizational control. Not surprisingly, such competing logics are likely transposed to individuals, therefore affecting how they perceive and act as users and professionals (Ward, 2012). The way these macro-structural changes affect professional groups, professionals and professionalism, has been a core concern for the sociology of professions in more recent years (Brock, Leblebici, & Muzio, 2014; Carvalho, 2014; Correia, 2013; Evans, 2016; Noordegraaf, 2007, 2011, 2015, 2016; Skelcher & Smith, 2015; Kuhlmann et al., 2013). This special issue intends to further contribute to the discussion of market-driven societies through the lens of the sociology of professions.