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

1.1 What is a profession?
There is no single definition of ‘profession’. For the purposes
of this report, we follow Sir Alan Langlands’ working
definition from his Gateways to the Professions report: those
occupations “where a first degree followed by a period of
further study or professional training is the normal entry route
and where there is a professional body overseeing standards
of entry to the profession” (Langlands 2005). However, not
all professions require an initial degree qualification, the
professional qualification itself providing at least an equivalent
level of achievement.
A more comprehensive study of the term reveals various
connotations. Meanings range from the narrowly defined
traditional professions of doctor, lawyer, and accountant
to the broadly defined usage as any occupation by which
someone earns a living. “Professional” now refers to
competency and efficiency in almost any field (eg the
professional footballer). The Oxford English Dictionary
(OED) defines professional occupation as, “an occupation
in which a professed knowledge of some subject, field, or
science is applied; a vocation or career, especially one that
involves prolonged training and a formal qualification.” In early
use, the OED specifies that the word applied specifically to
the professions of law, the Church, and medicine, sometimes
extending into the military profession.
One of the most thoughtful and comprehensive definitions
of “profession” is Lord Benson’s 1992 criteria for professional
bodies. Lord Benson stated that to be a professional is to
operate within certain principles, most of which ultimately
pertain to the public interest, which he went on to detail in
nine points (see Appendix 1, p. 38).
Indeed, it is the duty to serve the public interest which
distinguishes a profession from a representative body such
as a trade union. This attribute encompasses independent
(eg self-employed barristers), organisational (eg accountants
working in firms), and public sector professions (eg health
care professionals). Our research focuses on the private
sector, “liberal” professions. Though the report approaches
the professions as a generic group of occupations, it does
not attempt to draw a hard and fast line, or even count the
number of professions in the UK. 1 Labelling is less important
than acknowledging the shared, professional characteristics
of certain occupations. Following Everett C. Hughes (1963),
professionalism is a process as well as a structure: “…in my
studies I passed from the false question ‘Is this occupation
a profession’ to the more fundamental one ‘what are
the circumstances in which people in an occupation
attempt to turn it into a profession and themselves into
professional people’?”
1.2 History of the professions
The professions can be considered an “articulation” of
the modern capitalist state (Johnson 1982), because the
opportunity for professions to emerge and thrive is made
possible by modern societies, where knowledge is a unified,
autonomous realm (Gellner 1988), and where free markets
in goods and services exist (Weber 1978). While some
professions, such as medicine and law, have long and rich
histories, in general the rise of the professions in Western
society is a relatively recent historical phenomenon. The
roots of most modern-day professions may be traced to
the nineteenth century or later, with most professions fully
coalescing in the twentieth century (Jennings et al. 1987).
1 Incidentally, no offi cial fi gure for the number of professions or professional
bodies in the UK exists. The Privy Council keeps a record of the number
of Chartered bodies (currently 750), but this fi gure includes other bodies
such as educational institutions. Moreover, certain professions are
represented by several Chartered bodies (eg accounting), and some
remain un-Chartered (eg barristers).
British Professions Today: The State of the Sector © Spada Limited 2009 3