The Professionalization of Knowledge in European Markets: Engineering in the UK and Poland

Abstract

The article considers one of the institutional contexts in which knowledge is controlled, reproduced and changed. These are the professional associations or institutions at the level of states and provinces, and increasingly the international federations of professions which operate at regional (e.g. European) levels. The article begins with a general statement about professionalization processes within states and how internationalization is affecting and influencing such processes. Then national and international regulation of the profession of engineering is compared as a case study in two contrasting European nation-state contexts: the UK and Poland. The article concludes with a discussion about the differential impacts of international regulation and the likely effects of this on the employment and mobility prospects for engineers in different European nation-states.

Keywords

engineering internationalization knowledge workers professionalization professions

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