The Professionalization of the Public Service: A Roadmap for the 1980s and Beyond

1 R. Richard Riggs , "Toward a Professionalism Model for Public Administration," Southern Review of Public Administration 5 (Fall 1981): 283.

2 Random House Dictionary of the English Language (New York: Random House, 1973), p. 1148.

3 Idem, "Toward a Professionalism Model for Public Administration": 283.

4 R. W. Habenstein , "A Critique of `Profession' as a Sociological Category," in Philip Elliot, The Sociology of the Professions (New York: Herder and Herder, 1963), pp. 291-300.

5 M. L. Cogan , "The Problem of Defining a Profession," 297 The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (1955): 105-111.

6 Idem, The Sociology of the Professions, p. 3.

⁷ Just as there are no textbook examples of a perfect profession, so there are no occupations with none of the traits of a profession. The bulk, or even the entirety, of the occupations identified will fall somewhere in the middle.

8 G. Millerson , The Qualifying Associations (London, 1964), p. 5.

9 Gardener Hanks and C. James Schmidt , "An Alternative Model of a Profession for Librarians," The Journal of College and Research Libraries 36 (May 1975): 176.

10 These descriptors are set forth more fully in R. Richard Riggs , "Toward a Professionalism Model for Public Administration: Upgrading Corrections in Kansas," Southern Review of Public Administration 5 (Fall 1981): 286-287.

¹¹ Op. cit., The Sociology of the Professions, p. 10.

12 Howard M. Vollmer and Donald L. Mills , Professionalization (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966), pp. 11-12.

13 J. A. Jackson , Professions and Professionalization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 6-7.

14 Emile Durkheim , Professional Ethics and Civil Morals (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1958), 25.

in Vollmer and Mills , Professionalization, pp. 20-21.

16 Idem, Professionalization, p. 57.

¹⁷ That is to say, physicians. To say "the medical profession" is probably inappropriate since nurses, medical technologists, and others are now either fully or substantially professionalized.

¹⁸ Again, many of these indicators of professionalism are interrelated and overlapping; the lack of a musician's monopoly affects, among other things, the legitimacy of all practitioners in the field (a concept to be discussed presently).

19 Idem, Professionalization, p. 12.

²⁰ This is changing somewhat. For example, doctors now find themselves questioned more, and trusted less, than in days gone by. This may be due in part to the general consumerist trend in this society, and it may also be due to the growing awareness of abuses and incompetence which this consumerism tends to expose.

21 Idem, Professionalization, p. 13.

22 Leo Flanagan , "Professionalism Dismissed?," Journal of College and Research Libraries 34 (May 1973): 221.

23 Margali Sarfatti Larson , The Rise of Professionalism (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977), p. 2.

²⁴ Idem, p. 180.

25 See, for example, the editorial in Public Administration Review 41 (July/August 1981): 405: "PA Centennial: 1887-1987—Footprints of a Profession."

and Dwight Waldo , "Education for Public Administration in the Seventies," in Frederick C. Mosher (ed.), American Public Administration: Past, Present, Future (University, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1975).

in Campbell and Rawson , "The `New' Public Policy Programs and Their Effect on the Professional Status of Public Administration": 91-113.

²⁸ Dwight Waldo notes that public administration knowledge and training are increasing both in mass and diversity, without, however, moving decisively toward an agreed-upon intellectual paradigm or well-articulated `public philosophy' " (Waldo, 1975, p. 197). Vollmer and Mills, however, point out that considerable flexibility and even looseness in the conceptualization of key concepts are an important part of exploratory investigations into any phenomenon. "Our openness to important aspects of these observed phenomena could be inhibited by premature agreement upon precise definitions of concepts" (Vollmer and Mills, 1966, p. vii).

²⁹ By no means do I mean to imply that government service actually is more comfortable, nor less demanding, than private enterprise. Indeed, the opposite may be true for reasons already discussed. However, there does seem to be that conception in the mind of much of the public. Therefore, these supposed more comfortable conditions may account for some of the applicants for public sector employment.

³⁰ Op. cit., "Toward a professionalism Model for Public Administration": 301.

³¹ Op. cit., "The `New' Public Policy Programs": 95.

32 For example, Morris Cogan defines a profession thus: "A profession is a vocation whose practice is founded upon an understanding of the theoretical structure of some department of learning or science, and upon the abilities accompanying such understanding" (Cogan, 1953: 49).

³⁴ op. cit., Professionalization, p. viii.

³⁵ It may be argued that since even students of the field cannot precisely define "Public Administration," no discrete field of PA knowledge exists as we have defined a body of knowledge here. Campbell and Rawson, in particular, regard agreement on the parameters of PA knowledge as a necessity. I would argue, however, that delineation of the parameters of the body of knowledge, and weighing the relative merits of specialized occupational competencies versus a generalist education, are not as important as agreeing that a significant amount of PA knowledge does exist, even if the boundaries are hard to see.

36 Samuel H. Beer , "Political Overload and Federalism," Polity: Journal of the Northeast Political Science Association 10 (1977): 5-17.

³⁷ Ibid.: 10.

³⁸ While most would agree that a popular image of administrators in the public sector is not the primary goal of the occupation, it must also be remembered that part of the professionalization process is dependent upon public acceptance.

39 Norman Beckman , "Assessing the Value of Public Service Professional Organizations," Public Service Professional Associations and the Public Interest (Philadelphia: The American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1973), p. 188.