‘It’s complicated’: Professional opacity, duality, and ambiguity—A response to Noordegraaf (2020)

Abstract

In this comment to Noordegraaf’s ‘Protective or connective professionalism? How connected professionals can (still) act as autonomous and authoritative experts’, we argue that Noordegraaf has contributed significant insights into the development of contemporary professionalism. However, we argue for a less binary and more complex view of forms of professionalism, and for finding ways of understanding professionalism grounded in a relational view of everyday professional work. The first section (by Johan Alvehus) suggests that Noordegraaf’s ‘connective professionalism’ is primarily about new ways of strengthening professionalism’s protective shields by maintaining functional ambiguity and transparent opacity around professional jurisdictions. The second section (by Amalya Oliver and Netta Avnoon) argues for viewing professionalism on a range of protection–connection and offers an approach for understanding how connective and protective models co-occur. Both commentaries thus take a relational, dynamic, and somewhat skeptical view on the reproduction and maintenance of professionalism.

Working on connective professionalism: What cross-sector strategists in Swedish public organizations do to develop connectivity in addressing ‘wicked’ policy problems

“…Our empirical illustrations address Noordegraaf 's (2020) fundamental question of 'why professional fields may be changing and connecting more to outside worlds' [219], rather than advancing the assumption that professional identities and actions are in fact adapting or changing as an inescapable consequence of such changes. We leave such investigations to future studies and suggest the use of connective professionalism as a descriptive device to enable analysis of shifts in the practices (Alvehus in Alvehus et al 2021)-or perhaps novel understandings of the practices-through which ideal type professionalism can be maintained. In this sense, 'protective' and 'connective' professionalism (cf.…”

“…In this sense, 'protective' and 'connective' professionalism (cf. Noordegraaf 2020) are models that co-occur (Oliver and Avnoon in Alvehus et al 2021) and may sometimes represent two mutually reinforcing models with patterns that facilitate and contribute to the effectiveness of the other in making the organization and control over work performed by occupations. At other times, however, these models may represent opposing models or forces (cf.…”

“…Such investigations would suggest that careful attention should be placed on the societal arrangements and surroundings (Noordegraaf and Brock 2021) of professional action as mediators of the role of professionalism in the organization of work. Connective professionalism is then used fruitfully as a descriptive device to enable analysis of shifts in the practices (Alvehus, in Alvehus et al 2021)-or perhaps novel understandings of the practices-through which ideal type professionalism can be maintained. Which proposes a use of the concept that beneficially poses and answers questions of the ongoing shaping and reshaping of patterns of work, the negotiation of order in organizations and the division of labour in societies.…”

“…The dynamics in and around existing occupations, as well as our theoretical conceptions, have shifted over time and space and left us with a range of attempts to understand what constitutes professionalism and how it relates to broader societal developments. In recent debates, Mirko Noordegraaf's (2020) endeavour to reconfigure professionalism from 'protective' to 'connective' has sparked a range of intriguing attempts on this matter (Adams et al 2020a(Adams et al , 2020bAlvehus et al 2021;Faulconbridge et al 2021). Although the notion of connective professionalism has been scrutinized and questioned by a number of researchers, the idea that professional action is to be studied as relational processes enacted in changing societal landscapes is neither novel nor possible to contest.…”

Institutional Logics and Functionalist Differentiation Theory: Challenges and pathways forward

“…Such approaches also provide a point of comparison between different cases, and over time. If we want to claim that professions are moving from traditional to connective forms, an ideal type of professionalism would help us identify in exactly which aspects the empirical phenomenon of professionalism have or have not changed (see Noordegraaf, 2020, and the exchange in Adams, Clegg, Eyal, Reed, & Saks, 2020; Alvehus, Avnoon, & Oliver, 2021; and Noordegraaf & Brock, 2021).…”