BRITISH PROFESSIONS TODAY: THE STATE OF ... - Property Week

Introduction >>
All professions are conspiracies
against the laity.
George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma, 1911
Professionals in the UK form part of the backbone of the
services-based economy, play key roles in the political process,
and, perhaps most importantly, provide vital services in our
day-to-day lives. Professions are involved in every aspect
of human life: birth, survival, physical and emotional health,
dispute resolution and law-based social order, finance and
credit information, educational attainment and socialisation,
physical constructs and the built environment, military
engagement, peace-keeping and security, entertainment and
leisure, religion and our negotiations with the next world
(Olgiati et al. 1998).
Yet, the professions have come under attack from dual fronts:
from government, which often fails to consider professional
expertise in relevant policy areas; and from the general public,
which has come to view professionals suspiciously in an era of
declining deference to authority. How has this ambivalent state
of affairs come about, and why do the professions continue to
matter despite such criticisms, now more than ever?
The aim of British Professions Today: The State of the
Sector is to establish a set of core statistics and key
information about the role of professions in the UK, within
the context of the broader political, economic, social and
technological landscape. It is our hope that this report will
provide the substance to develop an open forum of debate
on the current roles and future of UK professions on
multiple levels, from the professional community through
to the wider public.
Methodology
A number of methodologies were employed to
prepare this report: desk research sourced from
secondary literature, web research, original
quantitative and qualitative research, and a series
of in-depth interviews with key members of
professional bodies. Please see Appendix 2, p. 39,
for a list of the personal interviews that were
conducted for this research. All tables, charts and
graphs have been originated at Spada.
We would like to point out certain limitations of
the study and welcome comments and criticism.
If the study is to be taken seriously, it must lead
to follow-up research and discussion. The first
constraint on the research project is its vast scope.
The approach adopted favours a broad analysis
of trends across the professions in historical and
comparative context over a narrower, in-depth
study of just one or two professions. Due to the
inevitable lack of completeness, particularly the
absence of quantitative measures of analysis,
this report cannot claim to be definitive. Instead,
it offers a critical synthesis of the literature
and statistics available to date, supplemented by
original quantitative and qualitative research where
this has been possible.
2