The emergence of hybrid professional roles: GPs and secondary school teachers in a context of public sector reform

Abstract

Responding to recent calls for more context and history in studying (semi-)professionals in the public sector, this article examines the emergence of hybrid professional roles along with large-scale reforms of Dutch healthcare and education since 1965. Using a theoretical framework based on public management literature and key professional attributes, the article shows how hybrid role expectations are developed by accumulation rather than replacement of successive reform models. Within a single national context, it also highlights considerable sectoral variation in how reform affects professionals' roles, suggesting a complex mutual relationship between reform and professions rather than a one-sided policy impact.

What we should do vs what we do: teachers’ professional identity in a context of managerial reform

“…Recognizing professional identity is key for understanding the interaction between professionals and their respective fields (Barbour and Lammers 2015;Goodrick and Reay 2010), the self-image and role interplay has increasingly been studied under different names in various domains to theorise the process of professional identity (re)construction (Ahuja, Nikolova, and Clegg 2017;Beauchamp and Thomas 2009;Bévort and Suddaby 2016;Buchanan 2015;Hendrikx 2018;Reay et al 2017). Hence, we know that institutional pressures like public management reform can imply substantial role change for professionals like doctors and teachers (Ball 2003;Chreim, Williams, and Hinings 2007;Day 2007;Hendrikx and Van Gestel 2017). Subsequent self-image change depends upon subjective interpretations of role changes by agentic individual professionals, who all uniquely make sense of their roles, which ultimately shape their self-image on a collective level (Bévort and Suddaby 2016).…”

Changed Roles and Strategies of Professionals in the (co)Production of Public Services

“…The various strategic models for reform of the welfare state have resulted in a multi-faceted role for professionals (Brandsen and Honingh 2013;Hendrikx and Van Gestel 2017). In this role expectations of professionals' focus and attitude in co-production with users of public services (NPG) essentially differ from the more top-down established executive roles expected of professionals in service provision (NPM).…”

“…In addition, it is increasingly recognized in public management literature that NPM and NPG models are simultaneously at play in strategic reforms of the welfare states across Europe (Aschhoff and Vogel 2019;Klijn 2012). Professionals thus face multiple demands that are not automatically compatible (Brandsen and Honingh 2013;Hendrikx and Van Gestel 2017) and some reform principles do not even match professional values (Kerpershoek et al 2016;Noordegraaf 2016). Still, the differences between the NPM and NPG models do not necessarily imply that one has replaced another and therefore more scholarly attention is necessary to understand the implications of such accumulated expectations for professionals (Hendrikx and Van Gestel 2017).…”

Meeting the needs of local communities and businesses: From transactional to eco-leadership in the English further education sector

“…In this way the introduction of Eco-Leadership (distributed leadership embedded within more democratic local decision-making) shifts the embedded nature of leadership away from the NPM paradigm (i.e. market incentives, policy levers, targets and performance indicators) (Hendrikx and Van Gestel, 2016) which requires constant change in the sector, an overemphasis on college competition at the expense of local collaboration and to unethical and inequitable education outcomes (Hodgson and Spours, 2015).…”

“…Integral to this would be the freeing of lecturers from the oppressive standardization of teaching and learning practice (NPM), with practice instead embedded within network processes at the local level (NPG). More specifically local stakeholders (combined with research on teaching and learning) would inform the nature of the curriculum and guide reflective practice within professional learning communities, so that the needs of local businesses, the wider community and disadvantaged adults may be addressed (Hendrikx and Van Gestel, 2016).…”